Metropica’s Tower 1 is the first residential tower of Metropica’s 4-million-square-foot planned community and is set for move-in soon.
A model in the Metropica sales office shows what’s planned—regular condos, student living, an active senior center, and an assisted living home. It will theoretically be possible to live one’s entire life in the community if all goes well.
Seventy-year-old Joseph Kavana first purchased the 65 acres Metropica is being built on more than 20 years ago. To finance it, he’s created what’s known as a special taxing district—a mechanism that has paid for large-scale engineering projects throughout the state’s history.
The homes under construction in places like Lehigh Acres are cookie-cutter—often identical.
Lehigh Acres is often cited today as one of the areas most affected by the subprime mortgage crisis, and it’s still dotted with spread-out dwellings separated by unclaimed lots. Meanwhile, the people who banked on them as newlyweds and had prepared no backup retirement plan now live in what are basically slums.
The primary asset of the homes in Lehigh is their newness. But without upkeep, they will fall into disrepair in a matter of decades.
Although it was touted as the community of the future in the 1920s, only a few homes remain in Aladdin City a century later.
On a recent visit, a man selling lychee just outside the circle told me he had never heard of Aladdin City. Luis seemed to know that we weren’t quite standing in Homestead, where he lived, but to him, and to history, the place was basically semi-anonymous brush.“No se,” he said, shaking his head at the great expanse when I asked where he thought we were.The 1926 Miami hurricane and the Great Depression sealed the fate of Aladdin City. Today, only the northwest quadrant of Ali Baba Circle remains, and on it, enough houses to count on one hand.
Luis sells lychee fruit a few feet away from what is still known to a handful of residents as Aladdin City. He has never heard of it.
