COURTESY : OCALA STAR BANNER
By BILL KOCH -- THE REPORTER
Published March 04, 2004 

THE VILLAGES - The supervisors of The Villages Center Community Development District certainly recognize his face. He's no stranger to district staff, either.

His name is Joe Gorman, president of The Villages Property Owners' Association, and he wants The Villages' government and its developer to pay better attention to residents' concerns.

In recent months, doing something significant with the Paradise Center has topped the association's list.

Residents have registered numerous complaints about the building, including regular sightings of rats, cockroaches and other crawling creatures, as reason enough to bulldoze the structure.

A survey done by the POA earlier this year of residents in the retirement community showed a majority (62 percent) wanting to raze the building instead of making modifications.

The district board agreed late last year to conduct engineering studies of the building to see if it warrants demolishing or renovations.

Gorman spoke to the district board last week, presenting the findings of his survey, which he said constitutes a cross section of the expansive tri-county development.

"This is an important issue for many of us in The Villages," Gorman told supervisors. "People are starting to notice these problems."

The board agreed to let the POA look at architects' findings when they become available but stopped short of letting association members participate in the process.

"The board of supervisors are paying attention to this," said supervisor Mike Killingsworth. "And we're deciding what we have to do."

What the POA and many residents in that area of The Villages want taken off the table of options to consider is any renovations, rebuilding or what they consider short-term solutions. Simply put, they want Paradise destroyed - as their survey suggested.

"I think this is a clear signal that the residents want this demolished," Gorman said.

That idea, however, is not necessarily the same as the board's, which still wants to consider saving the building if possible. Killingsworth urged Gorman and area residents to be patient, insisting that architects will devise a satisfactory solution.

"I feel like we're on step two, and we're making progress," he said. "We need to get back with the professionals and see what they want to do."

The board agreed to allow the formation of an advisory group of area residents, but not until experts make their recommendations.

"I'm kind of astounded at that remark," Gorman told supervisors after they refused to allow residents to participate in the review process. Gorman's insistence and earlier remarks about VCCDD supervisors or their administrator not being subject to popular elections irked Killingsworth, who threatened to block the POA president from continuing his address to the board.

"If you're going to get ardent about this, I'm going to ask you to sit down," Killingsworth said. "We're doing everything we can."

According to Gorman, the governing board is hardly doing everything it can to address a problem that threatens to lower property values in that area and is cause for great embarrassment to residents.

AARP representative Bob Laughrey taught driver-safety classes in the Paradise Center last April and told the board he has instructed classes not to leave lunch bags or boxes on the floor.

"Termites swarm into that room," he said. "They're very ugly little animals."

Gorman said it would cost relatively little to residents in that area to demolish the building and build another one. According to the POA survey of several hundred residents, most area homeowners said they'd be willing to pay the extra cost, which Gorman said would come to nearly $2 a month for a new building.

"It's affordable," he said.