Fastest-Growing Metro Area in U.S. Has No Crime or Kids

[ed. Sounds like hell on earth to me. Who'd want to isolate themselves from grandchildren, dogs, young people and families? Different ethnic cultures and businesses? New experiences and new perspectives? A lot of people, apparently. But hey, at least there's no crime (and it's clean!)]  

For Jerry Conkle, life in America’s fastest-growing metropolitan area moves as slowly as the golf carts that meander through his palm-lined neighborhood at dusk. Most days, he wakes early, reads the newspaper, and then hops into his four-wheeled buggy for a 20-mile-per-hour ride to one of the 42 golf courses that surround his home.

“It’s like an adult Disney World,” Conkle, 77, said of The Villages, Florida, whose expansion has come with virtually no crime, traffic, pollution -- or children.

The mix has attracted flocks of senior citizens, making The Villages the world’s largest retirement community. Its population of 110,000 has more than quadrupled since 2000, U.S. Census Bureau data show. It rose 5.2 percent last year, on par with megacities like Lagos, Nigeria, and Dhaka, Bangladesh.

That the most rapidly expanding U.S. metro area is a Manhattan-sized retirement village -- with more golf carts than New York has taxis -- highlights the transformation of the world’s demographic profile. The over-60 set -- which the United Nations projects will almost triple to 2 billion by 2050 -- offers opportunity to marketers and homebuilders even as it confounds governments that must care for an aging populace.

“A lot of communities see seniors as a huge benefit -- they contribute to the tax base and the local economy,” said William Frey, a demographer and senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington. “But these people are going to get older, and they’re going to have health needs and service needs.”

Few have benefited from the spending power of retirees more than H. Gary Morse, who developed The Villages. The Holding Company of the Villages Ltd., owned by Morse and his family, has sold more than 50,000 new homes since 1986, generating $9.9 billion in revenue, according to disclosures in municipal-bond filings.

The Villages, which has rules governing everything from how long children can visit to how many pet fish residents can keep, has helped Morse build a family fortune worth $2.9 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

In addition to selling homes, Morse, 77, and his family own the local newspaper, a radio station and a television channel.

They also hold a controlling interest in Citizens First Bank, which provides mortgages. The holding company is the landlord of more than 4.5 million square feet of commercial real estate, including dozens of restaurants and retailers.

“They own everything,” said Andrew D. Blechman, author of “Leisureville,” a book about The Villages and other retirement communities that ranks Morse’s as the biggest. “You basically have a city of 100,000 people, owned by a company.”

by Toluse Olorunnipa, Bloomberg | Read more:
Image: Bloomberg