The Country’s Largest Retirement Community Has New, World-Class Schools

Photos courtesy of Wharton Smith 

The Villages, which is much more a destination than a “place” in Central Florida, is touted as the world’s single largest retirement community, with over 75,000 people now calling it home. Matern Professional Engineering is engaged in helping The Villages expand its residential offerings to those who aren’t anywhere close to retirement age. Our company is providing mechanical, electrical, and plumbing (MEP) engineering services for an expansion to The Villages Charter School (TVCS) campuses. TVCS opened its first campus in 2000 as a charter-in-the-workplace school, offering education to students whose parents work for qualifying businesses that serve The Villages community.

The TVCS new campuses are located in the newly developed town of Middleton, Florida, which is the latest addition within The Villages community. The children of all workers who keep The Villages running daily deserve the best educational buildings. As The Villages and its population continues to grow, the educational infrastructure also needs to expand to accommodate more students. Matern Professional Engineering worked in conjunction with project partners including architect, Schenkel Shultz on the new Early Childhood Center, The Villages Charter K-8 School, and The Villages Charter High School.

The new Early Childhood Center fosters a positive and supportive educational environment for children as young as one year up through the 4^th grade. In a nod to the history of the Sunshine State’s significant agricultural history, the school features classrooms with reinvented grain silos and Quonset huts, and a bright, airy atmosphere offering the students a stimulating environment that engages their curiosity. With the capacity to educate over 300 students, the Early Childhood Center represents but one piece of the long-term vision for The Villages to offer a high-quality educational experience starting in early childhood.

The new Middleton K-8 School features a campus with separate elementary and middle school education buildings. The K-8 campus includes shared student amenities including a media center, modern cafeteria, gymnasium, stadium, playground, and playfields.

Meanwhile, the world-class high school features performing arts, athletic, and academic facilities with dedicated academies for agriculture, business, computer science, construction, culinary, digital media, engineering, fine arts, graphics arts, and health sciences. The state-of-the-art sports complex includes a standard gymnasium, four basketball courts, and an artificial turf football stadium with a four-story media tower and expansion of up to 10,000 people. The complex also boasts an Olympic-size swimming pool, four natural turf soccer fields, an artificial turf multipurpose field, and baseball and softball fields. The campus includes a golf education building with two simulators. The Tracy Performing Arts Center serves as a vibrant cultural hub for both TVCS and the surrounding Villages community. Located in the heart of the school's Performing Arts Academy, it provides students with a professional-grade venue for their artistic pursuits. The center's two performance spaces – The Tracy Theater and the Encore – cater to diverse events, from large-scale productions to intimate gatherings. With state-of-the-art technology and flexible configurations, the center fosters creativity and collaboration, enriching the lives of students and audiences alike.

Collectively this grants young students a feeling that they too are part of The Villages community. Together these buildings ensure generations to come in the Villages community receive the best possible education. Matern Professional Engineering is proud to be an active part in realizing this vision.