A sprawling Central Florida retirement community sues its pesky foe, who won't give up despite losing every round in his eight-year fight to limit its growth.

By CRAIG PITTMAN, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times
published July 7, 2002

OXFORD -- The most hated man in Sumter County lives on a country road in a concrete-block house that he built himself. On his 55 acres he grows hay for sale.

He also raises Cain.

T. Daniel Farnsworth is 73, with wavy white hair and horn-rim glasses. He can be as stubborn as a stump, and that has led to his current unpopularity.

In the past three months, he has been vilified in dozens of letters sent to the local papers and subjected to threatening phone calls. The head of the local hospice has complained about him. A new civic group held a big rally in a nearby pasture and pointed him out as the kind of person they don't want around.

All this because of Farnsworth's personal crusade against a sprawling retirement community that touts itself on billboards as "Florida's Friendliest Hometown."

"I don't think they're the friendliest," said Farnsworth, who is being sued by the community -- Central Florida's largest development -- called the Villages. "I wish they'd spend their energy on making it the best community in Florida, instead of the biggest."

Launched in the 1980s, the Villages is a retirement community so huge it straddles three counties. On what was once verdant farmland are now homes for 25,000 seniors -- not to mention 181 holes of golf, 16 restaurants, an eight-screen movie theater, two bowling alleys, a florist, an ice cream shop, Publix, Winn-Dixie, an Eckerd drugstore, a daily newspaper, a radio station and a cable news station.

The development contains enough voters to attract Gov. Jeb Bush for a visit last month. Its chief executive, Gary H. Morse, recently donated $250,000 to the Republican National Committee.

Sumter, Lake and Marion county officials are big fans of the Villages and the jobs it has created. They have erected few impediments to its building boom.

The Villages' current expansion plans call for adding another 11,000 people to the community as well as a hospice, a charter school for children of its construction workers and an Arnold Palmer-designed golf course.

One thing has stood in the way: Farnsworth.

"Mr. Farnsworth is a self-centered, selfish man," contended Terry Yoder, president of T&D Concrete and a board member of the newly formed Citizens for Economic and Environmental Balance, or CEEB. "He wants Sumter County to himself."

In March, Farnsworth and two friends filed a formal objection to the permits for pumping water out of the ground to supply those new residents. They argued that the Villages' plans would waste 1-million gallons of water a day, drying up farmers' wells and opening sinkholes galore.

They pointed out that while state officials say there is plenty of water for the Villages in Sumter, next door in Lake County state officials have declared a serious water shortage.

The delay in the permits halted construction for three months, idling hundreds of workers and outraging Farnsworth's pro-growth neighbors, spurring the formation of CEEB.

At the end of June, a judge ruled for the Villages, clearing the way for construction to proceed. However, the victory doesn't mean the developer will now drop its suit accusing Farnsworth of malicious interference in its business.

"We've already incurred the damages," said Stephen W. Johnson, one of Villages' attorneys. "We don't get those three months back."

Farnsworth's attorneys contend the Villages is after something more important than money.

"They just want to make sure Dan Farnsworth never pipes up at another county commission meeting," said attorney Jane Gordon.

* * *

Farnsworth has battled the Villages repeatedly over the past eight years, a fight that has included legal action against two state agencies that have cleared the way for its expansion, the Department of Community Affairs and the Southwest Florida Water Management District.

So far he has lost every round.

He also took on another developer, Pringle Communities. His side won and "that's now a nice tree farm," he said.

Farnsworth seems an unlikely candidate for the role of anti-development spoiler. When he's driving his beige Ford Ranger, his radio is tuned to Rush Limbaugh. He used to be on the local GOP committee. He's not the type to swoon over endangered species.

But he has a deep love for country living, dating to his childhood in what he calls "West by-God Virginia." When his mother died, the 4-year-old Farnsworth was sent to an aunt's farm for a while. He fondly remembers visits to his cousins' farms too.

"Those people are the salt of the earth," he said.

Army service brought him to Florida, where a blind date introduced him to the woman he married 50 years ago, Eleanor. After his discharge, the couple found a quiet corner of Palm Beach County where they started a family and a chicken farm.

"I spent 13 years working off the farm to support the chickens, and then for two years the chickens supported me," Farnsworth said with a rare smile.

After Farnsworth gave up on the chickens, he ran a business installing cable TV systems in condominiums and mobile home parks. A condo company attempted to take over his system, so he sued. Eight years and three appeals later, the company settled.

"That $150,000 cable system that they stole from me ended up costing them over $1-million," he said. "I have the utmost respect for the legal system."

In the meantime, his rural slice of Palm Beach County had turned suburban. He dispatched his son to scout out a country place unlikely to attract development. They picked Sumter County, about 100 miles north of Tampa Bay. The Farnsworths bought the hay farm near tiny Oxford in 1987 and moved in in 1990.

Then, in 1993, Farnsworth saw something in the local paper that horrified him: The Villages wanted to expand into Sumter, putting 6,000 new residents within 3 1/2 miles of his farm.

He marched down to the courthouse for his first of many unsuccessful protests, launching a crusade that Villages' officials say constitutes an abuse of the right to free speech.

"He's going to say or do whatever it takes to stop them," said Johnson, the Villages' attorney. "You don't have a constitutional right to maliciously misrepresent information for your own purposes."

* * *

Farnsworth has followers. Since 1994 he has led a loose affiliation called Sumter Citizens Against Irresponsible Development, or SCAID.

Farnsworth said SCAID was once so popular that "I got all these phone calls and checks in the mail with notes saying, "Keep up the good work.' . . . You don't know how good that made me feel."

But ever since the Villages sued him, "the money has dried up real quick," Farnsworth said. "People say they don't want the Villages to get hold of it."

A recent editorial cartoon in the Daily Commercial of Leesburg depicted Farnsworth as a tiny figure about to be squashed by the Villages' big shoe.

To read the paper owned by the Villages, the Daily Sun, is to see Farnsworth depicted in a different light, with headlines like: "One man's repeated court challenges cause uncertain future for area families."

The Sun printed the address and phone number of SCAID's officers on its front page, which Farnsworth says led to the harassing phone calls.

Nevertheless, Farnsworth granted a lengthy interview to the Sun, portions of which are now being used as evidence in the suit against him. Farnsworth's attorneys now sit with him for any interviews.

"I cannot go to a public meeting," he said. "There's so many things I'd like to go tell the commission and I can't do it."

Farnsworth recently testified, "We've never said it was a bad development. . . . I wish sometimes I could go over to some of the restaurants, but I can't because they're members-only."

If he did, he might run across a kindred spirit, Barbara Down. After 20 years in Spring Hill, she moved into the Villages last September, paying extra for a lot overlooking a small pond.

"I thought coming here and having this water view would soothe my soul," said Down, 64.

But sinkholes keep draining the pond, sometimes with an alarming whoosh. Villages work crews fill them in, but then new ones open up. No salesman mentioned sinkholes when Down bought her home.

She has complained to the board that governs her section of the Villages, but she got nowhere because the board members were all appointed by the developer, she said. A real estate agent told her if she tried to move now, she could not recoup her expenses.

She has heard of Farnsworth, of course, but she does not want to join SCAID because of the Villages' lawsuit.

"I can't afford to get involved in a legal battle with them," she said. "This is a huge machine, and everything is geared to making more sales."

-- Times researchers Caryn Baird and Cathy Wos contributed to this story.

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