LAKELAND, Fla. — A small Lakeland community is celebrating a big win after they stopped a development project coming into their rural neighborhood.

What You Need To Know

  •  Housing exploded in Central Florida recently

  •  Polk County is more affordable than the Tampa Bay area

  • A local homeowner shares the story of how they stopped a development

Central Florida saw a lot of growth after the pandemic; some counties are ranked among the fastest growing in the nation. The Tampa Bay area has more traffic and higher cost of living than rural Polk County. Communities are changing.

Those large open spaces have become prime real estate for big time developers who want to build shopping centers and homes on those plots of land, but some residents in the area don’t want change.

Many saying they are okay with new development in their city but not in their rural neighborhoods.

“We’ve all grown up in rural neighborhoods all our lives and the way developments are happening nowadays, it’s all being closed in,” said John Joyner. “If you look around the neighborhood, most homes are one home per 5 or 10 acres. There are very few homes out here.”

So, when big time developers proposed 30 additional homes in this Lakeland community off Medulla Road, residents pushed back.

“This was all God,” said Joyner. “We weren’t smart enough to come up with this on our own.”

Joyner, who joined Billy Friend and other residents in the fight to keep big development off medulla road, sold his property and bought the land that developers wanted to build on.

He spent over one million dollars on the investment.

“I was shocked,” said Billy Friend. “John called me up on the phone and said hey man, I got some good news to tell you. He said, man I bought the property.”

Friend was on the front lines of the fight to keep his community rural. He attended several county and city held meetings regarding the development that contractors proposed.

“It just didn’t fit the area,” said Friend. “We don’t mind the county growing, but we moved here for the quiet; we moved here for the peace.”

Joyner purchased 35 acres that he refers to as “Old Florida.”

 “In the wooded portion, we’ve made some trails,” said Joyner. “Our grandkids are very happy to be able to go out into the woods and just enjoy it.”

Joyner said he has hopes that this is the last fight they have to keep their community as it is, quiet and without big development.