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Local developer’s Florida masterpiece becomes HGTV Dream Home
By Kathleen Dayton
Staff Writer
Ah, the HGTV Dream Home. This year, 41 million people registered to win the luxury home in Islamorada, Fla., which was the 12th annual home giveaway sponsored by the Home & Garden Television Network.
Maybe you registered to win it, but you didn’t. Stephanie Dee of Solon, Iowa, beat the odds and won the fully furnished $2.2 million oceanfront home. Disappointed? A Charleston developer has more of them if you’re interested.
A special project
Ned Johnson, a 31-year-old developer who moved to Charleston two years ago from Savannah, Ga., is developing The Shore at Islamorada, where the HGTV Dream Home sits on a spit of sugary white sand overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. It is one of eight homes in the gated, 3-acre development, and sales have just begun.
The Shore at Islamorada is the first project for Johnson’s company, The Shore Partners Inc. Getting selected by HGTV for the Dream Home sweepstakes was a bit of luck Johnson hadn’t expected when he began the development.
“I think it’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, especially for me just starting my own company,” Johnson said. “It gives it a national spotlight that no marketing dollars could even come close to.”
Jack Thomasson, the house planner for HGTV and the person who scouts the nation each year for the dream home location, said he considered about 200 sites for the 2008 Dream Home. Thomasson said it is rare for him to select a site that is presented to him rather than discovered by him as happened in this case.
Kathy Rogers, a real estate agent working with Johnson at The Shore at Islamorada brought the project to Thomasson’s attention. Rogers had worked with Thomasson a few years earlier when he was scouting Dream Home locations in the Florida Keys. Although he did not choose a Florida site that year, he trusted Rogers’ instincts.
Thomasson said he immediately put Johnson’s home on his “short list.”
“It’s very hard to find a piece of vacant land, and it’s very hard to obtain a permit,” Thomasson said. “There’s not a lot of land and there is a growth ordinance. I wanted to find the perfect location, the right setting, the privacy. Waterfront was key for me.”
Johnson and Thomasson had a couple of meetings in the Keys as Thomasson considered Johnson’s house for the Dream Home Sweepstakes.
“We went out by boat and had some great stone crabs,” Johnson said. “I thought to be selected would be a one-in a-million, but I knew we had a very special project.”
Inspired by memories
Johnson planned The Shore at Islamorada to reflect the uniqueness of old Florida and was inspired by childhood memories of vacationing at Islamorada, where his grandfather once owned the Cheeca Inn & Spa. A passionate fly fisherman, Johnson searched for a piece of oceanfront property where he could build a Florida-style home that reflected his love of the area.
When Johnson found his property, he began designing The Shore at Islamorada with a Caribbean Island feel, inspired by small fishing villages. The development will have a community pool and an eight-slip dock.
“You have lush vegetation all around it with aqua blue water and a white sand beach,” Johnson said. “It’s very dreamy. That’s what makes it a dream home, to be honest.”
Johnson worked with the Savannah, Ga., architectural firm Dawson & Wissmach, whom he had worked with before he started his company. Johnson had previously spent three years with the Bluffton development company Dolan, Pollack & Schram, developers of The Ford Plantation near Savannah, the Greenbrier Sporting Club in West Virginia and Deepwater Cay in the Bahamas.
Neil Dawson, a project architect with Dawson & Wissmach, said Johnson had a strong concept with The Shore at Islamorada.
“He’s got a long track record of family ties to the area, so the whole idea of a place that was very much for family and would center around the water and fishing was one of the things we wanted to create,” Dawson said. “What we tried to do with the layout of porches and outdoor spaces was to create some spaces that were public and others where you could get away and read a book and not be viewed by the neighbors.”
The hard part
Viewed by 90 million households, the HGTV Dream Home Sweepstakes will bring Johnson much recognition, but the project was not without its challenges.
“We had to build the home in five months, which was tough,” Johnson said. “And just dealing with Islamorada — it’s a Third World in getting things done. Everything has to come through Miami and down a one-lane road. You have to be organized and make sure you have everything in your inventory, because if you’re missing one thing it’s a week to get it. We can’t run to a lumberyard.”
Johnson said it is too soon to tell how sales of his seven other homes at The Shore at Islamorada will progress, especially in the current housing market. He bought the property for $3.5 million in 2005.
“Obviously, it was a better time then,” Johnson said. “In south Florida, the market was really hot, with 30% to 40% increases in property values in a year. Now, it’s just slack. We’re selling them for the same value they were two years ago. But we’re not seeing it decrease as much, and waterfront is waterfront. You can’t make any more of it, so waterfront is holding its value, which is encouraging.”
Kathleen Dayton is a writer for the Business Journal. Email her at kdayton@scbiznews.com.
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