Addressed and permitted. Pricing not released.

Cypress Trails at Laurelton, Green Cove Springs: 98 homes on two brand-new streets, and the yearly cost nobody puts in the brochure

Two weeks ago Clay County assigned street addresses to 98 building lots on Castalia Place and Dayton Way, in a corner of the Laurelton master-planned community southwest of Jacksonville. Century Communities owns that ground outright, holds the permit for the site work, and markets the neighborhood as Cypress Trails at Laurelton. Five floor plans are named, from about 2,470 to 3,443 square feet with three-car garages on 60-foot homesites. What has not been released, as of mid-October 2026, is a price of any kind.

That is a genuinely early moment, and a good one to be paying attention in: the rest of Laurelton is already selling, so you can see what the master plan looks like finished and what other builders charge there while this neighborhood is still unpriced. This page is the honest version of what the records show, the recurring cost that will not appear on a brochure, the amenities that are drawn but not built, the highway that is half-open, and what to settle before you sign.

Fast facts, and what has not been released

Where it is

Castalia Place and Dayton Way, unincorporated Clay County, Green Cove Springs 32043 mailing address

Builder

Century Communities, which owns the land outright and is the permit holder for the site work

Homes

98 addressed lots, 61 on Castalia Place and 37 on Dayton Way, addressed in early October 2026

Site

About 88 acres, one undivided parcel, inside the roughly 3,300-acre Laurelton master plan

Floor plans

Five named plans, about 2,470 to 3,443 square feet, three-car garages, 60-foot homesites

Approvals

An issued individual state stormwater permit for this pod and an adopted county planned-unit-development zoning ordinance

Pricing

No price of any kind has been released for this neighborhood as of mid-October 2026

Per-plan sizes and prices

Not released. Only the overall square-footage range has been published

Community development district assessment

The annual amount for a lot here has not been published

Recorded plat

Not recorded yet. The neighborhood is addressed and permitted, and the plat has not recorded

School attendance zones

Not set for these streets. Clay County District Schools at district level

Amenities and opening

The master plan amenities are planned and not yet built. No opening date has been released

Details on this page are compiled from public entitlement records and are targets, not commitments. Pricing, floor plans, home counts, and timing have not been released by the builder and are subject to change without notice.

What the records show about this neighborhood

The ground is about 88 acres held as one undivided parcel, owned in fee by Century Communities, inside a master plan of roughly 3,300 acres. County records show 98 residential addresses across exactly two streets, 61 on Castalia Place and 37 on Dayton Way, all assigned in early October 2026, and no other streets serve this pod. That works out at a little over one home per acre, consistent with the 60-foot homesites the builder describes.

Treat 98 as the addressed count rather than a final number: there is no recorded plat yet and no individual lot parcels exist on the county roll, so there is nothing to cross-check it against. Note too that Cypress Trails at Laurelton is the builder's own marketing name, used by the master developer as well but not an official or recorded one. In county and district records the same ground is Governors Park Pod 1C, or Pod O, and the master plan is recorded as Governors Park.

The approvals are solid and, unusually, satisfied twice over: an issued individual state stormwater permit covering this pod's site work, transferred into the builder's name in mid-2026 and modified again in late September 2026, and separately an adopted county planned-unit-development zoning ordinance over the site. The entitlement question here is settled rather than hopeful.

Subdiview is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Century Communities. Century Communities and its community names are trademarks of their respective owners and are used here for identification only. All community information is compiled from public records and is subject to change. The same applies to the Laurelton master-planned community and its developer.

What has not happened yet is the plat. The neighborhood is addressed and permitted, but its plat has not recorded, and in Florida a builder normally cannot pull permits on individual homes until the lots legally exist on a recorded plat. That recording, not the marketing launch, is the real milestone, and any opening date offered before it is a target subject to change. No homes are standing here: the neighborhood is marketed as coming soon, with no completed homes and no sales-office address or hours.

How to buy Cypress Trails at Laurelton without leaving money on the table

The person at the builder's sales desk works for the builder. You can have a Florida agent on your side instead, touring with you, reading the contract line by line, and pushing for every incentive, upgrade and closing-cost credit the builder will give. It costs you nothing: on new construction the builder already budgets your agent's fee whether you bring one or not. The one catch is timing. You usually need your own agent from the very first visit, or the builder will not recognize them and you lose it. Start here and we will set it up.

