Arrested development: Whither the hubcaps

The weather-worn house sits at the corner of U.S. 19 and Atlanta Avenue in Hernando County, directly east of black bear habitat, just north of sprawl. It’s a place in limbo: near the wild, zoned commercial, currently decrepit. It was once owned by an eccentric pack rat named Lovell Richards, who collected sinks, toilet bowls, rusty bikes, records, coffee cups and hubcaps — thousands of hubcaps — earning it the title Hubcap City. Sometimes locals called it a landmark. Almost always, they called it an eyesore. “And that’s putting it mildly,” said Frank McDowell, a retired county code enforcement director who helped clean it up. After collecting people’s throwaways since the 1960s, and having little luck selling them, Richards’ Hubcap City became a dense junkyard. “He couldn’t pass up a bargain,” McDowell added. “He’d just bring it back and toss it back on the property. ” People complained. The county’s code enforcement tried to get him to clean up. But Richards refused, went to court and lost. “When we’d take the stuff up to the landfill, he was up there with a trailer, and he’d load it back up and haul it back,” McDowell continued. Eventually, Hubcap City was cleared for good. Then five years ago, when land speculation was reaching a climax in Florida, Richards sold his 12 acres to a hotel magnate living in Southampton, N.Y., for more than half a million dollars. Public records zone it as commercial. No immediate plans have been announced for developing the site. The current owner did not return a phone call seeking comment. And Richards, 85, lives in a nursing home, apart from his treasures that most people would call junk.

(Times writers Michael Kruse, Kameel Stanley and researcher Shirl Kennedy contributed to this report.)