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Saturday, Jul 11, 2009
The first gated community marketed at gays and lesbians is under construction in a small Florida town. Will it be a queer utopia -- or one more sign of the fragmentation of America?
Apr 30, 2004 | Each year, a growing number of Americans agrees to be locked behind bars.
They check in at manned guardhouses, waiting to be sealed inside their gated communities, where they obey countless rules written into their deeds. They grow only approved flowers and walk dogs no taller than 16 inches. They choose window treatments with trepidation, afraid a peeping neighbor might report a deviant swag to their homeowner's association -- which can and will foreclose on rebels. They endure these indignities for one reason: order. "In the end, it's not about security at all," says Mary Gail Snyder, a professor of urban studies at the University of New Orleans and co-author of "Fortress America: Gated Communities in the United States." "Most gated communities are incredibly easy to break into. The appeal is really about control."
But more than just a way to escape the chaos of real life, these enclaves are also becoming ghettos, increasingly targeted to specific groups. Golf addicts lock themselves away in sand-trapped communities such as Colorado's Fox Acres. Sections of the Los Angeles suburb Monterey Park are specially feng-shui'd to serve the Asian population.
But the newest example will likely be the most controversial: Wilton Station, the first gated community in America to specifically, if not solely, target the gay market.
Now under construction in Wilton Manors, Fla., a bedroom suburb of Fort Lauderdale, Wilton Station will be an ambitious low-rise project of 272 varied condominium units: brownstones in dignified rows, loft spaces to tempt the trendy, and quaint porches to add a Mayberry touch. The prices, from $300,000 to $500,000, are less quaint. On-site retail spaces will let young professionals dry-clean John Varvatos sweaters or stumble out of a martini bar without leaving the complex. A vast health club will overlook a 72-foot lap pool, "beach" area, waterfalls, two spas, and a "Tiki Hut." Other perks: a private screening theater, pet areas, and the conspicuous guardhouse, where security guards will let the privileged through that magic ingredient -- the gates.
Its developers are calling it an upscale "village," implying traditional values. Its detractors are calling it a yuppie suburban version of a gay ghetto -- or, worse, a Mecca for sinners who'll need saving. And it's all happening at a time when gays are sparking widespread anger by attempting to "appropriate" the tradition of marriage, and President Bush is seeking to institutionalize homophobia with an anti-gay-marriage amendment to the Constitution.
Is this the new gay American dream: First you get illegally married, then you move to Wilton Station?
The $100 million project's development team, all friendly, middle-aged straight men, see it as anything but a political statement. "To me, it's not a controversial issue," says Jim Ellis, chairman of Wilton Station LLC. "I want to build a really good product and it needs to sell. If people don't like it, they won't buy. Simple as that."
Well, not really. Wilton Station, which will welcome its first residents in fall 2005, raises other questions: Will rabid conservatives protest it as an attempt to "appropriate" the "traditional" suburb? And, if it succeeds, will it trigger even more splinter-group enclaves?
At the moment, Wilton Station is nothing but a big empty hole: Twelve acres, formerly the site of a beer distributor's warehouse, bordered by an (occasionally cacophonous) railroad, and a 300-foot stretch of the lushly overgrown canals that cordon off the town of Wilton Manors (pop. 13,000), and give it its nickname, "the Island City."
