by Michele Newbern Gillis
Staff Writer
Paul Nichols, president of Bestcon Homes, is a no-nonsense kind of guy.
Years of hard work and a propensity to get his hands dirty has made Nichols appreciate the people actually building his houses.
“The perspective that I take in the construction process of the house has a lot to do with my being a craftsman in the houses,” said Nichols. “I have a lot of respect for the people that do that work of building the house. So, I have good relationships with the subcontractors. Having had my tools in an apron tied to my waist before keeps me in tune with the process itself. It’s not a numbers name for me, it’s a product game to me.”
As the president, Nichols draws all the plans and charts the direction of the development. His company has a mobile office that they set up in a model in each new subdivision they develop. The small company builds about 50 homes a year.
Nichols started Bestcon, a niche builder at the beach, in late 1996.
“We let our buyers do pretty much what they want,” said Nichols. “We don’t have a standard list of options. We will pretty much accommodate our buyers’ desires in modifying the house.”
They build spec homes and have plans available that buyers can choose from and modify if needed.
Nichols has personally drawn every single plan that they have permitted since the company started.
“We have created a product on very narrow lots,” said Nichols. “Almost all of my houses that we have built out here at the beach have fit on 50-foot lots. So, I sort of specialize in a 35-foot wide product.”
The zoning and setback laws in Jacksonville Beach propelled Nichols to create a product that would fit on the lots, yet be spacious and inviting to home buyers.
“Our houses, by necessity, have all been on small platforms, but when you walk in they are all open,” said Nichols. “There is a nice flow and very little wasted space in all of our homes.”
When Nichols started his company, all of South Jacksonville Beach was subdivided into 25-foot and 50-foot wide lots. Because of their narrowness, they weren’t used for houses because there were other places to build with bigger lots and where sewer and water were already in place.
“So, we came in and started picking up lots that may not have had sewer and water to them and I developed a product was 30 feet wide because the setback was 10 feet on each side,” said Nichols. “A 30-foot wide house with a two-car garage is pretty restrictive with what you can do. We had about 11 lots in early 1997 in an old platted subdivision called Ocean Terrace. That’s where we started. The product I had in there was a 1,600 square foot, three bedroom, two bath, two car garage house and it was 30 feet wide.”
After that, they picked up 18 lots in South Jacksonville Beach near Ruth Avenue and South Beach Parkway which were not developed and had no sewer or water.
“We were able to put enough of the lots together that it made sense to put the infrastructure in, so we put the sewer, water and streets to these 18 lots and we called it The Reef at South Beach,” said Nichols. “Those lots were 50 feet wide and 115 feet deep, and given the setbacks the biggest house that I could build that would fit within the zoning was 35 feet wide and 65 feet deep. We called it the 1634 plan because that’s how many square feet it was and I’ve built that house 75 times.”
The next development they started was 20-lot development Coastal Oaks west of South Beach Parkway. They also did a second phase of Coastal Oaks.
“All in all, over the past five years, we have developed 140 lots in South Jacksonville Beach,” said Nichols. “It was very tough to find the owners and then negotiate the purchase of the lot itself. We were our own worst enemy. In 1997 and 1998 we were picking up lots for a fairly reasonable price, but as the owners of those adjacent lots started to see the success we were enjoying the prices of the lots went up.”
Over the years, they had also been picking up lots in Atlantic Beach.
Paradise Cove was their first official community development in Atlantic Beach.
“We broke the $180,000 barrier off Mayport Road,” said Nichols.
Currently, Bestcon is developing Hidden Paradise, a 25-lot development, in Atlantic Beach; Paradise Moorings, which is situated over 46 acres on Doctors Lake in Orange Park; and 68 lots in an existing subdivision, Hidden Lakes, off of State Road 210 in St. Johns County.
On the drawing board is Paradise Preserve, an 11-acre, 47-lot subdivision in Atlantic Beach, and Paradise Key in South Jacksonville Beach on 22 acres.
“Paradise Key will be a 64-lot subdivision and the house style will be a three-story Key West style Victorian,” said Nichols. “I will be doing it all off grade with wood floors. They will start at a half million dollars. About 38 percent of my buyers are women and I am catering to them in Paradise Key in that those houses will be Paul’s doll houses, that’s what they’ll be.”
The name Paradise which seems to be associated with all of his new communities.
The reason? While in college in Utah, he milked cows part-time in a little town called Paradise.
“It is a beautiful place, so the name has a nice connotation to me and brings back good memories,” said Nichols.
He attributes his success to Watson Realty’s Bill Walton, who is associated with Bestcon, and to the people he has working for him.
“He is my mentor and guru,” said Nichols. “He gives me guidance. Without his help and assistance, Bestcon would have failed a long time ago. The other thing that makes my company successful is the people I have working for me. I tend to be a non-dictatorial type of boss. I like to empower my employees to be able to solve most of their own problems and that has worked very well.
“The other thing that makes us so successful is that we are willing to do things that other builders aren’t necessarily going to do. If you look around my developments, there are lots of trees left. We haven’t fought the fact that there are trees because it is very evident to me that buyers like to have trees. We haven’t seen trees as an impediment to our development plans, but as an asset to our development.”
Nichols has a bachelor’s degree in watershed management from Utah State University.
After college, he worked for a year as a hydrologist (natural science engineer) with Dames & Moore Group, an environmental consulting firm. He found the job quite boring and decided to look up a friend in Oregon who told him if he ever wanted to learn what it was like to make a living to come see him.
“I started as a carpenter in 1976, framing houses on the coast of Oregon,” said Nichols.
Three years later, he was tired of framing houses in the rain so he moved to Florida and worked as a trim carpenter in Clay County.
He then got his contractor’s license and became a remodeling contractor in Clay and Duval counties for the next 10 years.
In order to spend more quality time with his children, he closed his business and went to work for Schaffer and Sons, owned by Marty Schaffer and Bill Walton in 1992.
“I learned a lot from those guys,” said Nichols.
The company changed hands and eventually became Pulte Home Corporation. He decided he didn’t want to work for Pulte and so he opened Bestcon.
“I went from a craftsman building houses to a craftsman/contractor as a remodeler and then into strictly new home construction,” said Nichols.
Nichols lives in Orange Park. He has been married to Diane for three years. Together, they have four children.
When he is not working he enjoys surfing, building furniture and doing woodwork.
He said he sees his game at the beach ending in the next five years when they run out of lots, but then he will move into Clay County to keep building.
“As Bill Walton says, ‘There’s always another opportunity waiting to happen,’” said Nichols.