From Our Town To Boomtown

By BILLY TOWNSEND The Tampa Tribune

Published: Jan 4, 2007

LAKELAND - Drive toward Hillsborough County on the Polk Parkway in southwest Lakeland and look to the left and right.

For years, you would have seen open land, punctuated by sporadic homes and industrial buildings.

You still see plenty of cows grazing on scrubland. But there's also a thriving outdoor mall and movie complex, a housing development and the great, green glass boomerang that houses Publix Super Markets' new corporate headquarters.

That's just a start. In a decade or less, you may be able to walk on the roofs of homes and business parks for miles in either direction.

City officials are working with about 20 new or expanding housing or commercial developments in the southwest Lakeland area. The 10 residential projects, encompassing about 5,000 acres, are expected to bring 6,000 new homes or apartments to the city in the next five to 10 years.

Those are unprecedented numbers for Lakeland.

"The magnitude of the growth today is greater than anything we've seen in Lakeland's history," said Jim Studiale, Lakeland's director of community development.

And he and other Lakeland officials are decidedly ambivalent about it.

Not only does the growth in southwest Lakeland tax the city's ability to provide water, sewer and other services, but it also runs counter to a growth philosophy - focus on the central city and neighborhood quality of life - that helped rescue the city from dire economic and social straits in the 1970s and '80s.

For years, Lakeland grew far slower than other Florida cities and the state, and mostly through annexation. That allowed it to build its quality of life and its ability to provide water, sewers and roads. Now projections have Lakeland matching the pace of growth in Florida as a whole over the next 20 years. That growth will come mostly from new development.

For example, in 1997 the city issued 175 new single-family structure building permits. In 2005, it issued 544.

Said Studiale: "After 25 years of polishing our town, the world is beating a path to our door."

'Central City Bias'

A map of the Lakeland city limits looks something like a hurricane.

Through its center, the city is thick and regularly shaped. The eye is its downtown, where city officials and wealthy private individuals have poured millions of dollars and created a lovely network of parks, gardens and restored historical buildings.

City officials freely admit to a "central city bias" over the years. They wanted to avoid what they saw as the mistakes of cities such as Fort Lauderdale and Tampa, where transportation and public spending priorities drove growth out of their central cores to sprawling suburbs.

A better model, Studiale says, was Orlando, which identified and protected central city neighborhoods in the 1970s and '80s. They continue to function well today, he says, providing energy and identity for downtown Orlando.

In Lakeland, some of the hottest neighborhoods are those next to the downtown core, where many of the houses date to the 1920s. Little more than a decade ago, these neighborhoods were struggling.

In addition, people are moving into downtown. It started with the restoration of a 1920s-era hotel as an elegant, market-priced apartment building. Two downtown loft projects are under construction. Most radically, the city plans to raze a dilapidated 11-block area near the downtown police station and replace it with housing.

Some officials, including Studiale, are concerned that offices are crowding out retail shops downtown and threatening its long-term vitality. But for now, Lakeland's leafy heart has become a mark of fierce city pride and a magnet for redevelopment money and energy in the surrounding neighborhoods.

Lakeland's core is not limited to its downtown. There are commercial areas throughout the traditional contours of the city. But the public investment in the downtown area has given the city a clear identity beyond its location between Tampa and Orlando.

That identity is helping to end the perception that Lakeland is a sleepy rural town. Instead, it has become a comparatively affordable place to find urban parks and amenities without many of the traffic and crime headaches of larger cities.

Here's an anecdotal example of the way Lakeland has grown, using that emblem of urban cool: the coffee shop. Before 2004, there was one - an independent shop - in the entire city.

Now there are five Starbucks. And there are at least four other chain or independent coffee shops targeting the same audience of latte drinkers.

Building Storms

Beyond central Lakeland's eye, there are what amount to development feeder bands stretching to the southwest and northeast. In both cases, these are developing into their own storms, complete with centers of circulation independent of the central city.

Northeast of town, the core of development will be the new Lakeland campus for the University of South Florida, which could open on a limited basis by 2009.

But the southwest area is much further along. Its development is driven by open affordable land and the Polk Parkway's easy access to Interstate 4. Coupled with Lakeland's affluent southern suburbs, many of which are outside city limits, this new growth landscape makes an attractive market for The Lakeside Village development, which is mimicking a downtown core for this area.

The outdoor mall, which opened last year, brought Lakeland's first mass-theater stadium-seating movie complex, along with the Lakeland debut of several retail stores, such as Talbots and Jos. A. Bank.

Just northwest of Lakeside Village, Jacksonville-based Flagler Development plans Lakeland Central Park. It's one of two Flagler commercial projects in the southwest Lakeland area. Central Park is the much larger of the two, what's known as a development of regional impact. It will sit on about 750 acres in a highly visible spot alongside the Polk Parkway.

