Berkley Crossings

Berkley Crossings is an approved Planned Development on about 17.6 acres of unincorporated Polk County, northwest of Auburndale. The approved plan is 170 homes, a mix of detached houses on narrow lots and attached townhomes. The county Planning Commission approved it unanimously in August 2026. Nothing is built, no builder has been assigned, and nothing is for sale.

Yes, and we checked this carefully rather than assuming. In Polk County a Planning Commission approval does not become final if someone files what the county calls a de novo appeal within seven days, which sends the whole matter to the Board of County Commissioners to be reheard from scratch. We enumerated every appeal item on every county commission agenda and this project appears in none of them. The window closed in mid-August 2026. The Final Order for this case also carries explicit language that it becomes final when rendered to the Clerk. So the approval stands.

Two products on one site. The approval allows detached single-family houses on lots as narrow as 30 feet, with a minimum lot size of 2,850 square feet, alongside attached townhomes in buildings of four to six units. The applicant described the detached product to the county as a cottage-type home, chosen specifically because it means minimal outdoor maintenance compared with a conventional larger lot. That is a meaningful signal about who this community is being designed for, even though no floor plan or price exists yet.

Nobody yet. No homebuilder appears anywhere in the record. The applicant is a land-use attorney and the owners are three private individuals, which is the signature of a pre-builder entitlement: get the zoning, then sell to a builder. The county's own staff report even says amenities tend to change during later review as the needs of the homebuilders evolve, and that tree placement is to be determined by the home builder, both written in the future tense about a builder who does not exist yet.

No. This corner of Polk County is dense with the Berkley name and it is genuinely confusing. Berkley Ridge and Berkley Pointe are existing, built communities whose homes resell today. Berkley Park is a separate 65-unit development approved back in 2021 on the road across from this site. There is a Berkley Road, a Berkley Knights Drive, an Old Berkley Road, a Berkley Charter Elementary and a Berkley Accelerated Middle School. Berkley Crossings is none of those. It is the 170-unit approval from August 2026 and it has no homes.

East of the Polk Parkway, west of Berkley Road, south of Berkley Knights Drive and north of Pace Road, in unincorporated Polk County northwest of Auburndale. There are no street addresses or platted lots yet.

None, and that is unusual enough to be worth saying. The county's minutes record that there was neither support nor opposition in the audience, and the vote was 7 to 0. For context, plenty of Polk County residential approvals draw dozens of speakers and split votes. This one drew nobody. Read into that what you like about how the neighbors see it.

Several things worth knowing, because they shape what the place will feel like. A solid masonry wall along the entire Berkley Road frontage wherever there are no wetland impacts. A pedestrian connection to the Auburndale TECO Trail. A 20-foot landscaping buffer with a six-foot opaque fence along the northern property line. A 10-foot utility easement dedicated in agreement with the City of Auburndale. Between the July and August hearings the plan also changed: side setbacks went from 2.5 feet to 5 feet on standard lots, guest parking increased to 30 spaces, and the northern buffer was widened.

A paved rail-trail in Auburndale built on a former railroad corridor. It matters here because the county made a pedestrian connection to it a condition of approval rather than leaving it to the builder's goodwill. Trail access is one of very few amenities that already exists on the ground before a community is built, so it is a real, checkable feature rather than a rendering.

The county record names the current zoning as Lena Vista Elementary, Jere L. Stambaugh Middle School and Auburndale High School, and notes that the property is not zoned for the closest elementary school. Take that as a snapshot rather than a promise: school capacity has to be re-examined at the county's later Level 2 review, and attendance zones are assigned by physical address, which does not exist here yet. Separately, a new charter middle school is being built on land nearby. It is a different project on different land and it is not part of this community.

As unincorporated Polk County land, a tax bill would combine county millage, the school board, the water management district and other special districts, with no city millage. Many Florida communities also carry a community development district, which finances infrastructure through bonds repaid by an annual assessment on your tax notice on top of HOA dues. No such district exists for Berkley Crossings. Given the small size of this project, a CDD is less likely here than on a thousand-acre development, but nothing has been published either way.

No date has been announced. The Planned Development approval is final, but the project still has to clear the county's Level 2 review, where detailed site and subdivision engineering is examined and school capacity is re-checked, and then platting, infrastructure and builder assignment. Treat any date you encounter as a target rather than a commitment.

Join the interest list on this page. We read Polk County's Planning Commission records directly, which is how a 170-home approval that drew no public comment at all ended up documented here while there is still nothing to buy.