North Port
North Port, FL
Featuring four-legged friends: Sweetie the stray, Claire (white cat), Lily (tabby), Grace (black cat), Cloud (Pomeranian)
2010 – 2022
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My grandparents, and eventually my aunt and cousins, lived in North Port for many years. Roughly half an hour south of Sarasota, on the Gulf Coast side of the peninsula, North Port existed as the humble beginnings of a town when my grandparents first moved there in the 1980s. They chose the location after a lot of traveling and research into which regions of the state. In the 90s, businesses and new homes started to pop up as more snowbirds and families settled in the area. By the 00s, new lanes were being added to the main roads to accommodate strip mall traffic and snowbirds. Eventually their sleepy street off of Route 41 hummed with a steady flow of traffic. Nowadays, businesses and streets become completely clogged with snowbirds most of the year and much of the town has transformed into the same suburban sprawl that accounts for so much of Florida these days. Many of the empty lots filled with dense wilderness have since been razed to make room for more housing. And the cost of homes has increased, a stark change from the recession in 2008 when many homes were abandoned and dilapidated due to foreclosures.