Cover Story

Feeling Protected
United Construction Group builds on Florida's west coast as if the next hurricane were imminent.

by Howard Shingle

The 2005 hurricane season is shaping up to be the most active one on record. The threat of more hurricanes to come has put everyone on alert: certainly homeowners, but civic, state and federal agencies, relief organizations, the hurricane protection industry and the repair and construction industries as well. And this comes at a time when many of these groups still feel the effects of last year’s incredible season.

With four hurricanes making landfall in Florida alone last year, everything from materials to labor has become backlogged or scarce. “The materials shortages that we’re going through down here as a result of those four hurricanes—to this day I’m still feeling it,” says David Aldrich, United Construction Group LLC, Naples, FL. “The impact to the construction industry from those hurricanes has been significant.”

United Construction Group is an active residential homebuilder in Florida’s Collier and Lee counties on the Gulf Coast. It operates as United Family Home Builders and Signature Royale. With expectations of building 50 homes this year, Aldrich and his partners John Lechler and Glenn Vereen have had to plan ahead, look at all supply options and readjust schedules a bit.

The good news is that the backlog on hurricane shutters has eased since last year’s storm season. “It put a huge damper [on supplies] because everyone was panicking and wanted to get [shutters],” says Aldrich. “Right now it’s not too bad. I can call today and get steel shutters in three weeks.”

That’s not the case for many other supplies including aluminum hurricane shutters. Screen enclosures are incredibly backlogged right now, he adds. There even are contractors on the verge of bankruptcy because they have so much business, but no product—they are waiting for screening, especially the high-grade screening needed for multi-story enclosures.

The same applies to impact-resistant glass. Depending on where you’re building in Collier County, Aldrich says, you have to have your framing to hold the impact-resistant glass installed in order to pass the framing inspection. The metal window framers are so far backlogged on production, it can take six to eight weeks for them to get out a frame. Once they get that they have to order the hurricane impact glass.

On its larger, custom homes, which take longer to build, planning ahead can compensate for some of the problems with time lags. “When you plan it right, when you’re going into the permitting process—it takes a month to two months for permitting down here, so what I do is I put the order in for everything I can order literally the day after the contract is signed and the homeowners have their color selections. I put the roof tile order in; I put the impact-resistant glass order in; everything that I can do without having to be pre-measured. Trusses as well,” Aldrich says.

On United Construction’s Signature Royal upper-end homes, Aldrich has used a flexible wind abatement and impact protection product in place of shutters or impact-resistant glass. It is not inexpensive, but it is available and can cover larger expanses of standard glass, eliminating the need to wait for impact glass.

Backlogs affect both new construction and repairs. If a home is being repaired because of damage done last year—or even if the homeowners just want to upgrade their existing home—if the work covers 20 percent of the home, by code the entire home needs to be upgraded to current standards. All these jobs have had a significant impact on labor. Builders and contractors can use just about all the workers they can get, but workers tend to go where the pay is higher. In areas where people need repairs just to be able to get back into their homes the owners are more desperate and in many cases are willing to pay more to get the homes fixed quickly. That leaves an even greater labor shortage for building new homes.

NATIVE INSTINCTS
Having lived in Florida for most of his life (since he was four) Aldrich, for all practical purposes, can be considered a native. He has been through a few hurricane seasons and understands the residents’ mentality.

“When I was growing up, no one really believed [the Naples area would see a major hurricane]. I remember everyone was panicking with David (1979) coming up; then it turned and went up the East Coast. We have not had a major storm here. Helena in 1985 was a close one. We had Georges (1998) come up and turn, but we haven’t had anything really do anything to us except for some tropical storms and a lot of rain.”

With a history of hurricanes approaching, then veering off, residents have grown to trust their luck. “The problem is people think they’re all going to do that. It’s going to be an eye opening when we have the next major hurricane. I’m pretty certain of that. Charley had helped, but I think you’re still going to see a lot of people say they are going to ride it out.”

