CHARLOTTE COUNTY -- Hurricane Charley's scars linger here, but the storm's long-term effects could change one of Charlotte County's defining characteristics: Charley may have made Charlotte younger.
In some of the hardest-hit parts of this county, which has the highest median age in Florida, many of the oldest residents left after Charley.
Charley cleared acres of buildable lots and spurred hundreds of homeowners to put their homes on the market, making conditions favorable for younger retirees and working families.
The new residents arrive at a time when property values are rising to a level that could price out fixed-income retirees.
The changing demographics bring a new set of challenges to the county.
Schools, which are still rebuilding from the 2004 hurricane, and job growth must keep in step for working families to stay.
Advocates for the elderly fear that senior services could become marginalized and that housing costs could rise to a level that prevents retirees of modest means from moving here.
University of Florida economists believe it's too early to say whether new, younger residents will make Charlotte's median age substantially lower, or whether the state's oldest county will stray from its long-standing identity as a retirement community.
But in pockets around the county, from the underused shuffleboard courts at Port Charlotte's Higgs Park to the drop in age at Punta Gorda's Windmill Village Mobile Home Park, an age shift is apparent.
"It's younger, it's active, it's not like an old-age home in here," said Ray Rubin, chairman of the park's operations and management committee at Windmill, a 55-and-older park where the median age has dropped more than five years since Charley.
Charlotte's elderly grapple with their changing communities, said Tess Canja, a Port Charlotte resident and long-time AARP member.
Even the AARP has been affected by the county's changing demographics. The 125-member local chapter lost about a dozen individuals and couples as a result of Charley, Canja said.
"There's room for all of us," Canja said. "There's plenty of places for old people and there's going to be more places for young people."
Charlotte's median age rose slightly in the 1990s. But from 2000 to 2004, the median age became static at just over 54 years old, with enough older retirees moving into the county to just balance the number of younger newcomers.
Then Charley prompted some of Charlotte's elderly to rebuild elsewhere or move to be with children. Others couldn't cope with the stress of living in the county post-Charley, and left.
The state hasn't tallied the impact of the exodus on Charlotte's population yet. The University of Florida's Bureau of Economic and Business Research, which tracks population trends around the state, only has figures through April 2004.
Stan Smith, the research bureau's director, expects Charlotte County to remain a haven for retirees. But the heavy turnover and rising cost of homes could change the median age of some Charlotte communities drastically, he said.
Neighborhoods where the cost of land is much higher than it was a few years ago are the most likely to change, Smith said. The valuable land is an incentive for older residents to sell and leave areas like the Edgewater Drive corridor in Port Charlotte or flattened mobile home parks.
"Certainly, when you're looking at smaller local areas, the impact could be substantially larger," Smith said. "The impact on specific neighborhoods could be much greater both in terms of the total numbers and characteristics."
Indeed, Charlotte's rising land values have spurred many land use changes that are more conducive to working people and younger retirees with money than to fixed-income seniors.
Most recently, the county allowed a New York developer to build more than 380 condominiums on the site of the Victoria Estates mobile home park that Hurricane Charley destroyed.
The trend toward larger, more expensive housing that attracts younger, more affluent buyers had been in the works since long before Charley. The hurricane may have merely sped it up.
When Bucky McQueen developed 86 homes at Grassy Point Estates in the 1990s, he didn't expect to attract mostly younger buyers, but 35- to 55-year-olds bought up all of the properties.
"The oldest people don't want a 5,000- to 10,000-square-foot home to maintain," he said, adding that Charlotte's trend toward bigger, more expensive housing means "we will not see a community of over 30 to 35 percent retirees."
Stricter building codes could also attract more young home builders, said Smith, the researcher.
Hurricane Andrew, one of the worst storms in U.S. history, prompted widespread reform of state building codes after the hurricane devastated Miami-Dade County in 1992. The extra cost of rebuilding to Andrew standards is an encumbrance many of the oldest residents won't want to handle, Smith said.
Many of the homes that pepper Port Charlotte's Edgewater Drive were built in the 1960s, long before the Andrew codes. In the months after Charley, those homes, many owned by longtime Port Charlotte retirees, have been sold and bulldozed.
Real estate agents said more than two dozen homes in the Edgewater area sold in the year after Hurricane Charley. "For-sale" signs still line the neighborhood's streets.
What makes the neighborhood attractive to new Floridians is its winding system of canals, which feeds into the Gulf of Mexico and generates interest from investors and people seeking a lot to build a new custom home.
Gulf-access lots that sold for $300,000 five years ago can now fetch more than $1 million. But not all of the homes are so pricey, and homeowners in the area have seen more families move in.
Homeowners around Edgewater have always been "late 50s, early 60s, not generally with kids," said Tom Vick, who lives in the area. "But I've noticed in our neighborhood the last couple years a couple families coming in with kids."
New residents change the culture of the neighborhood.
The Port Charlotte Shuffleboard Club has seen its membership drop steadily for the past few years. Club President George Gange laments that the shuffleboarders, a mainstay at Higgs Park, have reached out to the new residents with little success.
Membership is down from 300 four years ago to 105 now.
"We're dying off," Gange said. "The younger people just aren't interested in the shuffleboard."
Punta Gorda's Windmill Village is younger and more active than ever, said Rubin, the park's operations and management committee chairman.
Charley destroyed all but about two dozen of Windmill's 454 mobile homes. There are now about 300, and the median age has dropped from 70 to between 60 and 65, residents said.
While some of the oldest residents moved, younger people moved in and the more spry seniors remained, Rubin said. The new group is planning dances, cruises and dinner shows, he said.
The park also has more working residents than before Charley, said Windmill resident Janis Teegan, a 70-year-old who still works as an administrative assistant.
"We have younger people moving into the park taking their place," said Teegan. "I think the hurricane really discouraged a lot the older people who felt that they could not cope with the hurricanes." http://www.newscoast.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060227/NEWS/602270356 |
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