Caribbean Lagoon coming to The Villages
 

Cool.

If you watch video, opening 2023. Need wingmannut to let us know where.

I haven't heard of this company before, but I did do some research. They have a lot of "pie in the sky" targets listed on their webpages, TV isn't one of them. I'm uncertain also of a possible location in TV or Sumter County for this and it would be very uncharacteristic for the developer to outsource a major amenity item such as this.

Understanding what this facility really is is also important, it is a heat sink for rejected heat for an industrial process or major air conditioning facility (mall, data center, etc). It utilizes this waste heat to create a heated pool (you can do this with your own pool and heat pump with a product I found) for entertainment purposes. Currently there isn't a major heat source located or planned that I know of that would be suitable. But I could be wrong all together on this, we'll just have to keep watching.

This is a huge expense and would require a significant customer base to support, something I don't think they'll find in TV or Sumter County. Many villagers are cheap and won't want to spend a dime to go to a place like this, especially in the cooler months.

I'm definitely going to do some more digging on this one.

Very interesting, may be fishing for investors.

Latest developer video hinted at a Top Golf like facility which may make more economic sense for here.

Great points Don. It seems like a place Villagers would go occasionally when grandkids visit.
It would be uncharacteristic for “the Developer” to outsource so much amenity real estate.
This is something that wouldn’t be built for 2 to 4 years, so the location would be way down south.
In the interview at the link, the executive of the company specifically says The Villages, BUT, as you say in your videos, the developer is good at keeping secrets - this could be something that wasn’t supposed to get out.

""The ones planned for Central Florida will be public, meaning anyone can pay and go.""

Imagine the traffic on a hot day in school holidays, if it was in TV!:ohdear:

Cool a Gator farm

Here’s there web site. It looks like a resort in Orlando is putting in one of their lagoons.

Don gives a good summary of their industrial cooling technology - there are more details on the web site.

Crystal Lagoons | Transform any location into an idyllic beach paradise

The man in the video says one of them WILL be in TV...

Talk is cheap lets see if they make the investment.

Hmmm, there are rumors of a huge prefab concrete plant planned to pre-cast home walls - replacing CCB construction...

Please what is product info for heating pool?

This is what I was looking at.
Heat Recovery Pool Heater | Compare To Solar Pool Heater | HotSpot Energy LLC
Instead of rejecting your home's heat to the air in the outside condensing unit, an alternate condensing unit is installed with a control valve to capture the waste heat and use it for heating a pool. Once the pool is at the control temperature, the valve would shift back to using the original condensing unit.

In theory, the heat rejection to the water would be more efficient for your home heat pump and there would be some energy savings. An advantage over solar is that with solar, the pump speed must be increased to provide sufficient head to move the water through the panels on the roof, the heat is free, but it takes more power to move the water. With this system a slower pump speed can be used saving more energy, combined with the increased efficiency the savings could be significant, in theory.

The one in Arizona looks amazing and more like a small theme park than something The Villages would be investing in.

A public recreation area within TV? I don't see it, unless it's outside of TV.

I’ve been to the one north of Tampa and loved it! Can’t wait till it comes to the Villages or nearby. They really are astounding. Imagine a massive pool the size of a lake with crystal clear water, boating and a water park. It’ll be a huge hit here!

Driving along 466A there are quite a few large fields for sale. Wondering if they would be large enough.

Irrelevant to the point I was making...

Where is the one north of Tampa? Thx.

kathy

At 35 bucks or more for a day pass. no way.

It's actually Crystal Lagoon, not Caribbean Lagoon.

Here is the location north of Tampa

Crystal Lagoon at Epperson - Fun 4 Tampa Kids

Hard to imagine anything needing that much acreage being built on developer land (thus making it cart accessible). Way too many houses could be built, on the footprint of a place like that. With that said, it would be nice to have one close by to take visitors, but with so many cart accessible neighborhood pools already in place (not to mention private pools), I wonder if it could ever survive around here. Now put a Costco next to it - and who knows? LOL

Only $35 a day, what a bargain.

Wesley Chapel. But there are at least three others in Florida - Wimauma (near the legendary Sun City Center) another in southwest Florida and one under contract in San Antonio. Metro Lagoons – Welcome to Paradise

There is at least one in Texas, too, attached to a planned community. It seems one of the company’s targets are big housing developers - like TV. Their website is very marketing heavy and reads like a venture capital investment scam. But they have legitimately built several.

There is the Lifestyle Center and Central Lake. Could Central Lake be made into one of these? And there are water features in the Community Support District plans. A lagoon could be a good draw for TV support families.

maybe that's what will happen to the Coleman prison-it would have enough space

After giving this some more though, I'm intrigued by the possibilities, the technical aspects of such a place is an easy fit for our area as it grows. Let me explain.

As I said in the previous post, the pool is little more than a heat sink for a facility that produces a lot of heat. Many large facilities and campuses use a Central Energy Plant (CEP) to produce chill water (for air conditioning and humidity control), hot water (domestic use and heating), and backup electrical power. Most CEPs use an array of cooling towers to reject the produced heat, these are commonly seen on large building rooftops and set aside locations around a group of buildings. Some uninformed see the steam plume coming from the towers and assume it to be air pollution, it's simply water vapor.

Currently in Sumter County there are few large heat loads that would require the sizable CEP that would be needed for one of these lagoons. As I said, currently. Look ahead just a few years and the picture is different. The proposed medical complex that is in the planning stages is a prime candidate for a CEP since it is all greenfield work and the distribution infrastructure can be economically laid in at the initial stages of the development. Hospitals are HUGE energy users, and many use the CEP concept to help control energy costs. All this being said, it seems technically feasible for our area to have such a lagoon location.

