It wasn't Donald Trump

I never thought it was, but that was the best title I could come up for this post. The Palm Beach Post reported today that the prospective buyer for the community Briny Breezes is a Boca Raton developer by the way of Quebec, Jean Francois Roy.

All I got to add is that I hope Briny Breezes residents do what is in the best interest. Money doesn't necessarily buy happiness.

Open Post- Third World County, Bright & Early,

Ending months of speculation, Ocean Land Investments of Boca Raton stepped forward Monday to say it is the developer that has offered $500 million to buy the entire town of Briny Breezes — a plan that would turn the old-fashioned trailer park into a glitzy condominium community in a modern city by the sea.

"We're going to be building a new city from scratch," said Jean Francois Roy, Ocean Land's 51-year-old founder, a native of French-speaking Quebec who is now a U.S. citizen.

The developer's unprecedented offer would make instant millionaires of the park's 488 mobile-home owners, most of them retired sun-seekers from the North. The deal also would set a Palm Beach County sales record, the property appraiser's office has said.

Through the years, Briny Breezes residents have rebuffed land-hungry developers who crave their oceanfront land, saying they prefer their friendly way of life to pocketfuls of money. This time, however, the developer has put so much money on the table, even the don't-sell diehards have to think hard about the offer.

"That's why we made our very best offer first," Roy said. "We said, 'What's the very best we can do?' Then we did it: $500 million."

Until now, it has been the developer who has avoided any publicity since making the $500 million offer several months ago. On Monday, however, it was town officials and residents who shied away from talking about the offer, which has gained national attention.

"We're still doing due diligence and won't talk to anyone at this point," said Ken Doyle, president of Briny Breezes Inc., the corporation that owns the town. Corporation shareholders are the mobile-home park's residents.

Many of those residents have said no amount of money is worth giving up what many think is the last bastion of small-town community life, sandwiched among opulent mansions and seven-figure condominiums that dot Palm Beach County's coastline.

Others have said the chance to make so much money — so late in life for many — is an opportunity that must be seized this time.