EAST LAKE - For homeowners who thought they bought a piece of paradise in the Nature's Watch community at Boot Ranch, things just keep getting worse and worse. 

What started in late 2000 as a dispute over a few thousand dollars in homeowners association assessments - to repair the exteriors of a handful of units with water damage - has ballooned into a fight for economic survival. 

Neighbors are pitted against neighbors. Dream homes bought with the fruits of lifetimes of labor have been lost to foreclosure. The remaining homeowners are struggling to hold on to their properties in the face of repair bills estimated at $91,000 each - and climbing. 

Even if everything goes the homeowners' way from here on in, survivors will be left with overpriced homes that in some cases may never appreciate in value to the point they can break even if they need to sell. 

When developer Richard Geiger began marketing the upscale town homes that initially cost between $115,000 and $250,000, he promised luxury living in a gated community with most lots backing up to either a canal leading to Lake Tarpon or a nature pre serve surrounding a small lake. 

"Come home to Nature's Watch ... soon to be the most desired home site in the Tampa Bay area,'' reads one brochure. "Its unique architecture, superior construction and supreme location make it as enviable as it is practical.'' 

But that has not proven to be the case, according to homeowners, engineering experts and state and county construction officials. 

Subject Of Complaint 

The licensed contractor who was supposed to oversee construction of the 182 homes at Nature's Watch is now the subject of an administrative complaint filed June 10 by the state Department of Business and Professional Regulation. 

Timothy Giddens is accused of participating in a conspiracy in which he was paid $150 for each building permit he obtained for Nature's Watch while knowing that neither himself nor any other licensed contractor actually was going to oversee construction of the homes. 

Giddens, a carpenter with the Pinellas County school district, could lose his contractor's license and be ordered to pay restitution to Nature's Watch homeowners. He also faces potential fines of $5,000 for each of the 182 building permits he pulled from May 1992, when construction of Nature's Watch began, until April 1997, when the last of the units passed final inspection, according to the charging document. 

Because Geiger is not licensed by the state, regulators have referred their case against him to the Pinellas-Pasco State Attorney's Office, said Fred Brown, the department's regional program administrator. 

Geiger will not face criminal charges, however, because the statute of limitations on such prosecutions has run out, Assistant State Attorney Doug Crow said. 

Geiger, who did not return calls to his home in Holiday, could find himself answering to his customers in civil court. The homeowners association is suing Geiger, Giddens and their development and construction companies for alleged violations of the Standard Building Code. But the chief target of the lawsuit is an estimated $4 million in insurance money that may be available to cover the alleged code violations, according to Andrew J. Bolnick, the court-appointed receiver running the homeowners association. 

Another lawsuit is being contemplated against Pinellas County, about alleged failures of county building inspectors to detect an array of construction code violations uncovered by structural engineers involved in the repair project. That lawsuit would have to first overcome the issue of sovereign immunity, which shields government entities from such complaints, said Henry Stein, the lawyer expected to handle that case. 

But even if the lawsuits are successful, it is doubtful Nature's Watch homeowners will ever recover the full cost of repairs, which according to the latest estimate will exceed $11.5 million. 

Neighbor Against Neighbor 

Everyone except the builders agrees that homes in Nature's Watch sustained and continue to sustain water damage because of shoddy workmanship and a failure to adhere to basic building practices. 

What the homeowners and their growing array of attorneys don't agree on is the extent of the damage and who should have to pay to fix it. 

The first salvo in a continuing legal battle among Nature's Watch residents came in late 2000, when a group headed by residents Kenneth and Andrea Klak sued the homeowners association after it began assess ing property owners $4,000 each to pay for repairs to the oldest of the buildings at Nature's Watch. 

When repairs were halted in January 2001, a group headed by resident Harold Berger sued the homeowners association in a bid to force repairs to continue. 

The two cases ended up before Senior Circuit Judge Fred L. Bryson Jr., who was asked to decide to what extent the homeowners association was responsible for repairing water damage to the Nature's Watch buildings. 

