Sometime soon, and maybe by the time you read this, the 1,000th dwelling will be under construction in the World Golf Village. We tell you more about the Village real estate and its other major parts on pages 52-53, and let’s add a few comments here:
• The main observation is that the place is going to be a success. What’s the old joke? Six years later and you’re an overnight success? It applies here. The place has endured its critics and somehow managed to keep enough credibility to keep moving forward.
• Not enough credit can be given to Sherry Davidson for dogged determination. She and her partner, husband Jim, have led the Davidson Development and Davidson Realty operations since the outset and they’ve done it the right way: they set goals, stayed confident (at least on the surface) and stayed the course. Jim is involved in much more than the Village so it was Sherry’s lot to be the out-front person and she’s done that. Often, she seemed to be the ONLY Village person that got around and about.
• Three years ago, the PGA Tour moved Jack Peter over from PGA Productions to be the chief operating officer of the Village. He took over a disconnected group — it may have been different internally, but from the outside it seemed as if no one talked to each other. All the pieces are interdependent; if the hotel has a guest, the golf course may have another tee time filled, the CaddyShack restaurant may have another table filled and real estate may have another customer. Peter took the group and got it together.
• The place had lost its way, probably due to the participants going in different directions. They now have defined it around its original purpose, to be the home of the World Golf Hall of Fame. The national marketing now stresses the Hall and its celebrities, things people can identify with.
• Looking from the outside in, there seems to be a spirit of optimism about the place. St. Vincent’s has a big annual golf tournament at the Village and I’m on the committee, and it seems as if there’s a very different atmosphere about the entire place. All of us have noticed it. There used to be a feeling of pessimism that stretched from the top Village executives to the volunteers. It surely was the product of the constant media questioning and the shortage of visitors. Why it changed is unknown — give Peter some credit, of course — but there are smiles all the way around today.
• There’s now no question that it’s in solid shape. Not that it wasn’t going to get that way, it’s just that it looked like it might take a few more decades. The world is growing toward the Village, just as we figured, but the growth in upper St. Johns County is more than any casual observer anticipated. From Julington Creek down to the interstate, and from the interstate over to Palm Valley, there’s a constant stream of construction trucks. What were cow pastures just a few years ago are now homesites.
• The challenge now is not for the Village, but for the county. Lots of people and not enough school desks, not enough wide-enough roads, not enough business development to keep people from having to commute to Jacksonville, the spectre of having to raise residential property taxes to make up for a lack of commercial taxes, etc.
— Fred Seely is the editor of Realty/Builder Connection and editorial director of Bailey Publishing & Communications In. He can be reached at [email protected].