Sun City

Acacia Homes at Sun City offers 26 single-family homes, with prices ranging from $129,900 to $169,900. The development will eventually have 86 homes. There are one- and two-story floor plans available. Each home has three or four bedrooms and two to three bathrooms. Square footage ranges from 1,372 to 2,195, with move-ins expected in November. The development is open from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Thursday through Tuesday. The sales office is at 27955 Grand Ave.

WASHINGTON -- With their economies and housing markets gaining strength, some of the nation's biggest boom-to-bust cities in the Sun Belt are starting to become magnets again, attracting a growing number of people primarily from the northern part of the country. Among the top 100 metro areas, Las Vegas, Phoenix and several in Florida led the nation in the population growth rate change between July 2011 and July 2012, according to Census Bureau data released Thursday and analyzed by Brookings Institution demographer William Frey.

Retail developers seeking an overlooked area could do worse than consider the Sun City area of Riverside County, according to a survey conducted by an Orange County real estate research and land brokerage firm. The 22,000 residents of Sun City must travel at least 10 miles to Rancho California, Perris or Hemet to do most of their shopping, according to Penelope Eaton of Eaton Development Services Inc., Laguna Niguel.

On New Year's Eve, many of us will be putting on our party faces. Eugene "Lucky" Lacaillade will be playing his 360th round of golf this year. On New Year's Day, many of us will be swallowing aspirin and watching football. Lacaillade will be doing fairways and greens again. There are 365 days in a year, and little interrupts his daily march to the first tee. "I only miss for bad weather or fishing," he says. Lacaillade's golfing is more a "Ripley's Believe It or Not" than a Cal Ripken milestone.

Sun City Terrace, a collection of 80 one-story, single-family detached homes for active seniors, opens this week end in Sun City at 29708 Desert Hills Road, near the Sun City Municipal Golf Course. The Presley of California homes offer two- and three-bedroom plans with two baths in three distinctive designs and with floor plans ranging in size from 1,223 to 1,442 square feet.

One hundred fifty miles east of Los Angeles and a few hundred yards off Interstate 10 lies a formerly forlorn tract of desert where the Del Webb Corp. can't build homes fast enough. There's one little caveat to living at Del Webb's Sun City Palm Desert: You or your spouse must be at least 55 years "or better" and no other occupant under 19 may live in homes that start at $132,000 and reach $400,000.

Although the Padres still might be months away from making a commitment, Sun City, Ariz., officials were encouraged Thursday that the team will make the Phoenix suburb its spring-training home in 1994. "I'm very, very optimistic, and I think we'll be coming to an agreement in the near future," said Craig Kimmell, president of Fields of Dreams Inc., which owns Sun City Stadium. "We had a very positive, and informative meeting. I don't know how much more positive it can be."

"Sun City," the anti-apartheid single featuring an all-star pop lineup, has arrived in record shops amid news reports of growing violence and tension in South Africa, but with scant media attention for the record itself. The result was that weekend sales--though "good" in most of the two dozen stores checked by The Times in Los Angeles and Orange counties--were well behind the initial pace of the "We Are the World" single in March.

Jazz trumpeter Miles Davis is outraged. "Sun City (the lavish resort complex in a South African 'homeland') makes me ill . . . sick all over. When I think about it, I can't do (anything). . . . I can't even play," he declares. Pop-rock singer Daryl Hall is angry. "People (who perform in Sun City) are jerks for doing it (and) they should be called out for it," he maintains. South African black activist Winnie Mandela is determined. "We are no longer prepared to prolong our suffering.

A funny thing happened to Connie Goldman on the way to the grave: She discovered that everyone else was headed in that direction too. Rarely a day passes in Sun City, Ariz., without a grim reaper visiting somewhere in the vast retirement community. But Goldman, who recently wrapped up her latest radio documentary on geriatric sociology in Sun City, depicts death and disability more as a nuisance than a tragedy.