On a neighborhood that has not priced yet, that timing point is worth more than usual. The first release of lots is where homesite premiums, structural options and lender credits are most negotiable, and someone representing you can read the district disclosure, the association documents and the builder's contract form alongside you. Get pricing as soon as it exists, and have the paperwork read properly before your deposit is at risk.

The cost that does not appear in the brochure: the community development district

This is the single most important thing on this page, and the question a builder's marketing will not answer. This neighborhood sits inside a community development district covering roughly 1,846 acres of the Laurelton master plan, established by county ordinance in 2024 and contracted later that same year.

In plain terms, a community development district is a special-purpose local government created to build and pay for the infrastructure a master plan needs: spine roads, water and sewer mains, stormwater ponds, landscaping and often the amenity sites. It borrows the money up front by issuing bonds and repays them by levying an annual assessment on every home inside its boundary. That assessment is not a property tax and not a homeowners association fee. It is a separate, non-ad-valorem line billed with your annual property tax bill, collected the same way a tax is collected, and if you escrow your taxes it is in your monthly payment.

The scale here is not trivial. This district has issued bonds in several series across 2025 and 2026, and its own estimate of total infrastructure cost runs into the hundreds of millions of dollars. For the district's 2025 fiscal year, its published debt-service assessment rates run from roughly 708 to 849 dollars per home per year. Hold those at arm's length: they are fiscal-year 2025 figures for land already assessed, chiefly the first phase.

The assessment that will attach to a lot on Castalia Place or Dayton Way has not been published, and we will not put a number on it. What we can tell you is that one will exist, that it is on top of your property taxes rather than instead of them, and that it is a meaningful line in a monthly payment. A separate district covers the northern part of the master plan; that is a different entity with different numbers and the two should not be run together. When pricing is released, the written district disclosure is the document that answers this, and the district publishes its own budgets. Ask for both before you are committed.

The amenities are drawn, not built

Laurelton is marketed on an ambitious amenity programme: two gathering places with pavilions, pickleball, playgrounds, a fishing pond and walking trails, plus a large recreation complex with sports fields, an aquatics center, a medical complex and a school inside the community. It is described in the present tense, which is easy to read as a description of what is there today.

As a matter of record, it is not there today. As of early 2026 the main amenity complex was still in county design review, its civil plan review was pending, and no building permits had been issued for it. The recreation complex, the aquatics center, the medical complex and the in-community school are planned rather than under construction, nothing has been published labelling any amenity as open, and no completion timeline has been disclosed.

None of that is a reason to avoid the place: master plans are built in order and amenities usually arrive after the first few hundred homes. It is a reason to buy on what exists rather than on what is rendered, and to ask which amenity is funded and permitted today and what the scheduled completion is in writing.

The commute, told straight: what is open now and what opens in 2030

You will see this location sold on its proximity to the First Coast Expressway, and the expressway genuinely does run close by. A segment near Green Cove Springs opened in mid-2026, tolled from day one, so budget for the toll if you will use it daily. What it does well is move you north and west, toward west Jacksonville and the Interstate 10 corridor.

What it does not yet do is cross the St. Johns River. The new river bridge is under construction and due around 2030, as are the remaining segments connecting the expressway east to Interstate 95. Until those open, a trip toward St. Johns County, St. Augustine or I-95 still goes over the existing Shands Bridge or north on US-17, exactly as before. Read any claim about convenient access to St. Augustine and the coast as a 2030 proposition, not a today one.

Today's real pattern is this. US-17 is the north-south spine, carrying you to Fleming Island, Orange Park and on into Jacksonville, and to the naval air station from the north end of that run; the expressway helps the Interstate 10 and west-side commute more than it helps the naval air station trip. Green Cove Springs is a couple of miles southeast and the St. Johns River is roughly two and a half miles away. We did not obtain verified drive times and will not invent any, so drive the route you care about at the hour you care about before you commit.

Green Cove Springs, and the fact it is not in the city

Your mail will say Green Cove Springs 32043, and that is the right thing to search for, but the neighborhood is not inside the city limits. All 98 addresses are in unincorporated Clay County. That matters twice over: county review applies rather than city review, and there is no city property tax line on your bill, which is a real saving against a comparable address inside the city. The flip side is that city services belong to city residents.

Green Cove Springs itself is the kind of small river town central Florida mostly stopped building: the west bank of the St. Johns River, a public riverwalk, a spring-fed municipal pool that has been there for generations, boat ramps, and a small historic downtown around the courthouse. The river is the center of life there rather than a view from a distance. Fleming Island to the north has the bigger shopping, Orange Park beyond that, Jacksonville beyond that again. Water and wastewater come from the county utility authority rather than wells and septic.

