Tampa condo is a tower of solitude

St.Petersburg Times reports:

Johnny Foens paid $548,200 to get into heaven.

He rode an elevator into the sky, unlocked a door and stepped onto the balcony of his new three-bedroom, three-bathroom condominium.

Behold, to the west, the majesty of a downtown skyline sparkling in the sun. To the south, the posh pulsations of Harbour Island. And you smell that? That salty stretch of Tampa's blue-black bay drifting toward the horizon?

"This is why I bought the place," Johnny says.

At first he had company.

Five hundred people turned out for the groundbreaking in 2005, complete with spotlights, valets and a sand sculpture of the towers-to-be. All 257 units in these two 29-story towers were snatched up in 13 days, before ground was even broken.

But alas, this is Florida, where another boom has busted. Two-thirds of the buyers have backed out. Deals have been shredded, lawsuits filed. The developer sought bankruptcy protection after the fallout.

That left Johnny Foens, who kept his promise and moved into the middle of a city of 318,000 in a county of 1.1-million, in a region of 2.7-million, and found himself living in a tower nearly alone.

Much has been written about the winners and losers in this soured housing market. But if there are bust-time complexities to explore, they are found on the 11th floor of Towers of Channelside, where a man makes his home among scores of empty condos.

Punch the button. Step past the security guard and onto the elevator.

"Hey!" Johnny says, swinging the door open. "Welcome."

Johnny is 39. He wears his hair curly and crisp and sports black-framed glasses, shiny shoes and a button-up shirt, pressed but untucked.

He grew up around here and made his money — good money — in the screened enclosure business. He has three kids; a teenager and two youngsters he sees every other weekend. Their pictures hang in the hallway and their bedrooms are painted with the Disney castle and Pokemon.

Johnny's girlfriend, Amanda Jasin, wearing long blond hair and a red party dress, just turned 22 and studies at the University of South Florida. The two met when Johnny's buddy hired Amanda as a cocktail waitress for a poker party. Johnny kisses her a lot and bought her a stuffed buffalo head for Christmas.

When she's not in school, she stays here, with the buffalo head, high above Tampa.

You can't help but think they'd fit perfectly into the social network of this condo tower, if one existed.

"We'd really like to meet some couples," Amanda says, "but there's nobody here to meet."

That adds a touch of irony to the advertisements showing cute singles poolside, handsome couples snuggling, beautiful people doing beautiful things.