Life After Charley

An exodus of residents and businesses is one of the biggest fears of Charlotte's economic-development officials. And there will be an "out migration," Ivy predicts. Many of Port Charlotte's homes, built decades ago, are small, dated and owned by retirees from the Midwest. Many seniors-and there are plenty of them in Charlotte County-may not want to stay and rebuild; others won't be able to find an affordable place to rent because 50 percent of the housing has been damaged, nor will they be able to afford the costs to build a new home. Some of them will take their insurance money and leave, predicts 74-year-old Vernon Peeples, a long-time Punta Gorda resident, a former state legislator and a local historian whose insurance agency, Peeples Agency, has been on Punta Gorda's Marion Avenue since 1952. "One couple in their 80s couldn't wait to get their check and move to Mount Dora," he says.

But after the initial shock and plummeting home prices, property values will begin to climb back, predicts Woodward. Already, real estate investors who own property along the canals are looking at their demolished homes and seeing dollar signs. Over the last few years, the land has become far more valuable than the small homes resting on them. Nearly anyone who wants to sell can sell at a profit. New homes will have to meet new building codes, which means they'll be larger, better constructed and likely to feature the latest amenities. "I guarantee you won't be abandoned," economist Woodward says. "Coastal prop-erty is a limited quantity. People will forget about the hurricane. They [newcomers] may be more affluent. Tourists won't even think about it."

Peeples, who has been through at least seven hurricanes since moving to

Punta Gorda 72 years ago, has no doubt that Charlotte County will recover. And, a week after the storm, in his steamy offices that were beginning to smell a bit moldy from the lack of electricity, he was philosophical about the businesses and people who choose to leave. "This place doesn't stay the same even if you don't have a hurricane," he says. "Many people who come here have the concept that they want it to be the way it was when they got here. But this is not the Punta Gorda I knew in the 1930s. It's not the Punta Gorda I knew in the '50s. We have a turnover rate in population every eight years in Charlotte County, and we've already had a cultural change that's been very sudden because of the avalanche of people flowing here in recent years. The hurricane just escalates the change."