Nature's Watch is not a condominium but rather a community of attached single family homes where residents own the land under their units and are responsible for buying their own homeowners insurance, court records state. 

Most of the units are town homes and are two or three stories tall, have about 3,300 square feet of floor space and are constructed four to six to a building, according to engineering reports. There are also a group of 32 smaller homes known as villas that are built as single-story duplexes. 

Because of the way the homeowners association was set up, each unit is assessed the same maintenance fees regardless of size or value. 

How Responsible? 

The fight before Bryson, now pending before the 2nd District Court of Appeal, focuses on where individual property and the responsibility to repair it end and where the homeowners association becomes responsible for repairs. 

The Klak group contends that the homeowners association should only be responsible for the roofs and exterior finishes of the 58 buildings in Nature's Watch, according to the group's attorney, C. Phillip Campbell Jr. 

The Berger group contends the homeowners association is responsible for the entire exterior structure of each building, basically everything from the interior paint outward, according to Stein, who represents that group. 

That issue becomes critical because of the extent of repairs required to fix water damage and prevent future damage. Engineers have uncovered an array of construction flaws that began with uncapped wing walls that were filling with water and rotting from the inside out, causing the balconies they supported to become unsafe. 

Other flaws include inadequate waterproofing around windows and doors, a lack of mechanical fasteners or strapping between upper floors, plywood decking that is not fully supported by exterior framing, floor trusses not fastened to top plates, and single studs at building corners where additional bracing is required, according to an April 2003 report by the the Biller Reinhart Structural Group Inc., which the judge appointed as a third party engineer to help settle the ongoing dispute. 

"The structural deficiencies combined with the water- damaged elements are cause for concern regarding the structural capacities of the buildings,'' the report states. 

Following a nonjury trial in June 2001, Bryson ruled in the Berger group's favor, saying the homeowners association is responsible for all repairs. When the association balked at the cost, the judge appointed Bolnick as receiver to get the job done. Bolnick, who is paid $100 an hour, has so far assessed individual Nature's Watch homeowners $24,000 apiece. 

The most recent estimates show that each homeowner could be assessed another $62,000 or more in order to bring the entire Nature's Watch community up to the 1991 building code, Bolnick said last week. Already, he has placed liens on 65 properties where the owners are not keeping up with assessments. The receiver has filed about a dozen foreclosure actions and expects that about 15 homeowners will eventually be dispossessed of their properties. 

Bolnick said he hopes to negotiate a bank loan to cover the balance of the repairs until the lawsuits against the developer, builder and county are concluded. That way, homeowners might not have to be hit with additional assessments, he said. 

"The hardest part about this job for me is the unfortunate toll it's had on the human element,'' Bolnick said. "These people are victims. They did nothing wrong .'' 

The Quiet Majority 

In between the Berger group and the Klak group, whose membership waxes and wanes as the case progresses, is the majority of Nature's Watch homeowners who acknowledge repairs need to be made but who question the cost and extent, said John Doran and Ed McDermott, two members of a new "Board of Advisers'' set up by Bryson to speak for the community at large. 

Following a court hearing last month, Doran and McDermott said they and three others were elected by all 182 homeowners to represent the homeowner's association during the ongoing appeal of Bryson's ruling that the association is responsible for all repairs. 

Doran said many residents believe the receiver is overdoing the repairs, bringing buildings constructed during the 1990s up to current code standards and fixing things that don't need to be fixed to protect himself from future lawsuits. 

"We know there are repairs needed in our community,'' Doran said after the May 29 hearing. "What we don't want to see is a gang of people profiting by doing repairs that are not necessary.'' 

Reached by telephone last week, Doran said he had been warned against commenting to reporters and would have no further comment. McDermott did not return calls. 

Bolnick said he is open to suggestions on how to reduce the cost of fixing Nature's Watch. But so far, four experts have looked at the situation and they all recommend extensive repairs, he said. 

"If someone has a credible alternative, I would be willing to consider that,'' Bolnick said. "There are a lot of people out there who think it could be done for less, but they don't hold any licenses ... they don't come from any authority.''