History repeats

When Keith Bass was a rising executive with homebuilder Taylor Woodrow, his biggest competitor was the company he now leads: WCI Communities.

“They were the big gorilla,” says Bass.

Indeed, WCI was the homegrown building and development company built by legendary Florida developer Al Hoffman Jr. In the 1990s, Hoffman engineered the union of his own company, Florida Design Communities, with Westinghouse Communities, taking the combined company public in 2002.