The Highlands Club

The Highlands Club is an approved Planned Development covering about 300 acres of unincorporated Polk County, in the area the county's own staff describe as essentially an extension of south Lakeland. The approved plan is 747 single-family homes. The county commission gave it final approval in January 2026. Nothing is built, no builder has been assigned, and nothing is for sale.

West of US Highway 98, south of Crews Lake Drive, west of Yarborough Lane, south of County Road 540-A and east of McCall Road. It is unincorporated county land rather than city limits, sitting between south Lakeland and Bartow. Its immediate neighbors are useful landmarks: the Touchstone subdivision is under construction to the east, Treymont lies to the west, and Wind Meadows South is to the south. There are no street addresses or platted lots yet.

No, and this trips people up constantly, so it is worth being precise. There are two separate approved developments on the same stretch of road network west of US 98. This one is The Highlands Club, about 300 acres and 747 homes. The other is a 400-home Planned Development on about 151 acres, approved separately in 2026, with different owners and a different applicant filing. Adding to the confusion, a roughly 28-acre lake called Crews Lake sits inside The Highlands Club itself, there is an existing subdivision called Crews Lake Woods nearby, and an unrelated project called Crews Lake Haven exists elsewhere in the county. Four different things share that name in a two-mile radius. We keep a separate page for the 400-home project.

Nobody yet. No homebuilder is named in the staff report, the Final Order, the site plan or any coverage. The parties on record are a land-development partnership and the families who own the land, which is the normal pattern: an entitlement group takes the property through approval and horizontal development, then sells lots to homebuilders. Builder names typically surface at or shortly before the plat stage. Catching that moment is the entire purpose of the list on this page.

Yes, and it is a genuinely useful thing to understand about this project. The Planning Commission approved the development in November 2025, but not unanimously. That decision was then appealed, which in Polk County triggers what is called a de novo hearing: the Board of County Commissioners rehears the matter fresh rather than simply reviewing the earlier decision. The Board heard it in January 2026 and approved it, and a Final Order was signed. So the approval standing today is the county commission's own, which is the stronger of the two.

The approved lot mix is the most concrete thing on the record, and it is more informative than it first looks. Of the 747 lots, 678 are 50 feet wide and 69 are 130 feet wide, with a minimum lot size of 6,000 square feet. That is a community built mostly around a narrower, more attainable production lot, with a small number of substantially wider homesites, which in practice usually means a premium tier along an amenity or a water feature. Beyond lot geometry, nothing is released: no floor plans, no square footages, no elevations and no price bands, because no builder has been assigned.

We are deliberately not publishing a density number, and the reason is instructive about how carefully you should read development coverage. The county's staff report and the applicant's own narrative in the same case file state two different densities. Both are primary documents. Rather than pick the one we prefer, we will give you the underlying facts, which do not conflict: 747 homes on approximately 300 acres, with a 6,000 square foot minimum lot. You can judge from that, and it is a fairly typical suburban production density for this corridor.

No. It is unincorporated Polk County. That distinction is worth money to you. Unincorporated property does not pay city millage, so the tax picture differs from an otherwise identical home inside city limits, and county rather than city services apply. It also means the county commission, not a city council, is the body that approved it and will handle subsequent reviews. Mailing addresses in this area commonly carry a Lakeland designation even though the land is not in the city, which is a frequent source of confusion.

Polk County Public Schools assigns attendance zones by physical address, and no addressed home exists here yet, so any school named today would be a guess. This corridor has been absorbing significant new rooftops, with Touchstone under construction immediately to the east and other approved projects nearby, so expect boundaries to be reviewed as these communities deliver. Run the specific address through the district's locator once addresses are assigned.

As unincorporated Polk County land, your bill would combine county millage, the school board, the water management district and other special districts, with no city millage. Many Florida communities of this size also carry a community development district, which finances infrastructure through bonds repaid by an annual assessment on your tax notice, separate from and on top of HOA dues. Nothing of that kind has been established or published for The Highlands Club, so there is no figure to quote. Florida has no state income tax, which is often what starts this arithmetic for relocating buyers.

No date has been announced. What the record tells us about sequence is that the project has its Planned Development approval but has not yet cleared the county's Level 2 review, the stage where detailed site and subdivision engineering is examined; the staff report notes that a traffic study is not required until that submittal. Platting, infrastructure and builder assignment all follow. 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 a 747-home approval ended up documented here while there is still nothing to buy and no builder to call.