Enclave residents can get a blank slate
FORT LAUDERDALE In 2004, a partnership of developer Terry Stiles and auto magnate Phil Smith bought the Coral Ridge Country Club in Fort Lauderdale and an adjacent 75 acres known as the American Golfers Club golf course.
They intended to create a development of luxury homes. But it wasn’t the smoothest of rides.
Hurricane Wilma, the housing bust and Great Recession, a declining interest in golf and residents opposed to redevelopment all played a role in the golf-course site languishing for more than a decade.
Now, though, Stiles and the family of Smith, who died last year, are making progress on a new 36-lot development called Enclave at Coral Ridge Country Club, off Federal Highway and Northeast 38th Street.
Eighteen of the 36 lots have sold, priced from the $700,000s to $1.8 million. The lots range from 17,000 square feet to more than an acre. Four of the homes are under construction.
It’s one of the only remaining sites in east Fort Lauderdale where buyers can get lots so big, said J.J. Sehlke, managing partner for the Enclave.
“You can build your dream home and have plenty of room to do it,” he said.
What makes Enclave so attractive is that it will give buyers the chance to live in custom homes in an older-but-still-popular section of Fort Lauderdale, said Tim Singer, a real estate agent for Coldwell Banker.
Coral Ridge is centrally located, but most of the existing 3,000 homes in the area were built in the 1960s and ’70s with ranch-style floor plans, he said.
“A lot of the existing homes aren’t meeting the needs of what people want today,” Singer said.
Bomar Builders and Grey Door Luxury Homes are the featured builders in the gated Enclave development, though buyers can use their own builders. The homes must meet design standards and can’t be smaller than 3,700 square feet, Sehlke said.
The Stiles-Smith partnership faced adversity almost from the start.
Wilma swept through in 2005, severely damaging a course that