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Thread: Mirage interior fitting

  1. #11
    Champion Member Manta22's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jul 2014
    Location
    Tucson, AZ
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    124
    Dan;

    About Cape Coral & the Gulf-American Company--most histories confuse the company with the one which bought out Gulf- American. Those were shady characters many referred to as "loan sharks". The Rosens (Julius ("Jack") and his brother Leonard were pressured by the FL governor's office for kickbacks, which they refused. In retaliation there were unfounded charges made by the governor to try to force them to comply. The corruption was so bad in FL at that time, the Rosens sold their company in 1967 for $127M and left FL to do business in AZ. Published histories do not know the inside story. Your uncle may have known of "JR" as Jack was known to his close associates.
    Regards, Neil Tucson, AZ

  2. #12
    Pole Position Member
    Join Date
    Aug 2014
    Location
    Cape Coral, Florida
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    68
    Alas, the shady characters in politics are still plentiful in Florida.

    One or two books written locally by those who worked inside with the Rosens as they were building Cape Coral, paint a picture similar to what you describe. While there were some people selling swampland in Florida back then, and the politicians had their finger in lots of enterprises, the Rosens got a lot of heat because they didn't want to play that way. As a result they were accused of a lot of things that just weren't true.

    The Rosens actually went way beyond what the average developer did in SW Florida...raised the level of the land so it wouldn't flood in summer rains, putting in roads, dredging 400 miles of canals to provide waterfront homesites, then adding power, sewer and water, bringing industries from "up north" to provide jobs, giving land to churches to build on, pre-planning the area for schools, business, light industry, single family homes as well as condo/apartments, building a world-class attraction park for visitors, developing the waterfront on the river for residents, getting a bridge built to the "mainland" Ft Myers, and lots more.

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