Demolition equipment tears apart the home at 2900 Avenue Au Soleil in mid-May. Tim Stepien/The Coastal Star
By Steve Plunkett
The new owner of 2900 Avenue Au Soleil has leveled the decrepit home on the Intracoastal Waterway and its detached, multi-vehicle garage, but had not completely demolished the structures by Memorial Day.
Assistant Town Attorney Trey Nazzaro said owner David Willens asked for extra time to finish the demolition after workers encountered huge blocks of concrete to remove.
“This has been a long-standing issue that’s going to result in significant improvement for Place Au Soleil,” Mayor Scott Morgan had said on April 14 as town commissioners approved an agreement to vacate easements that run the length of the property.
The legal maneuvers involved new owner Willens, former owner Bhavin Shah and his 2900 AAC LLC, the town and the Gulf Stream Golf Club, which also had easements on the parcel for an irrigation line from its well near the Place Au Soleil guardhouse to the Intracoastal.
“The contract purchaser, he is probably the only person happier than I am to get this finally approved,” Nazzaro said of Willens.
Shah and his group bought the property for $3.3 million in October 2021 and were the target of several code enforcement actions as the house fell into further disrepair. Willens, a lawyer who lives on the Intracoastal in Highland Beach and founded dental service company Sage Dental Management LLC, paid $5.15 million in April for the property, according to county property records.
The long driveway to 2900 Avenue Au Soleil opens up just behind the guardhouse at Federal Highway and weaves east behind nine homes on Orchid Lane and Avenue Au Soleil on one side, and seven homesites on Bluewater Cove on the other.
Bluewater Cove’s developer originally wanted to buy the parcel and incorporate it into its new subdivision. But Cary Glickstein, president of Ironstone Development Inc., said in 2021 that he had abandoned that idea partly because of the property’s “tortured” legal past.
The home’s previous owners, heirs of the late Anthony Turner, the first code enforcement target there, racked up $200,000 in fines. The Town Commission reduced the amount due in 2019 to $20,000 in an effort to get new owners for the property.
Shah later faced $200-a-day code enforcement fines for not keeping the principal building or the sea wall in acceptable condition. As part of the latest agreements, Willens will have the sea wall rebuilt and connect what will become the town’s main drinking water line to a line running under the Intracoastal.
Bluewater Cove, which has sold one of its planned 14 homes, built two others and is starting construction on four more, already installed an alternate main under the street it built to accommodate the drinking water line.
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