Looking at the other side of the coin, economics, is a necessary evil. The addition of such a heat sink would be additional cost, conventional cooling towers sufficient to handle the CEP full load would still need to be built on-site to handle the facilities needs in case something happened to the lagoon heat sink (a sink hole opens up and drains the lagoon, it is Florida after all).

One has to look also at the marketability of a lagoon location in or around The Villages. This would be a tourist attraction, it would have to have its own local draw as it's too far from the Orlando attractions to attract customers and would have to compete with Wet-n-Wild, Typhoon Lagoon, Blizard Beach, and the other area water parks. Other "attractions" and businesses would need to exist to be successful. For the locals/resident the novelty will wear off quickly so you must continuously pull in new customers. Sure, it would be nice to take the grandkids to when down for a visit, but regular use by Villages residents, not very likely. It's been my experience over the last 7 years living here that most residents here are cheap and have forgotten how the real-world works (businesses have to make money), any cost increase and they cry poor with indignation and condemnation, blaming it all on the developer for being greedy.

Who would operate such a location? The developer, maybe but doubtful, amusement parks (for lack of a better label) are not their specialty. The local government/CDD, not likely. A 3rd party, this is the most likely, but they would be focused on their own profitability and not necessarily the image and reputation of The Villages/developer putting them at odds with the developer. Only one person gets to drive the bus and I doubt the developer will give up control of the future and planning of The Villages.

This would also require a large swath of land within or adjacent to current development. This would take away from home/golf course/amenity development.

So, technically feasible, absolutely, but likely improbable for coming here. I know, the guy in the interview said The Villages as a location, but more likely it is in the early stages of consideration, and it will probably wither and die on the vine.

(Before retiring I worked for Johnson Controls and was involved with the CEPs at St. Jude, FedEx World Hqtrs, Shands hospital, and Methodist Central Hospital in Memphis, as well as several others.)

I'm going to continue to dig into this one, it's an interesting concept, but I think unlikely to come to fruition.

wow, thank you for sharing this info-we are lucky to have you here to explain it! i look forward to any future comments re: this subject, thx for doing what you do

According to WESH news, TV will be one location. Read on…

ORLANDO, Fla. – Get this: Central Florida's inland counties won't have to head to the coast to enjoy the beach. Wait, what?!

Yep, five of counties are getting Caribbean-like lagoons.

The destinations are called Crystal Lagoons. “[They're] an idyllic beach life just steps away from people's homes,” says Iván Manzur, Crystal Lagoons' corporate senior VP of sales.

Thanks to patented technology, five Central Florida counties are getting Caribbean-like lagoons with crystal clear waters, tiki huts, white sandy beaches, and room for all kinds of water sports, from paddle boarding to kayaking.

The five counties are Orange, Seminole, Osceola, Lake and Sumter. “The first 3 projects will be located in Kissimmee, the Villages and Orlando,” Manzur says.

Lagoon
 

Ha ha . April fool's? Nothing guaranteed . Why would they invest here when the community has dozens of pools? More likely Clermont with young families .Or as some say a name dropper for investors . Lake/ Sumter has no tourism nexus

If you look on their website they list Lake Panasoffkee as an in development site. They have already opened a beautiful facility in Wesley Chapel.

It looks like their high expense options are for heated waters and weather domes, 2 things not a big need for in Florida.

The Wesley Chapel location is $35pp general entry, hardly a budget breaker and they are sold out regularly.

Crystal Lagoon lists Lake Panasoffkee as in development stage. This is less than 7 miles from the villages. The project is more than likely being advertised as “The Villages” because no one knows where Lake Panasoffkee is but everyone knows where TV is.

Like Tampa Bay baseball team that don’t play in the City of Tampa Bay.

It will be very close to TV but not on property. Easy exit fro I75 and Turnpike.

Already done. 2 homes in Oxford Oakes going up with pre fab walls.

Hope it's Lake Opkahumpka (spelling?) I've been wondering how we are going to enjoy paddle boarding and other water sports there.

No thanks!

Right.....No Thanks!

Just what we need in TV. Another public place for noise, mayhem and chaos.
What we need is a nice place to eat, relax, and have some nice conversation without any intrusion.

The large retention pond on the county line near the new power substation? Could the substation be cooled by water? No idea on technology in this area, but I do know that the blue lagoon in Iceland is waste water from a power plant...

I think you're being confused by their web page. The heatsink is an OPTIONAL use of a lagoon; it's not a requirement. It's one way to provide heating to a section of a larger lagoon.

The big technology break through they claim to have is mass desalination and purification of the water.

If you do some digging on their web site and a bit of web searching, you'll see that several of these are installed in planned communities as part of the community amenities - and the public is allowed in for a fee.

So my speculation is:

• "Central Lake" shown in the recent Continuing the Dream booklet is one of these Lagoons.
• The new "Community Support District" gets one of these with residents getting access as part of their HOA/amenity fee, and the public being charged access.
• It's installed adjacent to the Wellness Village and used for cooling.

One type of facility with heavy AC needs is a Cloud Computing Facility. They may have thousands of computer servers running at once, and they have to be kept cool. These places cost millions to build—often over $20 million—and they are being built in a number of locations around the world. They look a lot like a shipping warehouse. I could see a large one including a Crystal Lagoon from the beginning. It might even become common. Maybe one will be built in Sumter County. Maybe down near the interstate.

The original article says it can use 100 times fewer chemicals. That always confuses me. 100 times should be MORE, not LESS. It should be “one hundredth as much.”