About 7 1/2 years ago, residents of the Bonaventure area that is now part of Weston had plenty of concerns when they learned that a timeshare operation was coming into their neighborhood. Now, they are finding Vacation Village to be a welcome — and expanding — neighbor.
“Certainly, at the onset, I was distressed that the developer sold the land to a timeshare,” said Ed Jacobson, then president of the Bonaventure Presidents Council, an umbrella homeowners’ group, and now a member of the Weston City Commission. “Since that time, I have seen what the timeshare has done for the community.”
Fears that the Vacation Village area, which is near Wyndham Resort & Spa, would be overrun with tourists have been replaced with delight that the timeshare units result in no demand for schools and very little for other services while generating what soon will become millions of dollars in annual property taxes.
“I, for one, certainly appreciate his presence,” Jacobson said of J.P. Ottino, vice president of Vacation Village developer Berkley Group Inc. of Fort Lauderdale.
In fact, city officials have been so pleased with the favorable impact of Vacation Village that last year they approved the developer’s plans to more than double the number of units that it has in the Bonaventure area. There are now 340 units.
In addition to paying lots of taxes and not putting children in schools that already are crowded, the timeshare units attract one-week vacationers who patronize restaurants and spend shopping dollars at a faster pace than year-round residents, Ottino said.
With its 340 units in six buildings, Vacation Village pays about $1.75 million a year in property taxes, making it the city’s No. 1 residential taxpayer. After completion of 440 additional units in coming years, the annual tax figure is expected to climb over the $4 million mark.
Ottino said he never envisioned the Bonaventure timeshare venture mushrooming into such a large-scale project back in 1992, when his company acquired a two-acre tract at 401 Racquet Club Road with a three-story, 39-unit apartment building plus five vacant acres across the road.
The Berkley Group’s other 16 timeshare properties in Florida are on the beachfront, from north Miami-Dade County to south Palm Beach County, and all of them were converted to timeshare use from their original hotel configurations. So the firm, which also has inland timeshares in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley, was breaking new Florida ground when it decided to embark upon purpose-built units away from the ocean.
Bonaventure’s proximity to Sawgrass Mills mall and its abundance of public golf and tennis facilities have proven a great draw, and the company sold out the original building in 1993, Ottino said.
Vacation Village’s developers began building additional five- to eight-story units on the first five-acre tract as well as two more on five-acre plots that the company obtained.
Then, last year, the firm began construction on 11 acres just northeast of the Wyndham property. The first 112 of 336 approved units are expected to be completed by summer, about the same time that a new city-owned tennis club is anticipated to open on nine adjoining acres that Berkley deeded to the city, Ottino said. Another 104 villa-type units are to eventually open in two- and three-story buildings on a seven-acre tract to the north of the original building.
“We had our challengers, and we had our naysayers,” said Ottino, who estimated his firm’s total Bonaventure investment at $75 million. “I think we had to prove ourselves, to earn our stars, so to speak.”
The way timeshares operate is that owners buy a week’s vacation per year for life, deedable to heirs, at an average cost of $13,000, according to Ottino. The owners can spend that week at the same property each year or exchange the week for another week at another of 3,500 affiliated resorts worldwide.
Holly Jones, vice president of operations for Daily Management Inc., the management company for Vacation Village, said guests come from Europe, Latin America, Asia and Canada, as well as every other state in the United States. Shopping, the Everglades, beaches and the weather are big attractions, she said.
The resort’s multilingual staff numbers 123 employees, and Ottino’s firm has an on-site sales staff of 140 plus 25 administrative support employees.
While he said his company has no immediate plans for even further expansion, Ottino said, “We are always taking a look to see what is on the horizon. We’re always taking a look at options.”