A Coveted Piece Of Land

Keith Tickell, a Flagler vice president who oversees the Lakeland projects, points to three drivers for his company's big development plans:

•"It's about location," Tickell said. "The population of the I-4 corridor [including the Bay area and Orlando] is much bigger than Atlanta." Throw in the easy access to I-4 from the Polk Parkway, and you have a coveted piece of land.

•Tickell said 750 acres of open land anywhere in the I-4 corridor is becoming harder to find. In southwest Lakeland, it was "much less expensive" than a comparable tract in the Orlando or Tampa areas when Flagler bought the property about two years ago. However, he also says land prices in the area "have escalated significantly."

•The market is there.

Tickell said Lakeland is thought of a distribution hub. Central Park will have a major warehouse component.

However, Tickell said he expects class-A corporate office spaces to do well in the development. Tickell said there is interest from local business looking to expand and from out-of-county companies looking to move.

Lakeland officials see the new commercial projects as job-generators. To that end, city officials have held out for a balance of residential and commercial projects, said Studiale and Steve Scruggs, executive director of the Lakeland Economic Development Council, which works closely with the city.

Tickell praised the quality-of-life work the city has created, but acknowledged it is not a huge consideration for his company's development projects.

But he also noted that city officials recently made a point of showing him Lakeland's shiny new interior. "They've done a marvelous job with downtown," Tickell said. "It's a pedestrian-friendly environment."

One Chance To Get It Right

Most observers agree Lakeland has done a far better job than unincorporated Polk County in marrying growth to the roads, utilities and other services needed to sustain it. But between existing projects and the avalanche of construction on tap, Studiale says the long built-up excess capacity in Lakeland's roads, water and sewer systems has been exhausted.

In 2005, the city maxed out its water permit with the Southwest Florida Water Management District and briefly had to halt new construction. The city received an emergency expansion of the permit and is near agreement with the district for long-term expansion. An agreement could come as soon as this month, city and water district officials say.

Much of the water needed for the coming projects already is "banked," said Studiale and City Manager Doug Thomas. Studiale expects the city can handle some form of all of the projects in the offing. But he also says the city will strictly enforce concurrency, the state growth management rule that allows governments to halt growth if needed services aren't in place

"Concurrency is a tool to let you slow growth," Studiale said.

There's a different, market-driven drag in play as well: downturn in the national housing and real estate market. It also may help the city buy time to build up its service capacity. But simple location-driven economics are likely to keep up the pressure.

In October, CNNMoney.com named Lakeland one of the nation's top 10 cities for investing in real estate. Like Flagler's Tickell, CNNMoney cited Lakeland's proximity to Tampa and its relatively cheap land. It said nothing about the city's quality of life.

Putting Together A Master Plan

Several officials interviewed for this article said they explicitly want to avoid becoming a bedroom community for Tampa. A city-produced presentation uses Brandon as an example of what Lakeland doesn't want to be.

Scruggs said the geographic concentration of growth offers "a unique opportunity" to cobble together a master plan for the area, which probably would include developer-funded infrastructure improvements through a special taxing district for new projects or some other mechanism.

Tickell said Flagler Development fully expects to pay for extensive road improvements and other needs. He's not sure whether the mechanism for that will be a special property tax or simply requirements for building specific projects.

In September, the city commission convened a work session with developers to broach such a master plan, including the tax. Nothing has been formally proposed.

Studiale calls this rush of development Lakeland's second real estate boom. The first peaked in 1924, when Lakeland was one of Florida's premier cities. It crashed along with much of the rest of Florida in an economic depression that preceded the national Great Depression of the 1930s. It could be argued that Lakeland has just now recovered from that bust.

City officials hope to make this new boom far more sustainable.

"This is a big deal," Scruggs said. "We're talking about the future of our community."

Reporter Billy Townsend can be reached at wtownsend@tampatrib.com or (863) 284-1409.

WHY LAKELAND?

What's behind the projected development explosion in southwest Lakeland over the next decade?

It was one of the few areas in the Interstate 4 corridor where large tracts of land could be bought at relatively cheap prices. Depending on which statistics you use, the median Lakeland area home sells at 10 percent to 25 percent below the state median price. In addition, the Polk Parkway, a toll highway that opened in 1999, provides easy access to I-4 for commutes or product distribution. At the same time, Lakeland has invested heavily in its downtown public spaces and core neighborhoods. In a growing region, Lakeland is developing a reputation as a highly livable city.

Many of the largest planned projects are years from construction, and growth projections are subject to market conditions and government actions. Local Realtors have seen a softening of the market. That being said, the median existing home price in the Lakeland-Winter Haven area increased 8 percent in 2006, in the face of this housing slump. That was the biggest increase in the state. In addition, by design, about half of the new developments are business parks. City officials say they don't want to create a bedroom community for Tampa. Some of them even view the slowdown as a blessing, buying time for the city to ratchet up services the developments will require.