Talk of The Villages Florida - The Villages FL VS Sun Cities AZ

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Quote:

Originally Posted by DeafDeaf (Post 2199826)

I share my friend from The Grand, AZ to respond to your comment:

The writer from Colorado was confused with the Sun City West (SCW) with Sun City Grand (SCG) resort. He is right the SCW is an old town that is bland. Many outsiders are confused when they talk about Sun City as a town known as the first Senior Citizen community in the 1960s. The Del Webb had expanded the Sun City to build another Sun City West with some limited activities that allowed golf carts to drive around on the street where 35 mph is the traffic limit. Then it expanded to build another Sun City Grand (now known as the Grand in 2023) as a sole resort for seniors to enjoy plus many clubs just like the Villages in FL.

In fact, The Sun City Festival and Fiesta are built for senior citizens in the west of the original Sun City. The writer did not seem to know we have a resort with golf courses and lots of people driving in golf carts into the street in the city of Surprise where they are allowable up to 35 mph.

I can testify about both The Villages and the Grand where I am currently living in the resort community. We are just smaller than the Villages. The only setback is that the houses are built following the culture of the native desert to blend with the environment in several grey/brown/tan tones. I like the Villages too but way too big. 1-2 big setbacks about the Villages, two hours drive to the beach and 1+ hour drive to the airports.

Our Grand is mostly regulated by the Mormon folks unlike the Villages with lots of social parties involving lots of booze resulting in too many golf cart accidents. We do not deal with too many accidents involving golf carts. We have many places within driving distance for hiking, camping, opera, and downtown for good restaurants or cultural festivals that I do not think the Villages have this much. They are like an island of their own alone.

I prefer mountains, deserts, wild desert animals roaming, lots of paths for bicycling and walking, and sunny and dry climates. Actually, it is an individual choice to make. We have many active young seniors around here, too.

No place is perfect for everyone. We had no desire to live in Arizona for a number of reasons. But for some it's great, and that's ok too.

But I don't get the beach comment. How far is Sun City form the beach? As beach lovers it's an easy day trip for us. 1 hour 40 minutes to Flagler beach and less than that to the gulf. Airport 1 hour away, who cares?

I can get from my home to Orlando Airport in exactly one hour - Without traffic, the commute from Sun City West to Sky Harbor Airport is about 45 minutes. However, if driving in morning hour rush hour traffic, it takes over an hour. Kind of a wash for me.

My mother-in-law retired from Michigan to Sun City West, AZ. We visited her several times there. When we started, that's where the newer retirees were going to, preferring it over the older Sun City, AZ. It had very nice facilities and really opened our eyes to what an active retirement lifestyle could be. However, we decided we didn't want to retire to either of those communities for a number of reasons, including:

Surprisingly (to us, anyway) bad air pollution
Quite a high crime rate in the surrounding areas, especially Phoenix
The insanely high summer temperatures (even if it is a "dry" heat", it's still stupid hot)
The lack of green (other than golf courses) - everything was tan or brown

After several years and several visits, we also saw Sun City West start to shut down recreation centers, theaters and the like. It turns out that the developer (Del Webb, if I recall) pulls out entirely when the last house is sold and hands the operation over to the residents. Most retirees don't really want to take on the job of running a retirement community, whether it is small of fairly large.

Years later, we visited The Villages with no intention of retiring here or to anywhere in Florida for that matter. We were living in North Carolina by then and loved it and thought we'd retire to South Carolina (all of the whether, food and location benefits of North Carolina but better taxes for retirees). We decided that The Villages had everything we liked about Sun City West but none of the things we didn't like about it. It also, due it's huge scale of operations, simply had more to offer than Sun City West or any other retirement community we looked at in the Carolinas (or Arizona or Florida for that matter).

For those that prefer the desert, Arizona has a growing number of retirement communities and you might well be as happy at any of them as we are here. There's a place for nearly everybody, somewhere.

Ditto on the comment about being jealous of the OP's having retired fairly young. I retired at 62 and would have loved being able to retire as happily as I did only a decade or so earlier.

Probably in the long run you'll have water in FL versus Arizona

Have to be within driving distance of the ocean. Being from southern Cal, Arizona was like moving to a brick oven like Las Vegas.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Calisport (Post 2200100)

Have to be within driving distance of the ocean. Being from southern Cal, Arizona was like moving to a brick oven like Las Vegas.

Yep! Us too. Lived 20 minutes from the coast in SoCal, could never live in the AZ desert even though we would’ve been closer to our kids and toddler grandson if we’d retired there instead of here.