Florida Man Desperately Holds on to Home as Developers Surround It

Struggling with developers in the posh city of Coral Gables, Orlando Capote is holding on to the last remaining home surrounded by a one-million-square-foot metropolis.

Capote’s parents bought the Mediterranean-style, two-bedroom home thirty-five years ago. But now it’s surrounded on all sides by office buildings, a fourteen-story hotel and several parking garages.

“Just imagine ... that your house was in the middle of Manhattan surrounded by high-rise buildings,” Capote told reporters. “That’s what it’s like.”

For most of the year, the sun barely reaches Capote’s home and now his bushes and mango trees are dying. Across the street from his front yard, cars and tour buses pick up and drop off passengers at the Loews hotel. The developer even installed large planters along the front of his house to block it from the view of hotel guests.

To get to his home, Capote must take the one-way streets through the retail complex and an unmarked back alley that leads to his backyard. He can’t even get the city to pick up his piles of yard debris.

After negotiating with the city for months over code violations, Capote said the bills totaled nearly $30,000 prompting rumors in the community that the city had placed a lien on his home. City offices were then overwhelmed by a flood of emails and phone calls from concerned residents defending Capote.

“We were very clear at the last commission meeting to state that we had not continued to move forward in regards to any citations or any liens in regards to code enforcement,” Coral Gables Mayor Vince Lago told reporters.

A Struggle Against Developers

For two decades, Capote has been fighting developers and the city. As a teenager, he hailed from Cuba with his parents, and the family bought the home in Coral Gables in 1989.

Now 68 years old – and a professional engineer who’s become well-versed in planning and zoning law – Capote said a developer approached him in 2004 as they gobbled up homes to make way for a new project. But Capote says his father was very ill and he was busy taking care of him.

Unable to take the time to sell the house and find a new one while he was looking after his father, the real estate bubble in Florida burst and the developer went bankrupt. After all the other houses in Capote’s neighborhood were demolished, a decade went by without any progress.

Another developer bought the land in 2013, but he became angry when they approached Capote to sign a document.

“The wording implied that we were going to sell them the property,” Capote told reporters. “And they could represent us in the permitting process for the project.”

Capote threw the papers at the developer and told them not to come back. But as the project progressed, the street was closed for almost two years, and cranes swung overhead. The 20-year struggle has left him weary and bitter at the local government.

“The laws and rules are supposed to be enforced equally to all parties,” Capote said. “And in this case, it was not. The city repeatedly enforced the laws and rules to the benefit of the developer at our expense.”

Coral Gables Mayor Lago acknowledges that Capote is in a difficult situation but says the two parties have to find a way to coexist. As one of Florida’s oldest planned communities, Coral Gables has a reputation for managing development carefully, and Capote says he’s often asked by those passing by why this small house sits in the middle of this opulent development.