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Originally Posted by Warren Kiefer
Gracie, you are missing some important points. First not having other realtors in the Villages would only benefit the Developer by giving him a monoply. This would certainly adversly affect the Villagers....Competition is always good for the consumer.
And you not seeing the Morses not reinvesting back into the Villages. Harold Schwartz had a vision, I believe that vision was for him to live a good life and give back as much as possible to the Residents. It has clearly been documented that Gary Morse has accumulated the enormous wealth of 1.2 BILLION dollars. I am sorry, but a person who has a worth of 1200 MILLIONS certainly isn't putting back hat he could into the Villages community.
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Harold Schwartz had the vision, and together with his son Gary Morse, was able to build that dream. His vision, IMO, was a self-contained village with everything a retiree could want or need: shopping, churches, a hospital, medical facilities, entertainment, recreation facilities including bowling alleys, softball fields, tennis, pickleball courts, swimming, etc etc., a woodworking shop, rv parking, and beautiful plush contry clubs. Fortunately, Harold lived long enough to see his main goal of having his own hospital.
It doesn't appear that a lot of this dream is being replicated by the younger generation that is now running The Villages. The business plan that seems to be in place now is build as many houses as quickly as possible, because that is where the quick return on investment is. Possibly they have plans for more shopping, churches, bowling alleys, softball fields, etc, that isn't apparent.
So many changes have happened since I made my first trip here in 2000, when every visitor to TV was picked up at the airport in a stretch limo with a fully stocked bar and given free accomodations when ordering their homes. The lifestyle visits were still $100 per night, but $75 of that was refunded in Village dollars to spend at any village owned facility; ie Katie Belle's, golf, movies, etc.
It's all speculation what will happen when the build-out occurs. Perhaps the Morse clan will move on to another project. They seem too young and too ambitious to retire at their young ages. After all 1.5 billion here, 1.5 billion there...pretty soon you're talking about real money.