Winslow's Point

Winslow's Point is an approved mixed-use community on about 268 acres of unincorporated Polk County, south of Lake Wales, on land adjoining Crooked Lake. The approval allows 533 homes in total, plus a hotel and roughly 124,400 square feet of commercial space. The county Planning Commission approved the current plan in April 2025. Nothing is built, no homebuilder has been named, and nothing is for sale.

No, and this is the most important correction on the page. The approval is for 533 units total, split as 427 single-family homes and 106 multifamily units. On top of that, a condition of approval lets up to ten percent of the units be swapped from single-family to townhomes or the other way round, provided the total of 533 is not exceeded. In practice that means the eventual number of detached houses could land anywhere from roughly 384 to 480. Anyone describing this as a 533-home single-family community is reading the headline number and missing the mix.

Yes. In Polk County a Planning Commission approval does not become final if someone files a de novo appeal within seven days, which sends the case to the Board of County Commissioners to be reheard from scratch. We enumerated every appeal item on every county commission agenda since the start of 2025, and this project appears in none of them. The window closed in April 2025, well over a year ago. A note in the interest of precision: the county leaves the date-rendered line blank on the Final Orders it publishes, so we say the project was approved on that date rather than that it became effective on it.

No homebuilder has been named, and it is worth being careful about why people assume otherwise. The property owner of record is Forestar, which is a subsidiary of D.R. Horton. But Forestar is a lot developer, not a homebuilder. Its business is buying land, entitling it, putting in roads and utilities, and selling finished lots, including to builders other than its parent. D.R. Horton is not named as the builder anywhere in this project's record, and we are not going to imply it will be. A builder announcement is the milestone the interest list on this page exists to catch.

Lot widths, mostly, and the reason is a good window into how these projects work. This community was originally approved back in 2010 and its density, unit count, setbacks and layout have been vested ever since. The 2010 approval capped lot widths at 60 feet. The 2025 modification lowered the minimum to 40 feet. The county's staff report puts it plainly, noting that 40-foot-wide lots have become marketable since 2010. The practical effect the applicant described was keeping the vested count of 533 while moving homes further away from the lake.

A specific list, which is the give-and-take of a planned development. Internal sidewalks, landscaped and contoured stormwater ponds, recessed and shielded lighting, additional parking, enhanced buffering and improved amenities. Plus one condition we have not seen anywhere else: a memorial tract measuring at least 50 by 100 feet must be provided within a passive recreation area for the purpose of recognising Crooked Lake as an Outstanding Florida Water.

Not in the way most buyers assume, and the approval is explicit about it. Crooked Lake carries the state designation Outstanding Florida Water, which is the highest level of water quality protection Florida applies. The conditions of approval bar a boat ramp entirely, and limit docks to electric boats, canoes and kayaks. So this is a community adjoining a protected lake with non-motorised access, not a powerboat community. That is a genuine amenity for some buyers and a dealbreaker for others, and you deserve to know which one it is before you tour rather than after.

You have, and it is the single most consequential practical fact on this page. The county's own staff report states it directly: the city of Lake Wales has a separate school system from the rest of the county, and the closest schools are part of that system, so residents of this development, unless annexed into the city, will have to travel farther away for public schools. The zoned schools in the county system are Ben Hill Griffin Elementary, McLaughlin Middle and Frostproof Senior High, with Frostproof roughly nine miles away and reported at 61 percent of capacity. Staff concluded the surrounding schools appear to have capacity. Capacity is not the issue here. Distance is.

Nobody can tell you yet, and be suspicious of anyone who tries. A community development district was established over roughly 242 acres of this property by county ordinance in February 2025, on a unanimous vote. A CDD issues bonds to build infrastructure and repays them through an annual assessment charged to every home in the district, appearing on your county tax notice separately from and on top of HOA dues. For this district, no bonds have been issued, no assessment methodology report has been published, and no engineer's report with per-unit figures exists. So the district is real and the assessment is coming, but the number does not exist on the public record today.

South of County Road 640 and east of US Highway 27, south of Lake Wales, in unincorporated Polk County. The staff narrative describes it as the southeast corner of US 27 and CR 640. The nearest municipality is Lake Wales at about 0.88 miles, with Frostproof about 1.93 miles away. There are no street addresses or platted lots yet.

Citrus grove and pasture. The surroundings are genuinely mixed and worth knowing: Warner University lies to the southwest, and there is a cluster of industrial neighbors to the west and southwest including a transport company, a chemical container business and a trailer manufacturer. To the south are a mobile home park, a lake village and the Crooked Lake Park subdivision, with citrus grove to the north and east. This is a rural crossroads becoming a community, not an established suburb.

Modest but real, and it did not change anything. The county sent 185 mailers and posted six signs, and received no response from the public beforehand. At the hearing one letter in opposition was filed and two people spoke against, one of them a former planning director of Lakeland and one arguing the land should stay in agriculture. Two commissioners voted no. The conditions were not amended as a result, so unlike some approvals we track, the objections here left no visible mark on the plan.

No date has been announced. A first phase of 69 single-family lots, at 50-foot widths and 6,000 square foot minimums, was already in county engineering review in early 2025, which puts this further along than a raw entitlement. But there is no builder, no plat recorded and no price. 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 and county commission records directly, which is how the mixed unit cap, the lake access limits and the school district split ended up documented here while there is still nothing to buy.