Rather than bulldoze the two-story masterpiece, the city’s Community Redevelopment Agency offered to foot the estimated $2.7 million bill to save it. The cost includes $448,000 to the house movers, almost $30,000 to the tree mover, as well as architects and the fee to Florida Power & Light to disconnect and reconnect electricity for the traffic signals.
The site plan to turn the house into a commercial structure will take more than a year, and then construction companies can come in to build the restaurant with a host of improvements: It needs to become handicapped accessible, and it will need new air conditioning and ventilation, electric, and plumbing. The second floor was built only to carry a “residential load,” said Sarah Mulder, the Community Redevelopment Agency project manager, so that could need retrofitting, too, she said.
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