“Even keeping Andrew in mind, there hasn’t been much damage on this coast,” Aldrich continues. “People used to joke about it, saying Collier County is protected, it will never get a major hurricane. That has been the mentality around here. No one is anticipating a major hurricane. Watching Hurricane Charley coming up the coast, I was up at three o’clock in the morning, I knew it was going to come closer than what they were projecting.”

Aldrich was correct. Charley hit Collier County in mid-August last year. “We’re fortunate. We were on the right side of Charley, so we got a good brunt of Charley. Charley was only about 40 miles away from where I’m sitting right now—where the eye passed. It was a very small but very intense storm. Collier County got a good blow. We had gusts over 100 mph. We hadn’t had a blow like that in years. Just to the north, in Lee County, where it was more intense, they had a lot more damage—especially in the Sanibel area. Then that storm made a right turn and went across Charlotte Harbor and hit Punta Gorda—it’s so desolated up there still. They’re still waiting for roofs to be repaired.”

Interest in hurricane protection seems strongest among seasonal residents. “Once they’re here, people are looking for functionality. They’re paying for functionality,” Aldrich says. Most people don’t want shutters on their homes all year round. “They’re down in Florida for four months out of the year, they don’t want anything on their windows.” Surprisingly, year-round residents don’t feel as strongly about shutters. “Even after last year,” says Aldrich, “it amazes me for how many people hurricane shutters are not prominent on their list in building.”

COMING TOGETHER
United Construction Group builds all types of homes. Doing business as United Family Home Builders it concentrates on homes generally under $700,000 in value. That includes its production line of homes and any affordable housing it builds. These homes are specified with non-impact glass with shutters all around—usually steel or aluminum shutters.

As Signature Royale Homes of Distinction the company builds homes ranging from $800,000 and up. In the last couple of years it has built homes that have topped out at $3.5 million. These homes are specified with impact-resistant glass and its top homes are built of solid concrete: “It’s never going to go. A big storm comes and it’s never moving,” Aldrich says.

Aldrich began doing upper-end specs for various builders in Collier County in the late 1990s. He enjoyed the work and began the process of qualifying for his own general contractor’s license, which he received in 2004. He was worked in home building, therefore, before and after Florida created its Unified Building Code in 2001.

That process had “a huge impact” on the building industry, he says. Its immediate impact was on building costs. “It has a substantial impact on the cost of production of homes from the doors to impact-glass. When the state started requiring [hurricane protection] there was a supply-and-demand issue that affected prices.”

Aldrich admits that before the code revisions things might have been more haphazard, but the Unified Code was written so that local building authorities have the right to make changes as long as they are more restrictive than the state code. “Every city in the county has its own codes as well,” he says.

A revised state code is expected to go into effect November 1, and Aldrich is anticipating being hit with more cost issues. He’s been told by roofers to expect a 10 to 15 percent increase in the cost of tile roofs. “The people making the code, unfortunately, do not—in my opinion—have the experience out in the field consistently through the committees as they should. They bring the experts in, but the experts should be the ones making the code,” he says.

Codes notwithstanding, home building remains a growth industry in his part of Florida. “Nothing is slowing down at all,” Aldrich says. “It’s unbelievable what’s going on here as far as building. And the more building the more the property values are escalating, whether it’s a true escalation—there has to be some sort of bubble here to some degree. Everything has been remaining relatively consistent. People thought that after Charley we would go through a down time, but it’s been so strong.”

Now, land is the issue. There are no high-rise land sites available in Collier County as far as Aldrich knows, and “there’s nowhere in town you can find two acres of land very well.” There is virtually no affordable housing in Collier County, he adds. The county, generally, is divided into two areas. One is west toward the beach; the other is east and out into the county. There is where you can find one of the largest subdivisions in the United States. An area Aldrich estimates as 13 miles by 17 miles with 30,000 lots. As property values continue to appreciate, Aldrich sees these two areas blending. “You see a distinguished blend of two geographic regions coming together as one, now,” he says.