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<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n“If traffic considerations can be accomplished, then to me it’s something extremely favorable to pursue,” Mayor Bill Mutz said at the commission’s Friday agenda study. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The land southeast of Lake Parker has been mostly vacant since the 1920s, according to Mutz. Back then, it was briefly developed into a county club and golf course, but has stayed largely undeveloped with brief exception of a mobile homes sales and a liquor store. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Commissioner Bill Read said the land has been particularly difficult to work with given its close proximity to the city’s Larsen power plant and location across from the CSX Railroad tracks. A prior proposal to build multi-family apartments on the north end of it never came to fruition. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
ECON South and Highland Homes are looking to create a single-family development that would be marketed as “workforce housing” for first responders, teachers, nurses and first-time home buyers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
In order for the plans to move forward, commissioners will need to vote on two aspects: changing the zoning of about eight acres from mixed-commercial corridor down to residential medium to allow for houses, and to allow the entire 56 acres to become a Planned Unit Development for construction following the submitted designs. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
One of the primary concerns from city’s staff upon reviewing the plans has been what impact adding nearly 200 homes will have on traffic on the surrounding roads of East Lake Parker Drive, Fairway Ave. and East Memorial Boulevard. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
“We have to put a package together to figure out how to get people out and around the site,” Chuck Barmby, the city’s business and transportation developer, said. “Under normal circumstances we would require a major traffic study prior to zoning action so that we know specifically what conditions to write in prior to zoning ordinance. We didn’t have that.” <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The city has requested the developer make several road improvements to help ease future traffic concerns: <\/p>\n\n\n\n
A southbound right-turn only lane be constructed on East Lake Parker Drive onto US-Hwy 92\/East Memorial Blvd.; <\/p>\n\n\n\n
A dedicated eastbound left-turn lane be construction on Fairway Ave. to access US-Hwy 92<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The westbound left turn lane on US-Hwy 92 at East Lake Park Drive intersection be extended; <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The eastbound left turn lane on US-Hwy 92\/East Memorial Blvd. be extended<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The developer has pushed back against these requested traffic mitigation measures by the Planning & Zoning Board on May 18. Their objections were that Fairway Avenue is a road controlled by Polk County and East Memorial Boulevard is overseen by Florida Department of Transportation. Both agencies are also reviewing the developer’s submitted plans and will make their own separate recommendations for possible traffic improvements. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Barmby said that city has agreed that if either agencies’ recommendations conflict with the city’s road improvement requests, these larger agencies requirements will win out provided a full traffic study is done. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The city will require the developer to do a full traffic study prior to obtaining subdivision plan review, a future step that would finalize the layout of the housing development and adjacent commercial parcels. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Commissioner Stephanie Madden said Friday she is excited by the preliminary plans and hopes to see the proposed development come to fruition after extensive work by Lakeland CRA into revitalizing areas around Lake Parker. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
“To have this be a bookend on the other side with new residents who will hopefully walk the corridor, go to those retail establishments and give us two major bookend to revitalize the whole corridor,” She said. “I’m really excited.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Lakeland-based engineering firm ECON South and developer Highland Homes have proposed to construct a single-family development on 56.1 acres along East Memorial Boulevard and East Lake Parker Drive. The development would… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11799,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"0","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","inline_featured_image":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"wpai_generated_summary":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"dois","default_image_id":71799,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[12,14],"tags":[470],"class_list":["post-11798","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local","category-news","tag-pasture-on-us-hwy-92-east-memorial-blvd-will-become-199-home-development"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11798","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11798"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11798\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11799"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11798"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11798"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11798"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}