Bay Shore Place

Bay Shore Place is a 1994 condominium building at 4255 Gulf Shore Boulevard North, in Park Shore. The building holds 103 homes, every one of them a condominium, sharing a single street address, and nothing has gone up on the site since.

The building is not on the beach: its land stops short of the water. The ground that carries on west to the sand belongs to Park Shore Towers, at 4251, which shares the entire western edge. So the address is a place in the Gulf Shore Boulevard corridor, a few hundred feet back from the Gulf.

How close is the water?

About 700 feet. That's the distance west from the building to the shoreline, across land the condominium doesn't own. Gulf Shore Boulevard North, a public City of Naples street, runs about 330 feet to the east. There's a public beach access half a mile north, at 4999 Gulf Shore Boulevard North. The Village Shops on Venetian Bay, which everyone local calls Venetian Village, are a quarter of a mile away at 4200 Gulf Shore Boulevard North.

What are the homes like?

Six floor areas cover all 103 homes, and four of them repeat in bulk: about 1,457 square feet on 28 homes, about 1,536 on another 28, about 1,649 on 28 more, and about 1,692 on 15. Four bigger homes sit above those, two at about 2,281 square feet and two at about 2,360. So almost the whole building sits in a narrow band under 1,700 square feet, and only four homes of the 103 clear 2,000.

Seven front doors open onto most levels and five onto the top one, fifteen levels of homes in all. The numbering skips 13 altogether. A listing's square footage tends to sit a little above the heated area recorded for the same home, because the two are measured differently.

What does it cost to own here?

Budget around $2,200 a month. That figure leans high on purpose, which makes it safe to plan against and wrong as a picture of what a single owner is billed.

Homes have sold here from the $990,000s to around $1.8 million. Four sales out of 103 stand behind that span, all of them smaller repeating plans, so it says nothing about the four largest homes in the building.

What should you read before you make an offer?

Before the floor plan, the structure. A condominium tower reaching thirty years owes Florida a structural examination, signed off by a licensed architect or engineer. A city can pull that date forward to twenty-five where salt water is close by. This one was finished in 1994, so both marks are behind it. Florida also makes an association price its major structural work in advance, and that price sets the minimum it has to put aside each year.

A deadline in the past tells you nothing about the finding. Read the engineer's write-up and the reserve figures together, because between them they settle whether the assessment stays put or a repair bill follows. Permits and inspections here run through the City of Naples rather than Collier County, since the site sits inside the city. The three documents that answer it:

• The engineer's findings on the structure, and any repairs called for.
• The reserve study, and how much of what it asks for is banked.
• The recorded declaration with its amendments, which is where the rules for living here are set.

Is the private beach park down the road part of this?

No. The park at 4061 Gulf Shore Boulevard North is a fifth of a mile south. It belongs to the Park Shore Association, a voluntary body formed in 1971 that sits outside this condominium altogether. It charges nothing to an owner at 4255, and it maintains nothing on the site.

Its published park rules put the entrance plainly: "Admittance by vehicle, bike, or on foot requires your active Park Shore Association membership card. Hours of operation are from dawn to dusk."

Membership is something a person applies for, and the board says yes or no. An application goes in online, with a one-time initiation charge and a whole year of dues attached. The dues run to the calendar year, and both amounts are reset annually by the board, which is why only the association can quote you a figure. The bylaws are blunt on the point: "Dues are not refunded when the property is sold before the end of a membership year." So the park is a separate decision with a separate cost, taken after the closing rather than inherited at it.

South of the tower there's a pool, with two small structures beside it, and a guest room inside the building that owners can use. The 2.29 acres underneath belong to the condominium itself.