Carver's demise marked with ceremony

DELRAY BEACH — Carver Estates took one beating from Hurricane Wilma 18 months ago.

It took another Thursday at the hands of sledge hammer-wielding city officials, developers and former residents who did their best to pound one of Carver's concrete block walls into a pile of rubble.

The damage they inflicted during the “building busting” ceremony was minimal, but the event more importantly marked a turning from the past to the future. Carver, damaged beyond repair by Wilma, is to make way for the $200 million, mixed use Villages of Delray — what officials called a catalyst for redeveloping the city’s Southwest neighborhoods and a national model for building affordable housing.

“What we’re building here is historic,” Delray Mayor Jeff Perlman said. “This project is going to provide a stable, safe, attractive neighborhood.”

Carver’s 18 acres are to be combined with 11 adjacent acres owned by the Auburn Group as the site for 400 “workforce” and affordable housing units. Auburn will develop the property in a partnership with the Delray Beach Housing Authority. Quincy Johnson, Jones, Myott, Williams, Acevedo, Vaughn Architects of Boca Raton designed the project.

The Villages also will include market rate, for-sale homes to attract a wide range of income groups and professionals — teachers, doctors, lawyers — to the neighborhood. The first homes are to be completed in 2008.

Eventually, 1,000 apartments, condominiums and townhouses will be built, making the Villages the largest project of its kind in Florida.

“This neighborhood his going to be a great place to raise a family, a great place for children,” Auburn CEO Thomas Hinners said.

What makes the project special is its location — 50 acres east of Interstate 95, a mile-and-a-half from the beach, a half-mile from Delray’s downtown. In other words, prime real estate.

Said Auburn Vice President Cito Beguiristain: “It’s going to be an example of how to do workforce housing. You don’t see residential communities in blighted areas redeveloped like this.”

Housing authority president and CEO Dorothy Ellington said while the prospects for the future are exciting, it’s important to recall that Carver has been home to a lot of people for a lot of years.

Ellington introduced one former resident, 96-year-old Sarah Broadnax, who lived in Carver for more than 30 years. Broadnax later took a turn at pounding Carver’s walls.

Asked if she intends to live in the Villages of Delray after it's built, she replied, “I’ve got to come some place.”