The Right Places by Stephen; Birmingham Page B

fortune (as most people frankly are and as it is in the California Valley), and the high-rise is what it’s played with. Higher and higher rise the high-rises until they rake the heavens. They march along the oceanfront like so many gleaming white filing cabinets, and the sound of cement mixers is everywhere. The apartments and condominiums that these buildings contain sell so well that, in many cases, buildings have been completely sold before their foundations were even dug. It is said that this is the smart-money way to buy a condominium because, what with skyrocketing building costs, the same apartment you can buy from a builder’s floor plan for fifty thousand dollars may wind up costing you seventy-five thousand dollars when the building is finished. Not long ago a man from Rye, New York, and his wife looked at a fulsomely decorated “model apartment” in a new Lauderdale high-rise, and offered to buy it just as it was—complete with everything it contained, right down to the ashtrays on the tables, pictures on the walls, books in the bookcases, and the plastic-flower centerpiece on the dining room table. When the builder demurred (he was, after all, using the model apartment as a selling tool, and to replace it would be costly and time-consuming), the Rye man offered twenty-five thousand dollars more, cash on the barrelhead, take it or leave it. The builder took it. The early-1970s business recession, spongy stock market, and tight money are said to have had “only a slight effect” on the Great Fort Lauderdale Boom.
    With all this agitated growth, there have been, not surprisingly, growing pains. Developers, in the tradition of their breed, have tended to want to get their buildings up as rapidly as possible, the hell with what they look like. Some strange structural concoctions have resulted. Along one strip, the Gault Ocean Mile—which is beginning to resemble a mini-Miami Beach—the hotels and apartment houses have gone up Miami-fashion, cheek by jowl, with barely space to breathe between the buildings, and so crowded together that the tall buildings cast long afternoon shadows over what, perhaps, were intended to be sunny terraces and pools and beaches. Since Fort Lauderdale is on Florida’s east coast, sun-worshippers must now get to the beach before midday; after that, the sun has set behind a mountain range of construction. From inland, what once were ocean views are now views ofother buildings. Further south, in a section called Point of Americas, the developers have been somewhat more considerate in their use of the land and have left more space between their buildings. Still, when the last building in the Point of Americas complex was completed, it managed to block the southeasterly view of the Atlantic that many apartment owners bought in their original package.
    One of the unusual things about Fort Lauderdale has always been its seven-mile stretch of public beach, skirted gracefully by Highway A-1A. Neither Miami nor Palm Beach has anything like this beach, which is permanently protected from the developer’s hand. It is this beach that periodically attracts throngs of college kids—particularly during Easter vacation. (They still come in droves, though a strong contingent has defected to Delray Beach, farther north.) But recently a grim ecological note has been sounded. From the highest of the high-rises, it is appallingly visible: a wide and spreading tongue of livid water that flows out of the Inland Waterway and from New River, through Port Everglades (itself a sewage dump for cruise ships) and out into the Atlantic Ocean at the southernmost tip of the city. Each year, the swathe of red-black water seems to grow wider, stretch out its feathery fingers farther. Increased development has meant increased pollution, and it has been estimated that if nothing is done, Fort Lauderdale’s famous beach will be unfit for swimming in less than five years’