Six NHL owners and six players will meet Tuesday in New York for direct labor talks, a new approach to resolving a dispute that has jeopardized the season. The NHL Players' Assn. on Sunday accepted the league's invitation to convene without the presence of Commissioner Gary Bettman or NHLPA Executive Director Donald Fehr. Each side will be permitted to bring staff members and counsel to the session. NHL Deputy Commissioner Bill Daly said Sunday the league will be represented by California billionaire Ron Burkle of the Pittsburgh Penguins, Mark Chipman of the Winnipeg Jets, Murray Edwards of the Calgary Flames, Jeremy Jacobs of the Boston Bruins, Larry Tanenbaum of the Toronto Maple Leafs and Jeff Vinik of the Tampa Bay Lightning.

Baby boomers' snoring has breathed life into the sales of mouth pieces, clips, strips, nose sprays and specialized mattresses. Now home builders have heard the roar. A so-called snore room is the latest offering from Del Webb, which builds communities for people 55 and older. Buyers whose marriages are plagued by a spouse who snorts, grunts and wheezes while he or she sleeps can opt for an adaptable bedroom plan marketed as the "owners retreat" at Sun City Shadow Hills in Indio.

Even along the Las Vegas Strip, where extravagance and overindulgence are the norm, people are wondering this about the new CityCenter project: Has it blown the lid off the definition of "over the top"? "My first impression was, 'This was either completely crazy or the greatest project in the world,' " said Daniel Libeskind, the renowned architect who designed the exterior of the project's Crystals retail center. "It turned out to be the latter," Libeskind said as he wandered through CityCenter, the $8.5-billion behemoth of hotels, private residences and super-chic retail that begins its debut this week.

Kudos to Susan Spano for her articles on bike riding in Denmark ["On Bicycle, See the Sights at a Sane Pace," Aug. 2]. Ten years ago, on a Scandinavian tour, we found ourselves in Copenhagen with a free day. Seeing bicycles everywhere, we decided to rent one and tour the city on our own. What fun. The city is so geared to bicyclists that we felt safe rubbing shoulders with the traffic. They even had small signal lights for cyclists at the intersections! John Putman Sun City, Calif.

Cloaked by darkness, a saw tucked under his jacket, Douglas Hoffman skulked through suburbia, methodically killing trees. He severed some. Others he sliced just enough so they would slowly die. In a year's time, authorities said, he wiped out more than 500 trees near an upscale retirement community just south of Las Vegas. Greenery, he had complained to a homeowners committee, was blocking his view of the Strip.

The Guide means I can read the Calendar section again on Thursdays. I just threw it out unread with the other recyclables before. I like the short pieces on current doings very much. You cover more, and do it better than ever before. Now if you'd just do the TV Times magazine once a week. Barbara May Sun City

Mick and Keith weren't there, but the backstage crowd for the recent 10th anniversary reunion of the Dead Boys still turned a few heads: David Letterman's musical sidekick Paul Shaffer, MTV veejay Martha Quinn and rock tough-gal Joan Jett. However, the doorman at the Irving Plaza Theater reacted most to Steve Van Zandt, unmistakable in his familiar purple bandanna and assorted Gypsy bangles and beads. "How's it going, man?" the doorman said. "Saw the ('Sun City') video on TV tonight. . . .

West Germany's Bernhard Langer won $300,000 Sunday with a two-stroke victory in the Sun City Million Dollar Challenge at Sun City, South Africa. Langer, who won five tournaments this year, including the Masters, finished with a one-under-par 71 to give him 278, 10-under par for the 72-hole event featuring an elite 10-man field. Lanny Wadkins, the overnight co-leader with Langer, never got going and struggled to a 73 for a total of 280 and second place.

Tell me it isn't so, Joe. Twenty-five years with the McCourts? More like five more years of minor league baseball until they develop the land then sell the team and land for a run at the Red Sox. Stan Long Sun City Any housing built in Chavez Ravine should include a significant affordable component. Beyond the dire need for such housing in the city of Los Angeles, it would serve as a symbolic replacement for the Chavez Ravine housing stock destroyed by the city prior to their essential gift of the land to Walter O'Malley in the 1950s.