Polk County planning board denies 3rd bid for Deeson Road development

The decision marks another significant victory for the Kathleen community in their long-running battle to protect their rural way of life.

The developer’s third attempt pushed for a high-density, 150-home subdivision on 117 acres along Deeson Road. Despite the developer tweaking the numbers from previous iterations, the planning board ultimately maintained the strict precedent established during the first two rejections.

The Evolution of the Deeson Road Proposals

Attempt	Date	Proposed Housing Density	Core Outcome
1st Attempt	July 2022	242 Homes	Denied with Prejudice by County Commissioners (4-1 vote)
2nd Attempt	August 2023	147 Homes	Denied following major community mobilization
3rd Attempt	June 2026	150 Homes	Denied by the Planning Board

Why the Project Failed (Again)

The planning board’s decision centered on the exact same environmental and infrastructure flaws that doomed the 2022 and 2023 plans:

• Severe Flooding & Stormwater Risks: The 117-acre site sits squarely inside a critical flood plain within the Kathleen Drainage Basin along Blackwater Creek. Board members and residents emphasized that filling in a “very wet piece of property” to build 150 suburban homes would inevitably displace millions of gallons of stormwater, threatening to flood existing neighboring properties.
• Fundamental Neighborhood Incompatibility: The surrounding Kathleen landscape is strictly designated as Agricultural/Residential (A/RR), where zoning generally allows only one home per five acres. Attempting to cluster high-density, cookie-cutter lots into a protected rural ecosystem was deemed an inappropriate “urban intrusion.”
• Threat to Local Wildlife: Community advocates and planners noted that the construction would permanently displace local wildlife, including threatened species like sandhill cranes and gopher tortoises that rely on the corridor.

By standing firm, the planning board honored its past commitment to the Kathleen area, confirming that minor adjustments on a developer’s spreadsheet cannot alter the physical, flood-prone realities of the Deeson Road corridor.