So I am proposing a New Vision Plan based on current socio-economic realities, which do not include inappropriate commercial enterprises that detract from our community's residential composition.
Ask yourself if you would prefer a liquid real estate market where, if you wished, you could sell your home in less than a month at a good price, or hoards of tourists, traffic and condo-tels like Reddington Beach or many of the other commercialized Pinellas County beach communities? If you prefer the former, then you may like my New Vision Plan. This plan includes many incentives to attract new residents, not contained in the old Vision Plan "adopted" by our current commissioners.
This afternoon Elisabeth and I went to the Manatee Art Center to see the National Watercolor Exhibition. WOW! I highly recommend it to anyone who appreciates beautiful art. The art center was packed with people obviously enjoying the exhibition. Elisabeth struck up a conversation with one couple who informed us that the entire group was from The Villages and had arrived on two buses. We noticed that everyone was our age and obviously having a good time with one another.
As our discussion progressed we inquired about the housing market in The Villages. They said that currently over 250 new homes are sold each month at The Villages, and that figure did not include sales of existing homes. I have since confirmed the 250+ figure with the developers.
Then we discussed community activities at The Villages such as the outing to the National Watercolor Exhibition that we were all attending. The woman directed me to the Activities Web Site for The Villages. I have since looked at the website and I am astonished by the breadth and depth of activities available to the residents. Here is the link: http://www.thevillagesdailysun.com/app/files/recnews.pdf
So the cornerstone of my New Vision Plan is creating more activities to draw our community together rather than promoting more tourist businesses up and down GMD. My New Vision Plan has the town using its resources to promote community values, community activities, development of a community center and spearheading a concerted effort to promote our community as the place to own a home, a place to meet new friends and a place where residents are actively engaged in life.
My New Vision Plan envisions a re-build-out of our residential neighborhoods, fueled by a strong demand by perspective baby boomer home-buyers, who want to be part of an exclusive seaside community, at the forefront of defining the new American way of life. Tourism oriented strip malls and condo-tels may be fine for Reddington Beach, but they have no place on our island.
My New Vision Plan has no place for traffic grid-lock or beaches crowded with day visitors. The New Vision Plan promotes an active yet relaxed community. One need only look at other successful communities, Florida communities, where real estate is in high demand, to realize that tourism is by no means essential to a vibrant growing community.
My Vision Plan has our community redefining itself and becoming part of today's New America, where it seems people want to be more active and more social. We need to have our town government turn its efforts towards community development, not commercial development. We are an island community that has failed to stay abreast of current community trends and we need to change direction now.
The Villages is not located on a beautiful island in the Gulf of Mexico. Yet they are attracting 250+ new home-buyers a month while our community is attracting a dozen if we have a good month. I believe we as a community are not currently able to offer a lifestyle that attracts the new generation of home-buyers; and that we need to change as quickly as possible. We might want to look at why we would even want to devote resources to tourism that is probably a decade in the offing. Until we understand why people want to move to such places as The Villages and not here, we should not embrace the commission's vision plan that emphasizes tourism.
The ink is barely dry on our new vision plan, the one some of the commissioners defend as being community friendly and absolutely unbiased towards commercial development, and the commission already has the town spending taxpayer money on a lawyer to immediately change our trusted comp plan to do one thing - promote commercial expansion on Longboat Key. The commission's actions speak much louder than their rather hollow protestations, that their vision plan is little more than a manifesto for commercial development of our precious residential community. One would think that at this time, when so many Longboat taxpayers are financially stresses and unable to sell their homes, that the commission would not hurry so to help their business friends, while doing nothing to assist their fellow residents.
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