Apparently, many residents of ‘The Villages’ in Florida are concerned about their community moving away from building single-family homes and going full-on commercial and multi-family instead.
Seems that increasingly apartments, medical facilities, assisted living homes, shops, stores and businesses are the new focus.
The original ‘Orange Blossom Gardens’ started out as gated, Mobile Home Subdivision within the Town Of Lady Lake, back in the 70’s.
But they soon changed, first to ‘hybrids’; Mobile Home Construction installed on a concrete slab, and then to larger conventional homes.
The main selling approach was to promise ‘Free Golf For Life’ with access to numerous other ‘amenities’, clubhouses, Town Squares, softball, tennis and much more, all for a nominal monthly fee.
At the time, ‘officials’ from the Town Of Lady Lake freely admitted that they were approving
tax-free bonds to the now-renamed “Villages”.
‘High Finance’ is way beyond my understanding, but it seems that the Founder, Harold Schwartz and his son Gary Morse’s team, would borrow the Bond Money to be used for land purchases, and construction improvements, water, sewer, streets, golf courses etc; Then that ‘infrastructure’ and those amenities would be sold to another company they owned/controlled, thereby making a multi-million dollar cash profit, without risking a dime of their own money.
then a ‘CDD’ (Community Development District), would repay the bonds out of the mandatory Amenity Fees which they collected from Resident/Homeowners.
Some residents claim that system is still in place today.
That has worked well for years, but now residents say that ‘management’ is closing down or even demolishing pools, recreation facilities, clubhouses and converting, what was expected to be conventional residential areas to multi-family, rentals, retirement centers and the like.
One person said that examples include the recent construction of densely-sited apartments at Brownwood. Then the demolition of Hacienda Hills CC with plans for a large high-rise building, and
apartments to replace the former Katie Belles club.
As I See It, there seems to be a complete misunderstanding by Buyers/Home-Owners/Residents in The Villages.
Over the years dozens or, perhaps hundreds of ‘Villagers’ have claimed that their monthly ‘Amenity Fee’ entitles them to free golf, pools, clubhouse access, activities, tennis, softball, entertainment in the Town Squares and numerous other ‘freebies’.
Of course, typical buyers accept what they are told without question.
You’d expect that residents of a community like The Villages’, which includes so many educated, retired, professionals would take time to ‘read-before-you-sign’!
Unfortunately, I am neither educated nor retired, but, I can read!
I’m hoping that someone, who is better informed than I am, will enlighten us as to exactly which ‘amenities’ management is legally obligated to provide to home-owners!
This issue came up when a ‘visitor’ asked why so much ‘premium real estate’, (for example, on both sides of CR 466 and 466a), were ‘wasted’ by being used for non-profit golf courses.
Furthermore, she suggested that the prominent golf courses, on prime commercial real estate, are simply a temporary use as ‘window-dressing’ to promote sales.
But, ultimately to be developed similar to US Hwy 27/441 from Lady Lake north to Summerfield.
She claimed that, in fact, residents of The Villages, have no ‘legal’ entitlement to ‘amenities’!
That residents have an obligation to pay, but the developer has no ‘legal obligation’ to provide anything in return for the fees they receive!
’til next time. . . .
