A direct hit from Hurricane Milton was the ultimate test for homes at Hunters Point, a Florida development designed for sustainability and climate resilience.
As Hurricane Milton churned toward Florida’s Gulf Coast last Wednesday, housing developer Marshall Gobuty watched the forecasts anxiously. The storm track maps showed Milton heading directly toward the new homes his company, Pearl Homes, recently built in the coastal town of Cortez, just south of Tampa Bay.
“You see the red line, and I’m going, ‘Oh, come on!'” he recalled in an interview with Newsweek after the storm had passed.
Milton made landfall just a dozen or so miles south of Cortez as a Category 3 hurricane, bringing a massive storm surge and damaging winds and downpours.
“I’ve never seen rain come perfectly sideways, but it was really flying”, Gobuty said.
But while much of the surrounding community suffered extensive damage and lost power for days, the homes at Gobuty’s Hunters Point development were high and dry and still had electricity.
“What this proved for us was resiliency”, Gobuty said. “I’m not gloating, I’m just relieved because we performed.”
Newsweek first spoke with Gobuty in July when the first storm of the 2024 hurricane season to make landfall was making its way toward shore. He described how the homes his company constructed were designed to withstand storms. But it was the direct hit from Hurricane Milton this month that provided the ultimate stress test.
