Empty Florida homes may return to nature

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Chelius, of the Trust for Public Land, hopes Bank of America will agree to split up the Georgetown property and let county taxpayers buy the bayfront portion to preserve as a park.

A private developer could buy the buildings, he said, fix them up and rent them as "workforce housing" -- until the market for luxury homes eventually picks up again.

Hillsborough County voters recently extended an environmental lands acquisition program that has been in place since 1987, allowing for the purchase of 6.5% of the land in the county.

Much of that has been in rural areas. City officials say Georgetown is a rare chance to pick up land in the city -- and, even more remarkably, along the water.

"The vast majority of our waterfront has been captured for development," said Mark Huey, Tampa's economic development administrator. "I mean -- look at our downtown. It's bounded on three sides by water, but you'd have a hard time getting to it."

Kaul's daughter doesn't know what her father would make of the idea of Georgetown becoming a park. "His background was in economics," Judith Kaul said. "He was a realist. . . . He wasn't an environmentalist."

As Chelius walked back to Size's Toyota Prius, he alluded, a little mischievously, to the fact that the federal government is now the largest investor in Bank of America, having given the company billions in recent months to help it manage its bad debt.

"It would be nice to have the public benefit from those dollars," Chelius said.

He didn't know what the property was worth, but he assumed that it was "losing value every day." The bank would be wise to sell soon, he said.

He also acknowledged that the environmentalists would need to act fast. In a past life, Chelius was a Florida real estate agent.

He knows that sooner or later, a property like this one will get hot again.

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richard.fausset@latimes.com