The Villages is seeking Wildwood zoning changes that clear the way for the retirement community to leap across County Road 470 and to begin construction south of the Coleman federal prison.
Special Magistrate W. Grant Watson Tuesday recommended approval of the zoning changes and a comprehensive plan amendment that will convert 12,513 acres zoned mostly agricultural to age-restricted development. Both are subject to approval by the Wildwood City Commission.
Steven and Carrie Corn, who attended the meeting and own property adjacent to the land up for rezoning, said afterward that an extension of The Villages means a drastic departure from the quiet retirement they envisioned more than a decade ago.
The Villages has acquired property as far south as the Center Hill city limits and is authorized by Wildwood to build 14,455 homes south of CR 470.
Some of the land subject to rezoning was slated in 2008 for the 8,000-home Landstone development, which would have been Wildwood’s largest residential development at that time. The real estate market decline scuttled Landstone.
In 2017, the property was acquired by the Buffalo Hide & Cattle Co., an entity created by an employee of a law firm that represents The Villages in banking and real estate. The company requested conversion of the zoning from residential to agricultural with plans to use it for pasture.
At that time, Archie O. Lowry Jr., then Wildwood’s special magistrate, said he did not buy the rationale of development director Melanie Peavy that the rezoning to agricultural would reduce urban sprawl by focusing development on property that already had municipal sewer and water services.
In light of the change to agricultural, Lowry said it would be difficult to justify rezoning the property for development in the future unless local conditions changed. But Watson, who succeeded Lowry, had no problem recommending the rezoning for approval.
Eleven years ago, Steven and Carrie Corn retired to an acre of land they thought would remain in Florida’s countryside. Soon, they could live next door to an extension of The Villages.
“We intended all of this to be wilderness,” said Carrie Corn.
Her husband Steven said he retired to avoid city life and now he wonders when The Villages expansion will end.
“It’s just going to follow the turnpike all the way to Orlando,” he said.