The Villages Retirement Community & Apartments
How to Find Effective Testimony to Prevent an Awful Local Government Decision!
Why you use real numbers to show how a proposal is terrible & how nobody gains by forcing apartments into a residential retirement community
Synopsis
- How do you fight the giant going back on its agreements, threatening to devalue your homes, endangering your physical wellbeing, and asking the county to help with a blank check?
- The Villages developer is doing just that by replacing a golf course clubhouse in the middle of single-family homes with apartments. If it works, no clubhouse is safe — anywhere in Florida. This was my approach and testimony under oath. The public testimony meeting lasted 4 hours.
First real battle with county board
A man who served on a board in another state said that everything was decided before public testimony even started. Most comments were as expected.
I took that as a challenge to build testimony for the county commissioners that was not expected. I wanted to show how the proposal negatively impacted the county, state of Florida, residents, and the developer.
Summary of the developer’s proposal
The Villages is a retirement community of about 125,000 living in mostly single-family, one-story houses managed by the developer. They tore down the Hacienda recreation center when the restaurant went under due to their mismanagement and are asking the county to change the master plan to let them replace it with apartments, right in the middle of a bunch of houses.
They used the Hacienda rec center for years as a sales tool for nearby houses with golf course and rec center view. People paid a large premium for those houses.
The developer is also asking the county to quadruple the population density throughout The Villages from 3 per gross acre to 12 per acre (I learned later the 12 is actually unlimited). That would let them put apartments anywhere.
This was my testimony — round 1:
Hacienda Apartments, First Reading Commissioners Public Comment — Oct 13, 2020
Most people here will talk about parking, traffic, and other frustrations. I will talk about the impact of these apartments on Sumter County, The Villages and the state of Florida.
A neighbor, who served on one of these boards, said valuation would drop $200,000 for every house in The Villages. That means a taxable valuation drop of 1.2 billion dollars, or 16 million in reduced property taxes for the county.
The $200,000 is based on his experience. However, a University of Nebraska study, a much more solid source, showed that the houses within sight of those apartments will drop 50 percent, the drop getting smaller the farther away they are.
So, if someone bought a $500,000 house with a golf course view near the Hacienda clubhouse, their house will be worth about $250,000 when the project is complete.
Based on the Nebraska study, the average valuation loss would more likely be $100,000 — changing the property tax income to minus 8 million, every year. The county would probably increase property taxes.
As for The Villages, the current management inherited a sky-high reputation. They’ve expanded at a surprisingly fast pace without many growing pains, based on that reputation.
Then they compared Freedom Pointe in the newspaper to the ordinary new apartments. From their website, Freedom Pointe: “is a life care community. You can seamlessly transition from independent living to assisted living, memory care and skilled nursing care.”
The new apartments will have none of that. A real bait-n-switch type of description.
If they build these apartments in the middle of an established residential neighborhood, that reputation will take a tremendous hit when the perception that they are a bait-n-switch operation goes national. Even if not legally true, perception is reality.
The Developer couldn’t do anything more damaging. I estimate, based on newspaper ads, it will cost The Villages developer 68 million dollars in lost house sales.
If the county approves this, then no rec center, no golf course, no tennis court will be safe from being converted into apartments.
Other retirement communities will want to do the same thing — slam apartment buildings into the middle of residential areas. The State of Florida could become known for that. Retirees might then go to Texas or Arizona, instead of Florida. Even a 1% decline would be significant.
Finally, the Villages developer appears to be changing their business model from Quality to Quantity. They will take Sumter County, the state of Florida, and the residents, all innocent parties, down with themselves.
This board can prevent that.
I recommend that the commissioners decline the request tonight and go no further.
What happened at the meeting
The meeting lasted 4 hours. Other boards restrict testimony to 3 minutes, but many others went longer. I testified second and had mine timed to last 3 minutes. The crowd clapped, but nobody on the board or for The Villages asked questions.
I could not tell if the Commissioners were bored, impressed, or just enduring all testimony.
They wouldn’t vote this time anyway but do vote after the second round of testimony two weeks later. I have a second approach for that meeting, building on this one.
This local news article contains testimony from other attendees :
A blank check does not need to be cash. It can be unlimited permission to do anything.
Hopefully, our testimony will convince the board to decline, or at least postpone, the proposals until the new board members take office 3 weeks after the next meeting.
They should require the developer to submit professional studies and plans before taking a final vote.
Summary of my October 27 testimony
- You, the committee, have no traffic flow study to answer concerns
- You have no traffic accident study to determine safety needs
- You have no endangered species study that came up at the prior meeting
- You have no plan for the building, not even a footprint layout
- You have no plan for parking
- You haven’t addressed the overall loss in valuation and property taxes
- The developer has asked for unlimited residents per gross acre
- You haven’t addressed the possibility that you will subtly grant permission to add 10,000 units
- You would be authorizing the first apartments inside the gated portion of The Villages residential areas. No others exist.
In other words, the developer has asked for a blank check, and if you approve this proposal, you will be giving them one.
The county board voted 5–0 to approve the apartments inside the gated portion of the community.
The developer is doing this:
and replicating Ea-Nasir’s actions from 3,800 years ago:
