HUFFINGTON
07.15.12
BEN HALLMAN
TWILIGHT IN THE SUNSHINE STATE
he plays golf, serves on a hospital
board and gets to freak out visiting
reporters on high-speed golf cart
tours. “It’s like Disneyworld for
adults,” he says more than once.
Whatever the lure, whether
it is the Golf Channel ads or the
personal testimony of true believers like Hahnfeldt, it seems
to be working. Just outside the
western gates a passerby can
observe an extraordinary sight,
on view almost nowhere else in
a state where the housing market has collapsed: bulldozers are
clearing ground for what will
become a third town square and
thousands more homes.
Last year, retirees purchased
2,307 homes in the Villages. It is
the second fastest-growing small
community in the United States,
according to Forbes. That growth
is decidedly geriatric and it’s emblematic o f what’s is happening
across the entire country.
“There is a demographic train
wreck coming that we are not really addressing nationally or in
Florida,” says Sean Snaith, director of the University of Central
Florida’s Institute for Economic
Competitiveness.
Over the next 20 years, the
Don
Hahnfeldt
looks out on
the water
near his
home in the
Villages.