{"id":41126,"date":"2016-09-12T21:35:54","date_gmt":"2016-09-13T01:35:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/?p=41126"},"modified":"2016-09-12T22:19:10","modified_gmt":"2016-09-13T02:19:10","slug":"lehigh-acres-most-iconic-sign-has-been-removed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/2016\/09\/lehigh-acres-most-iconic-sign-has-been-removed\/","title":{"rendered":"Lehigh Acres Most Iconic Sign Has Been Removed"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"With the death of Bob Elliott, Lehigh Acres most iconic sign has been removed. The days of $50 down and $50 a month for piece of Lehigh Acres is over.<\/p>\n

It all started with Lee Ratner’s 18,000-acre Lucky Lee ranch, the men hired an engineer to stamp out a grid pattern \u2014 over and over and over again \u2014 across what would become a 100-square mile vastness.<\/p>\n

The year was 1954. And Lehigh Acres was born.<\/p>\n

Forget about setting aside space for parks or retail or industry. Ignore the natural contours of the land. As the 10\u2019s then the 20\u2019s and then the $50 bills kept coming, the founders of Lehigh Acres needed more lots to sell.<\/p>\n

The first year, they sold more than 12,000 parcels. The cheapest lot was $495, but the deed wasn’t handed over until final payment. If a lot owner’s monthly checks stopped, the property was resold. Gerald Gould President of Lee Corporation estimates that a quarter-million sales were made as lots were recycled to new owners. Most buyers had never set foot in Florida, much less visited their site under contract.\"\"<\/p>\n

Richard Anglickis, who joined Gould’s company in 1962 and still lives in Lehigh Acres, watched a lot purchased for $800 sell for $2,500, then $4,500, and during the recent real estate frenzy in 2004, for an unbelievable $55,000 a lot.<\/p>\n

“It went insane, driven by greed,” he said. “But compared to other places, we became the affordable community.”<\/p>\n

With passing of Bob Elliott, and the removal of the most iconic sign. The days of $50 down and $50 a month for piece of Lehigh Acres history is over. And a new chapter of Lehigh Acres history has begun.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With the death of Bob Elliott, Lehigh Acres most iconic sign has been removed. The days of $50 down and $50 a month for piece of Lehigh Acres is over.… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":41128,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57,32],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41126"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41126"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41126\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/41128"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41126"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41126"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41126"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}