What Price To Sell Your Paradise? How about $1 Million?

Miami correspondent Jeffrey Kofman blogs:
So long paradise. The residents of  tiny Briny Breezes, Florida, simply couldn’t resist the huge pile of cash being offered for their mobile home park. Last week we reported the whopping $510 million being offered to the owners of Briny’s 488 mobile homes. Today the votes were tallied and the results announced: 82% of the owners voted YES to sell to local developer Ocean Land Investments. There are a lot of other mobile home parks across Florida, but what made Briny Breezes so valuable was, yes, location. The 43-acre municipality sits on some the most prized real estate in the country: Palm Beach County. It boasts 600-feet of pristine beach front on the Atlantic and 1,100 feet of water frontage on the Intracoastal Waterway. Developer Logan Pierson says it is probably the biggest piece of undeveloped property to be found on the Florida Coast. His company plans to replace the tiny tin mobile homes with condos and elegant hotels. The residents of Briny have two years to savor their modest little patch of paradise before the bulldozers move in. When that happens a little piece of Florida will disappear. Blue-collar Americans have been coming to this former strawberry field since the 1920s. The so-called “tin-can tourists” brought tents trailers and eventually mobile homes to their oceanfront perch. No, Briny Breezes isn’t as grand as the multi-million dollar homes that surround it, but spend some time in Briny and you can see why the decision is bittersweet. There is a sense of community and camaraderie on the neat little streets that seems to be lost in so much of America. “Like Mayberry,” says longtime resident Peggy Tenny. She and her husband Ted voted to sell but they know that a million dollars won’t replace the good friends and the good times at Briny. Neighbor Carol Ellis wasn’t dazzled by the dollars. She would have liked to stay. “I have all I want,” Ellis told us. “What could I buy? A big luxury car? Is that going to make me happy? I have a nice home, a nice place here and friends and family. I’m blessed. I don’t need anything else.” Those kind of sentiments clearly resonated with readers of ABCnews.com. In an informal survey 57 percent of our readers who cast a vote said they wouldn’t sell either. But in the end it was the owners’ decision. And an overwhelming majority voted to take the money — and keep the memories.