Jack Marqusee is rightly given credit as the developer of Margate, the first new town to be incorporated west of Pompano Beach. But one of the first individuals to visualize the residential development of these vast farmlands was Victor Semet, a transplanted New Jersey man who got into the real estate and development business after arriving in Florida.

In 1953, two years before Margate was incorporated as a town, Semet bought 1,900 acres of farmland, more than half of it from Hammon [Development Co.], and the rest was the Lyons Farm. That year he began work on the first Hammon Heights subdivision, and two years later, Semet sold most of the acreage he had acquired to Marqusee, whom he had met during the development of Melrose Park [in Fort Lauderdale]. Most of Semet's building was done on the east side of State Road 7, an area that was not originally part of the City of Margate when it was first incorporated.

(excerpt from William P. Cahill, "Margate, Florida: The First Quarter Century, 1955 - 1980" in Broward Legacy, Vol. 5 - No. 1, 2005-2006)