By Jane Musgrave
When Daniel Hassan looked at the long abandoned Ocean Ridge home of one of the ex-wives of notorious automaker John DeLorean, he didn’t focus on the peeling paint, the rotting wood or the plywood covering the windows.
“It’s a gem,” the 43-year-old Boca Raton real estate investor declared days after plunking down $3.6 million on May 28 for the oceanfront home that town residents have long derided as an embarrassing eyesore.
Then, acknowledging the home’s reputation in the community, he laughed.
“I’ve been called crazy a few times,” he said.
Rather than tear down the home that sits at an odd angle on an overgrown lot on Old Ocean Boulevard just south of Tropical Drive, Hassan said he plans to renovate it to recapture its half-century-old charm.
“Why tear down a perfectly good house?” he asked rhetorically. “Wow, this is a home from the 1950s.”
An artist’s rendering illustrates his vision for the home, which was long ago converted into a duplex. It shows a white house under a shake-tiled roof with blue shutters and window boxes brimming with flowers.
Daniel Hassan, above, has started the daunting task of rehabbing the former DeLorean duplex on Old Ocean Boulevard in Ocean Ridge. Jerry Lower/The Coastal Star
He plans to restore it as a 1950s-style bungalow, below. Rendering provided
While the property may one day be developed into something far more grandiose, that is years into the future, Hassan said.
“Our intent is to rehabilitate it and keep it in the family portfolio as a beach bungalow,” he said. “We want to restore it to what it was back in the 1950s.”
Ocean Ridge resident Terry Brown, who for years has pushed the town to raze the home and turn it and an adjacent parcel that Hassan purchased into a natural area, questioned the viability of planned renovation.
“Water comes up from the dune into the structure,” he said. “It’s been filled with water and sand on at least two occasions.”
Still, he said, if Hassan can figure out a way to keep the ocean at bay and comply with myriad other state and local regulations, it would be an improvement.
“Fixing it up is better than looking at it the way it is now,” Brown said.
Hassan said he has met repeatedly with town officials. “The tone from city hall has been extremely professional,” he said.
Real estate agent Dorian Hayes, who represented owner Howard Goldsmith in the sale, said she is convinced Hassan’s plans will become reality.
“He’s prepared to go through town approvals and do whatever needs to be done,” said Hayes, who works for Douglas Elliman.
Since Goldsmith put the house on the market last year for $5 million, Hayes said she has fielded numerous phone calls from would-be buyers. Given that the property is on the ocean, the interest wasn’t unexpected.
But, given the oddities of the property, those who followed through had to be creative. One man suggested that he would raze the house and build a cabana for his family to use when they came to the beach on weekends, she said.
Little has been done to the house since Elizabeth DeLorean purchased it in 1980, roughly 11 years after her 14-year marriage to the famous automaker ended. But the deeds became more complex.
In 1984, now retired Boynton Beach contractor Robert Larkie, who was renting half of the duplex, convinced DeLorean to divide the house so he would own half and she would own the other half.
Then, in 1987, DeLorean and Larkie bought the adjacent lot. That meant that three different pieces of land were involved in the recent sale.
Eventually, Larkie said he tired of paying high taxes for land that he couldn’t do much with. He couldn’t touch the vacant lot because it is environmentally sensitive land. Further, town officials insisted he couldn’t build a bigger house than the existing one.
Disgusted, in 2000 he sold his half to John Dragonas, who had befriended DeLorean. Roughly four years before her death in 2004 at age 81, DeLorean did the same.
But, Dragonas encountered the same resistance from Town Hall that had confounded Larkie. With no air conditioning in the house, he slept in his van in the driveway. His health suffered.
In 2023, Goldsmith purchased the three parcels for $2.6 million after Dragonas defaulted on a loan. The Boca Raton real estate investor didn’t want to develop the property, Hayes said. He just wanted to sell it.
After Hassan bought the property, he spent the weekend cleaning out long abandoned artifacts from past owners. Most of what he recovered was owned by Dragonas and returned, Hassan said.
While the house is unconventional, Hassan said it is ideal for him.
A self-described car guy, who converted a former Baer’s Furniture store in Tamarac into a car museum called the Patina Collective, he said he was intrigued that the house had been owned by DeLorean.
He is also intrigued by old Florida and wants to protect what remains of it.
“I’m an anti-development real estate guy,” Hassan said. “Since COVID, everyone who moves here wants to tear things down and build something bigger.”
He said he isn’t convinced bigger is necessarily better.
“Not everything has to be a megamansion,” Hassan said.
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