"The rich are different from you and me," F. Scott Fitzgerald once remarked. To which Ernest Hemingway famously responded, "Yes, they have more money." The Blackstone Group L.P. (NYSE: BX) is once again proving just how different the very rich are: the firm is now developing new condos in Florida. It seems that as we ordinary mortals suffer through the crash in the mortgage markets and watch housing values drop in just about every region of the country, the mega-rich are happily shopping for new million-dollar digs at the beach.

The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday that Blackstone's Luxury Resorts & Hotels business plans to build 52 condos in Boca Raton, Florida. Wells Fargo & Company (NYSE: WFC) has agreed to finance the $137 million project. Prices for the condos are expected to start at over $1,000 per square foot, which means the cheapest unit will be $2.75 million. The Journal reports that 24 of the units are already under contract.

Given the current state of the housing market, you might expect that condos in Florida would be the kind of project that even Blackstone would back away from. By most reports, there is very little new development going on in Florida, especially in the Miami area, where thousands of overpriced condos sit empty. And at $25 a share, Blackstone's stock is still well below its initial offering price. But Blackstone clearly operates in a different universe -- one in which the very rich buy new vacation houses even as the economic outlook darkens for the rest of us.