The Villages Wins OK on Land Use Change

THE VILLAGES, FL-The Villages, a 22-year-old, mixed-use northwest Lake County community that has grown from a 400-unit mobile home park to a lushly landscaped subdivision of 36,000 residences and four million sf of retail, has won a green light on rezoning 1,171 agriculture acres.

Sumter County commissioners approved developer Gary Morse’s application to use the rezoned land for additional mixed-use and recreational purposes. The 7,000-acre development stretches over Lake, Sumter and Marion counties, the largest commercial/residential/retail enterprise of its kind in Florida.

The community gained additional state and national recognition by being ranked second in residential sales in the US for 2003 in the 10th annual survey just completed by Charles Lesser & Co., a Bethesda, MD-based real estate, advisory and consulting firm. The Villages posted 2003 sales of 3,823, pushing Summerlin, a comparable Las Vegas development, to third place for the first time in six years. Summerlin sales totaled 2,873. The Villages sold 2,356 homes in 2002 and has averaged 2,000 in sales for the past 10 years, according officials at the community.