Schools are Clay County District Schools, graded A for the 2024-25 year and one of twenty-nine A-rated districts in the state. We are deliberately not naming an elementary, middle or high school: attendance zones for Castalia Place and Dayton Way have not been set yet, and the labels third-party listing sites attach to new construction are frequently the nearest school rather than the assigned one. Confirm assignment with the district for the year a child would enrol.

The master plan is selling. This neighborhood is not priced.

This is what makes Laurelton unusual to shop. Four builders are in the master plan. Richmond American and David Weekley are selling now, on a different street, in a phase already platted and built on. Perry Homes is announced and taking enquiries without a published price. Century Communities is here, in this pod, also without a published price.

As of mid-October 2026, the published prices inside the master plan run from about 438,990 dollars to about 564,490 dollars across roughly a dozen homes. Read that range carefully: it belongs to Richmond American and David Weekley, on their street, not to this neighborhood. It tells you what the master plan is achieving today. It would be actively misleading to treat the bottom of it as a starting price here, because the plans named for this pod are larger and better equipped than what that floor buys elsewhere in Laurelton. The useful part is that you can walk the finished phase, see the streetscape and judge the build quality before this neighborhood sets its number.

How it compares nearby

That last row is there because it is the easiest mistake to make here. Asbury Creek is also a Century community with a Green Cove Springs address, but it is a different project on a different road, already open, and its prices have nothing to do with this one.

Flood, taxes and insurance

On flood, the answer is good and specific. All 98 addressed lots are mapped outside the special flood hazard area on the current effective map. A small slice of the wider parcel, along a drainage at the edge and away from the building lots, is mapped inside the special flood hazard area. A proposed future county map would place the entire parcel outside, but it is proposed rather than effective. Mapped outside means no federal requirement to buy flood insurance with a federally backed mortgage; it does not mean water cannot reach a house, and a meaningful share of historic claims in this county came from outside the mapped hazard area, so price an optional policy anyway.

On taxes, the components are the county levy, which includes the unincorporated-area service levies and the voter-approved conservation land levy, plus the school levy, and no city levy. Then the district assessment above, separate from all of it. The mechanism that catches people out is reassessment: your home is assessed on what you pay for it rather than on today's raw-land value, so the first full tax year after closing steps up and a builder lender's estimate at contract is frequently optimistic. If this will be your permanent residence, Florida's homestead exemption applies, set by state law rather than by the county, and the annual assessment cap that comes with it is worth more over a decade than the exemption itself.

On insurance we have no verified premium for this location and will not publish an estimate dressed up as one. New construction built to current Florida code, inland, on a lot mapped outside the special flood hazard area, is close to the best case this state offers. Get a written quote on the actual plan and elevation before you are committed. Association structure and dues here have not been published either; sibling neighborhoods each have their own association of record, so expect one and ask for the budget.

Buying before it is built

Contracting on a home that does not exist yet is a different transaction from buying a finished house, and the differences are all in the paperwork. The agreement will be the builder's own form rather than a standard state contract: expect deposits in stages, a completion window rather than a date, the right to substitute materials, and warranty terms far more negotiable before signature than after. Ask where your deposit is held and what happens to it in writing if the schedule slips.

Two questions are specific here. The plat has not recorded, so ask how your contract handles a delay in recording. And ask for the written district disclosure for your specific lot, read alongside the association budget. Have your own inspection as well: county inspections check code compliance, not workmanship.

Who this suits, and who it does not

It suits a buyer who wants a large, new, well-equipped house with a three-car garage in a master plan that is already proving itself, early enough to pick a homesite rather than take what is left. It suits a household whose life runs north and west, toward west Jacksonville and Interstate 10, which is the part of the road network that improved this year, and anyone patient enough to let the amenities arrive.

It does not suit a buyer who needs certainty on price or timing today, because neither exists, or someone who needs the pool and the clubhouse open on moving day, or anyone commuting daily to St. Augustine or down I-95 before the river crossing opens around 2030. And it does not suit anyone who will resent a district assessment on top of their tax bill, which is a reasonable position to hold as long as you hold it before you sign.

What this page becomes once homes are listed

There is nothing here to shop yet, so this page is a record of what is permitted and addressed and a way to be told the moment that changes. When homes here reach the market this page switches over to live inventory automatically, and the people who asked to hear first do hear first.

Common questions about Cypress Trails at Laurelton