Greetings from Las Vegas. This is Day 2 of our trip report, covering Wednesday, October 13, 1999
Our second day in the Las Vegas Valley was almost all business, but not without pleasure. We started by joining most of the other villa guests for breakfast in the welcome center. This is a very useful and productive exercise, for we are learning a lot by talking at length with these other visitors from around the country who have either purchased a Sun City Anthem home or are investigating the Anthem lifestyle.
At 9:00 a.m. a group of us boarded a Bell Transportation minivan for a narrated 90-minute tour of Henderson. Our guide was a staff member from the Sun City sales center, and we did learn a few useful things during the excursion, even though the tour was aimed at those with little or no knowledge of the area. We do expect to pick up much more information next week on a three-hour tour sponsored by the Henderson Chamber of Commerce.
Returning after the tour, we got down to business with our sales rep, Jim Gibbons, who takes some ribbing because he shares the name of a Nevada Congressman. Jim showed us a site map on which he had marked a few lots he thought might interest us, and before long we were out on the property, standing on a lot site that is nothing more than desert rock and dirt, and trying to imagine what a home on this piece of land might look like a few months from now.
Let's make a long story short. Our Sun City Anthem home will be one of five on a cul-de-sac. Construction should begin in February, with completion in early summer, and we hope to be out here permanently by the end of August. By adding the option of a second master suite, we'll have a home with two bedrooms, a home office in lieu of the third bedroom, and three baths, containing a total of 2,094 square feet.
The model we are building is called The Independence, and you can see the floor plan and exterior artist's drawings by burrowing down a bit at the Anthem Web site: http://www.delwebb.com
After a quick lunch break, wolfing down sandwiches we bought the evening before at Port 'O Subs, we returned to Jim's office for a marathon document-signing session that dwarfed any volume of paperwork I ever had to handle in a real-estate transaction in my law practice. I'll save you the details, but we signed about 30 different documents and disclosure statements, leaving the office with a pile of paperwork so thick it will have to be shipped home separately. The good news is that we also turned over a deposit check and left the office with a real live street address in Henderson, Nevada, USA. As you'll soon see, our work as purchasers in Anthem is not over, but has only us begun.
The day was waning, and we were as exhausted as if we had just completed a five-mile jog. But Roz is on a workout schedule and, turning down the opportunity for free privileges at Del Webb's nearby MacDonald Ranch Sun City property until Anthem's own facilities open in a few months, she had me drive her to Gold's Gym on Eastern, about five miles from Anthem.
While Roz was working out, I returned to our villa and prepared a simple dinner of tossed salad and pasta with chicken. After two hours I returned to Gold's Gym and brought Roz back for dinner. We had intended to visit the New Frontier on the Strip to see a performance by Suzy Bogguss, one of my favorites, but this must be how things often go for locals who stay away from the Strip because they are simply too tired to make the trip. Thus it was that we "stayed home" with Roz reading while I suffered through watching the Red Sox lose their first game with the Yankees. Thanks for the bad call that probably cost them the game, Mr. Umpire!
And so ended Day 2.
--Best wishes from David in MA
