From Sun Cities to the Villages: A History of Active Adult, Age-restricted Communities

Preface

Preface Having taught urban history since the 1970s, I eventually came to wonder why no book-length, academic history of active adult, age-restricted communities existed. They comprised a distinctive type of community, so they should be well defined for research purposes. The popularity of these communities was continuing to expand. Some of them had actually established their own historical societies and had produced their own histories. Why academic historians had largely ignored them I can only speculate. Perhaps it was because of a general lack of interest in elderly people who were retired, in some cases living behind walls and gates, and who were not thought of as being very significant. However, I myself began to fit the “demographic” of someone old enough to move into these communities and saw a number of my friends, relatives, and acquaintances do that. These communities were significant to me. When I became eligible for a sabbatical in 2005 and no book-length history existed, active adult, age-restricted communities became my research project. My historical methods included doing a little of just about everything. Some of the historical societies of these communities, particularly the Sun Cities Area Historical Society in Arizona and the Historical Society of Laguna Woods in California, had extensive and fairly well-organized manuscript collections. Several people gave me wonderful tours of their communities and filled me in on their towns’ histories in the process. I wish to particularly thank Jane Freeman for showing me Sun City and Sun City West in Arizona; Lucille Retheford, president of the Youngtown (Arizona) Historical Society, who guided me through that community ; Bob Ring for his extensive tour of Laguna Woods, originally Leisure World Laguna Hills in California; Ken Walker of the Leisure World Historical Society, Seal Beach, California; and in Florida, John Bowker xii | Preface of the Sun City Center Historical Society and Noreen Stead, administrative assistant at Century Village in West Palm Beach. Other people, such as Jerry Svendsen, who did public relations for Del Webb from the mid-1960s to the early 1980s; David Schreiner, vice president for active adult business development for Pulte Homes, which owns Del Webb and other housing brands in the twenty-first century; and H. Irwin Levy, the developer of Century Village, and his son, Mark, were among those who either granted me interviews by telephone or in person. In all cases, I took handwritten notes rather than use a tape recorder. Besides the usual primary and secondary printed sources, the Internet proved particularly useful for newspaper articles published after the mid-1980s. My goal was to be up-front with my sources as to my research purposes , but because of my age and middle-class status, it was quite easy to fall into doing some research incognito. When I walked into the sales center at Sun City Center, the salesperson just assumed that I was a prospective buyer. At The Villages, I had previously encountered the noncommittal attitude of the head of public relations, Gary Lester, who refused to say much beyond confirming that The Villages was, indeed, an age-restricted community, so I deliberately decided to tour that community posing as a prospective buyer. My advice to anyone else who might be tempted to do this is to leave your checkbook at home. A new, three-bedroom, golf course home with an in-ground pool for $456,000 in June 2009 was definitely a temptation. However, I resisted and stayed at a motel, not the vacation villas with golf carts that The Villages rents to prospective buyers. In fact, the only time I did take advantage of such a “vacation special” was in 2002, prior to my beginning the research. A cousin had just bought a second home in Sun City Texas, and I decided to check out that community from a potential buyer’s perspective. However , for this historical research project, keeping focused on the history, being objective, and not getting sidetracked by retirement dreams was very important to me. Someday I may go back, select some communities as a prospective buyer, and tour them from that perspective; but that is in the future. As to whether I would be a good candidate for taking up residence in one of these communities, I’m not so sure. Another thing I did incognito was to take the Del Webb Advisor survey for prospective buyers designed to determine how interested I personally was in moving to an “adults only” community and whether I wanted...