| SIRE1 |
03-15-2022 01:42 PM |
To go back a little ways in history, before 2003 or so The Villages was truly promoted as a "Gated Community". There weren't any little red buttons on any of the entry gates. So there had to be gated attendants to allow visitors and contractors into the neighborhoods. The location of the manned gates were positioned so that at least one entrance to a neighborhood would be through a manned gate. For neighborhoods with more than one street entrance, those other streets were controlled by a Gate Card ONLY entrance.
But somewhere around 2003, Marion County decided that since the roads inside the neighborhoods were public, The Villages could not restrict access to the public. So a red button was provided to allow anyone access thru those previous Gate Card ONLY entrances. Shortly after that, the red button access was added to all of the other Gate Card ONLY entrances. I'm not sure whether Sumter County saw what Marion County had done and mandated this in their county or adopted by The Villages as a cost savings measure to a manned gate. And as The Villages expanded to the south, the newly built areas did away with the now unnecessary manned gates and provided only non-manned entrances with the red button for public access. That is why you see the manned gates primarily in the historic and northern areas. Fenney is the only exception that I can think of which is south of 466.
And, as I recall, previously to the introduction of the red button at all gates The Villages sales & marketing indicated that this was a gated community. All of that changed with the introduction of the red button. And then suddenly, the sales & marketing proclaimed the gates, manned and non-manned, as a traffic control measure.
So the manned gates don't appear to serve any function any more. But The Villages spends money to add bathrooms to the ones still here, like they did to one on the historic side. It will be interesting if any manned gates will ever be included to the new areas south of the turnpike.
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