I’m sure there was a time when the ROCORI area experienced a period of rapid growth. Maybe that meant there were a dozen permits issued to build homes, and perhaps a couple of businesses moved into existing buildings or took a leap of faith and built new buildings (like those you see on the property known as Granite Landing – where the granite company had offices and its production facility before it moved between Cold Spring and Richmond). Both Richmond and Rockville experienced new homes and commercial buildings at some point as well. I know from experience that those are exciting times for small towns.
The growth in the area we call “home” now is unbelievable. There are at least two more Walmart stores, a huge Costco, and several smaller commercial buildings being erected near our home. That alone would be amazing in most areas, but here it seems very common.
The Villages is the fastest-growing community in the United States. Not far from where our home sits, 180 homes are being constructed. A few miles south, there is another area with 80 new homes under construction. If you go about twenty miles from our home, there are nearly 1,000 new homes planned. It doesn’t take long to build all these homes – crews come in and build several at a time, and from the ground prep to occupancy, the goal is 36 days. It may take a few years to build the 1,000 planned for the far south end of this community, but there is an area larger than the size of Cold Spring that has been cleared, and the underground work is complete, so it won’t be long before homes start popping up.
If I’m being honest, I don’t like areas with high populations, I prefer towns like those you have in the reading area of this newspaper. During the winter season, about 200,000 people live in The Villages, but something unique about here is that everything we need is about one mile from our home in our development known as “Woodbury”, which is one of 80 villages in The Villages, so we don’t need to venture outside our “village” unless we want to.
It’s interesting driving around this area and watching the construction, and from what I understand, the developer here owns more land than has already been developed, so the area known as The Villages, Florida, will very likely be more than twice as big as it already is.
I’ll be happy in my 22-year-old home on the far north end of this community, where it’s quiet and the homes were built with a little more space between them than the new areas, where it appears the plan was to build as many homes as possible in designated areas, so they are built very close to each other.
I can still enjoy driving through the new areas to check on the progress, but I can go back to my quiet neighborhood, where I have to walk a few extra feet before I cross the property lines.
Have A Good Week!
