A Long Wait, But Worth It

Walk away or wait it out? That was the question facing Nora and Ray Koontz as they surveyed the damage the 2004 hurricanes had done to their fourth-floor condo at The Gables on Ocean Drive. The Baltimore couple’s home away from home was reduced to a pile of rubble.  
The easy answer would have been to settle the insurance claim and walk away but for Nora and Ray, who had fallen in love with Vero Beach the first time they came to visit his brother and his wife, the waiting won out.

“We loved looking out at the ocean and walking along the beach,” Nora says. “Every time we came here on vacation we looked around for a place of our own but we could never find just what we wanted. At the time condos here rarely went on the market. Then one day my sister-in-law called and said that a place had just become available and asked if we were interested. We bought it sight unseen, bubble gum pink and all.”

Nora laughs, looking at her husband who nods knowingly as he recalls the previous owner’s color of choice. “The beauty of the two hurricanes was that they gave us an opportunity to start over and get the look and feel we wanted. We just didn’t think it would take four years.”
Neither did anyone else. Months morphed into a year due to difficulties in securing the proper permits and hiring a contractor to rebuild the two concrete and steel frame buildings before Nora, Ray and others could begin renovations of their own.

Read the entire article in the February 2009 issue