September 6, 2024

The Villages Is Coming to Leesburg: Massive Expansion Planned

0.6 min read| Published On: September 6th, 2024|

By Kyle Coppola

The Villages Is Coming to Leesburg: Massive Expansion Planned

0.6 min read| Published On: September 6th, 2024|

The Villages is set for another significant expansion, this time in Leesburg adding approximately 3,200 acres to its footprint. The new land is located south of Florida’s Turnpike, along County Road 48, and sits adjacent to areas already under development. This acquisition signals continued growth for the renowned retirement community, which has become synonymous with active living and a vibrant lifestyle.

The Villages was started by Harold Schwartz and Gary Morse. The small mobile home park community called Orange Blossom Gardens has expanded over the past few decades to include Lady Lake, Oxford, Summerfield, Coleman, Wildwood, Fruitland Park and Leesburg will explode with growth and construction soon.

As part of this expansion, The Villages aims to provide even more neighborhoods and world-class amenities to meet the increasing demand from new residents. With the development consistently drawing retirees seeking an active and enjoyable lifestyle, the latest land addition will help accommodate future growth.

Benderson Development, one of the nation’s largest privately owned real estate firms, facilitated the sale.

12 Comments

  1. Avatar
    Steve September 7, 2024 at 1:01 pm - Reply

    This needs to stop.

  2. Avatar
    Jan Carey September 7, 2024 at 1:43 pm - Reply

    There are hundreds of pre owned houses for sale that aren’t moving due to all the bew construction.?

  3. Avatar
    Jerry Davis September 7, 2024 at 5:13 pm - Reply

    Hearing the Villages is expanding even more is not a good sound to my ears. They are quickly overwhelming the infrastructure every where they go. There will soon be no green areas left around here. They have taken a beautiful and peaceful county road 470 and turned it into 7 or 8 round a bouts. The traffic here is growing unbearable. 470 was always our route to I 75, so we started to use Hwy 48 instead to avoid all the traffic. Now they are about to ruin it as well. Many are selling and moving away and we are seriously considering that as well. I’m sure I will hear all about the job opportunities that we receiving and all the shopping. We were very happy without it.

  4. Avatar
    Jack September 8, 2024 at 10:35 am - Reply

    Thank you Commissioners for turning Leesburg into the Village of Leesburg.

  5. Avatar
    Dennis Ferrell September 8, 2024 at 11:31 am - Reply

    The villages is the biggest Cancer to ever disgrace Florida such a huge disappointment. They’ll never be happy until there’s not a single tree or piece of wildlife left in Florida.

  6. Avatar
    Debbie September 8, 2024 at 2:54 pm - Reply

    Very Sad. Florida’s natural beauty is getting swallowed up by greed and concrete.

  7. Avatar
    Sandra Wesserling September 8, 2024 at 7:53 pm - Reply

    This is what Greed looks like! This expansion of clearing the
    animal habit is cruel. I agree that there are resellable homes
    already there to purchase.
    I don’t want more traffic!

    • Avatar
      Cody Bretz September 10, 2024 at 3:27 pm - Reply

      ENOUGH with the villages! We don’t need more golf courses. So sick of all these developers destroying the whole state for money….

  8. Avatar
    Ron Taylor September 9, 2024 at 10:04 am - Reply

    Why are you trying to dictate what someone else want to do with their land. Did someone tell you how to develop your land? If you don’t like what happening move. Or visit the county during the planning period to ensure adequate infrastructure is provided for the development.

    • Avatar
      Cody Bretz September 10, 2024 at 3:29 pm - Reply

      Why? Because the bushes ducks. Because vast majority of flourishing are sick of seeing florida turned into a subdivision… we will be there to prevent this if we can….but ya know lobbying exists and everyone is greedy

  9. Avatar
    Mr. Frank September 9, 2024 at 1:55 pm - Reply

    Get ready for many more golf courses !!!

  10. Avatar
    bob miller September 9, 2024 at 7:57 pm - Reply

    you want others to move away to make them happy ? you miss the point why they are not happy with the “over building” process and i guess there is no way to explain it to a person like yourself. people have been here for over 50 plus years and their back yards and FOREST !! ARE BE TAKEN AWAY. and KILLING all the wildlife in those lands, producing water loss / sink holes !!

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About the Author: Kyle Coppola

Kyle Coppola was born in Newton, Massachusetts and received his Bachelor of Fine Arts in Communications from Curry College in 2016. After traveling to Florida on a family vacation, he decided he could not get enough of the warm weather and made the move from snowy Massachusetts to central Florida 8 years ago.

For the last decade Kyle has gained valuable experience in social media content creation, marketing and sales, writing, video production, sports announcing and even broadcasting for local radio stations, such as FM 102.9 in The Villages and FM 91.5 in Massachusetts. Every year he volunteers at The Villages Charter High School as a play-by-play sports announcer for the football games as well as a public address announcer for the basketball games, including the annual Battle at The Villages Tournament.

Outside the office Kyle is a husband and father to two beautiful girls along with their cat. In his spare time he likes to spend time with his family, travel, play golf and swim. He is also a huge sports junkie and even bigger motorsports fan and loves to attend racing events when he can.

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