Summer house construction is booming
The US is in the grip of a summer house boom so big its proportions are only dimly understood.
The rise in consumer incomes is for the first time making it possible for America's great middle class to buy a lot in the country and to put up a house in which to enjoy the new leisure.
State-financed highways and bridges are opening up hundreds of miles of new vacation territories to easy auto acces-”notably the reef islands off the Gulf Coast.
Summer house financing is easing
VA has just ruled that veterans may use their GI house entitlement to buy a summer house even if they already own a house (non-VA, of course), provided the summer residence is built to VA's year-round living standards.
Here is some of the evidence to show how summer construction is booming throughout the US:
• Houston realty developer John B. Cassidy last fall began to trans
form his 10-mile-long holdings on San Luis Island (50 mi. south of Houston) into a community to rival Florida and California resorts. His project was made possible by a new $2.5 million bridge from the mainland.
• On Padre Island, a 110-mi. long sandpit off the southernmost tip of Texas, ex-home-builder Jonathan Conrow (whose great uncle, John Collins, developed Miami Beach) is offering tracts from 35 acres up to builder-developers. Conrow thinks Padre Island may some day rival Miami.
• In Otsego, Mich., the president of the Chamber of Commerce has announced his area doesn't have enough builders to keep up with demand for vacation homes.
• In Cleveland, the Chamber of Commerce reports there are 20 inquiries for every summer cottage available around Lake Erie. Result: the Chamber is sending people to Canada.
• Around Chicago and Milwaukee so many middle-income families have bought or built summer cottages that the old resort hotels and motels are facing hard times.
Developers are getting busy
Promoters everywhere agree that the big money is in land turnover, not building. Land is bought cheaply, improved, then re-sold. Ponds are widened, swamps deepened and tagged "lakes."¯ One enterprising developer spotted a depression Ā½ mile from Fox Lake, Wis., dug a channel to the water and had himself a "lakefront development."¯
Biggest danger is shanties springing up in these areas and destroying the very values that first created the vacation spot. But as land prices begin to rise in vacation areas, the "$2,195-plus site"¯ variety of shack (a shell without plumbing, wiring or heating) is starting to disappear. Smart developers now know that their long-range interests lie in keeping densities down and quality up./END
LIFE: Walter Sanders