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Seniors Reject Clearwater's Ranking

Tribune photo by Julie Busch

Longtime Clearwater resident Bruce Bandini, 68, likes his home city and doesn't understand why AOL declared it a bad place to retire.

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By CARLOS MONCADA | The Tampa Tribune

Published: December 27, 2007

Updated: 12/27/2007 03:48 pm

CLEARWATER - In between rounds of ping pong, against someone 54 years his junior, Bruce Bandini speaks about why he picked Clearwater to spend his final years.

"It's convenient to the airport, it has good medical facilities and the weather is great," said Bandini, 68, who moved from Long Island, N.Y., to Clearwater in 1973. "And how about the beaches? They've been voted the best in the country for years."

Bandini and other seniors in the Tampa Bay area's third-largest city were dumbfounded Thursday by a recent America Online ranking that puts their retirement "hamlet," referred to as ""Clearwater City," atop a list of worst places in the nation for retirees.

Among the reasons cited are "the bland culture, extreme weather, and high real estate and homeowner's insurance prices of Florida."

But the biggest reason Clearwater is bad for seniors, the AOL article says, is that there are just too many of them.

Clearwater has more people age 65 or older than any major city in America, at 21.5 percent, according to the 200 Census. Clearwater also has three times more than the national average of people 85 and up, according to the article.

Yet new census figures released Thursday show seniors are declining as a share of Clearwater's population since 1980, when retirees made up 26 percent of the population. Today, the percentage is 22.5 percent, the latest figures show.

City boosters and retirees interpret those numbers in a more positive way.

"People pick nicer places to retire, so that's why we have so many retirees," reasoned Mario Carreon, 81, a former Chicagoan who retired to Clearwater nine years ago.

Marie Sapourn, 90, who moved to Clearwater from Baltimore in 1950, strongly disagrees with the ranking.

"I think they're wrong," she said while taking her morning swim at the Long Center, a recreational complex frequented by seniors during the day. "There's no better place you can go. We have the beach. We have the parks. And I love the weather."

As he played table tennis against 14-year-old Danny Gardner, Bandini took issue with suggestions that Clearwater has too many old people and too few cultural opportunities.

"Hey, Tony Bennett was there last week," said Bandini, referring to Ruth Eckerd Hall, the performing arts center where he is an usher. "Obviously there are a lot of old people here, but old people don't do drugs or commit robberies or burglaries."

Clearwater Mayor Frank Hibbard shrugged off his city's topping the "Worst Places to Retire" list of 13 cities. Other cities on the list include Anchorage, Alaska, Washington, D.C., and Austin, Texas.

"I hope potential retirees do more homework than the journalist did,'' Hibbard said. "And I think they will and will find it's a pretty great place to live."

Reporter Carlos Moncada can be reached at (727) 451-2333 or cmoncada@tampatrib.com.

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