Homeandgarden: Sun City also rises in Fort Myers

WCI Communities, which develops other master-planned communities in 16 Florida cities including Sun City Center in Hillsborough County, expects the first residents to move into Sun City Fort Myers by year's end.

The 55-plus project eventually will have 4,300 residents on a 1,100-acre parcel. The company is promising $30-million in recreational amenities, including a 27-hole championship golf course, tennis and volleyball courts, softball complex, indoor and outdoor pools, fitness center, "sports-oriented dining" where diners can watch televised sporting events, walking trails, personal garden areas, art studio, cybercafe and business center. The town center will be Mediterranean in design, with barrel-tile roofs and pastel buildings.

Housing is aimed at empty-nesters and retirees and includes low- and midrise condos, attached villas and single-family homes, ranging in price from the $140s to the high $300s.

For information call toll-free 1-877-881-5973. There is a sales pavilion with interactive displays to show the floor plans, and sales are under way, but there are no models yet. (Unfurnished models will open in September, and a grand opening with furnished models is planned for December or January.) From I-75, take Exit 22 and drive east one mile on Colonial Boulevard to the main entrance on the right.

Home is where the primping is

What downturn in the economy? Not here. Americans are spending more and more of their disposable income on their homes.

Last year consumers spent $585-billion on items for their homes, up from $551-billion the year before, an increase of 27 percent.

We're buying curtains, linens and domestics, major and small appliances, furniture, rugs, floor coverings, kitchenware, decorative accessories, hardware, tools, lawn and garden supplies, lumber, paint and wallpaper.

In other words, the contents of a typical shopping cart in the checkout line at Target or Lowe's.

That look at what we're spending and buying comes from The Home Report 2001: The Market, the Competitors, the Trends, a research report from Unity Marketing, a Pennsylvania research firm that studies consumer trends. It also prepares reports on such sub-markets as candles, collectibles and jewelry.

Why the home-related spending spree? The home is our status symbol, so a growing portion of our discretionary spending is budgeted for the home, said Pam Danziger, the company's president.

"The home market has been transformed from a largely functional to a fashion business, allowing customers to dress and decorate their houses like they dress and accessorize themselves," she said. "Today's customers have so many more choices that they can truly surround themselves with products that reflect their tastes, values and sensibilities."

Welcome the self-cleaning window

Put down that squeegee and spray bottle of window cleaner, and make way for self-cleaning windows.

By year's end, American consumers will be able to buy window glass that cleans itself, produced by Pilkington, a British glassmaker.

"Consumers told us that the No. 1 problem with windows is cleaning them. That's why they came up with pull-out windows and other inventions," Rick Karcher, president of Pilkington Building Products North America in Toledo, Ohio, told Newsday. "This just takes it one step further."

A competitor, Pittsburgh-based PPG Industries, is working on its own version of the technology, the New York Times reports.

Typically, when water hits glass, it beads up and runs off, and the dust particles in the rainwater or on the windowpane leave streaks or spots. Pilkington's glass has a permanent coating of titanium oxide, which attracts water and makes it run down the glass in a continuous sheet, pushing dirt particles off and diffusing dust across the window, rather than clumping it together in droplets.

In sunny weather, once the titanium oxide is exposed to ultraviolet rays from the sun, it also acts as a catalyst that breaks down organic dirt into carbon dioxide and water vapor. Homeowners could watch smudges slowly disappear. The self-cleaning function works only on the outside of the windows because it requires the sheeting action of rain to wash away the dirt.

For more information visit Pilkington's Web site at www.pilkington.com. Pilkington's glass, which will be called Activ, will add about 20 percent to the basic cost of windows, which typically run $200 to $600 each.

That price may be a deterrent to homeowners who are considering replacement windows, though it might be an upgrade builders are willing to offer their customers. Industry figures question whether this is really a technology for which homeowners are eager. But the Pacesetter Corp. of Omaha, which makes replacement windows, thinks the self-cleaning glass may find a ready market among older homeowners who want maintenance-free homes.

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