[swrinfla]

Russ and others:

Here's a little exercise for you to see how big TV is and will be.

Access GoogleEarth.com

Ask it to locate "Wildwood, FL"

Zoom in enough so that you can see the red dot labelled "Wildwood" as well as the red dot labelled "Fruitland Park." State Road 44 should run more or less along the bottom of your image, and Lady Lake's red dot should be sort of in the upper right hand section of your screen.

You can clearly see what was under construction at the time this image was made (I'm guessing late 2003 to early 2004, as my street is in, but there's nothing else anywhere nearby!) The lighter colored area is mostly Sunset Pointe/Poinciana/Liberty Park etc. The redder colors are Mallory Square/Virginia Trace/Amelia, etc. The abrupt cut-off line along the right hand side is the Sumter-Lake County line.

So far untouched in the image are Districts 7 and 8. District 7 is where most of today's newest houses are: Duval/Hadley/Bonita/Hemingway, etc. Infrastructure construction only is underway in District 8, which will be the Villages of Saint Charles, Saint James, etc. (I think).

The road running westwardly out of Fruitland Park is CR466A.

The angled road running southeasterly from Wildwood and meeting up with SR44 is SR44A.

Brownwood's Paddock Square is supposed to be in the triangle between 44 and 44A, east of the Wildwood label.

As you can see, there's not much in the space between CR466A and SR44, except several bodies of water. And, in fact, there's d*** little there but open land. I've flown over it a number of times with my brother.

There's some roll there, but I hesitate to call them hills, just "high ground" and "not so high ground!" ;D

I know of little industry or strip malls or anything else in the area. Cindy Chevrolet has a sprawl along SR44, but I don't think there's a heck of a lot else. On the other hand, I would expect there to be some reasonably significant development along SR44, just as there has been at Southern Trace along CR466 and Colony Plaza along CR466A.

That's still some time down the road, for sure. The market will undoubtedly rebound, but it'll be a little more cautious, I'm thinking.

Some folks worry about Paddock Square's proximity to the city of Wildwood. I'm afraid I'd echo their thoughts, but perhaps things'll be okay! I only hopeto see it all happen!

SWR