Concept rendering · We're going to build something very close to this · Subject to final entitlement · Every image on this page expands when tapped, and you're welcome to print any rendering or plan
Your own land. Your own home. Your own walled courtyard under century old oaks. Land. Peace. Privacy. 2 bed 2 bath from $259K.
This is the first community being built on Frank Lloyd Wright's Usonian principles, and it's being built in the open. You can own here, build it with me, or follow every step. Be part of it.
This isn't a simple purchase of real estate. You're choosing a different way to live. Limited to 99 residences. When they're claimed, they're claimed. The Priority List sees everything first. 2 bed 2 bath from $259K. Two story 4 bed 3 bath from $399K.
Here's the real opportunity in one sentence: a chance to truly own something, possibly for less than you're paying in rent, because thought-through architecture built with hundred-year-old principles doesn't have to cost more. Don't take my word for it. Run your own numbers right here. Nothing to fill out, nothing collected, this calculator is yours.
Estimates only, for education, not a loan offer, quote, or financial advice. Principal and interest only; taxes, insurance, and membership not included. Rates and terms come from your lender, and your numbers will differ. Pricing pending final entitlement.
This is the current conceptual master plan, every lot numbered on the sheet. Tap the plan to study it full screen, find the lot that calls you, corner lot, oak-side lot, deep in the quiet rows, then tap your number below and reserve your interest in it.
Tap the plan to enlarge and read the lot numbers. Conceptual, subject to final entitlement; lot lines and numbering may adjust.
Straight talk on what this is: a lot reservation today is a free expression of interest, it locks nothing and costs nothing. No payment is taken, and pricing is not yet guaranteed. Standard homesites are planned from $259K and premier homesites, corner and oak-adjacent positions, to $269K, with final lot designations and pricing published to the Priority List first. When reservations formally open, Priority List order decides who chooses first, so pick your lot and get in line.
Oaks on Olive is a long-term community being built transparently, and there's a place in it for everyone. Join the Priority List to own here. Become an Investor Partner to build it alongside me. Follow the Field Notes to watch every step as it happens. Whichever fits you, you're part of the journey from raw land to a completed community.
Can timeless architecture become attainable again? I believe it can. That question is the whole company.
And at Oaks on Olive, every decision that follows begins with a second question: will this make everyday life better?
From preserved oak trees and generous homesites to indoor outdoor living spaces and architecture inspired by Frank Lloyd Wright, Gene Leedy, and the principles of organic design, I'm creating more than homes. I'm creating a place people never want to leave.
I believe great communities should create calm instead of chaos. They should preserve nature instead of replacing it. They should encourage families to gather, neighbors to connect, and homeowners to feel like they've escaped without leaving the city.
That's Development Architecture.
U.S. Army · Operation Iraqi Freedom & Operation Enduring Freedom · TEDx Lakeland Speaker
This project started with a drive. February 23, 2021. I passed a for sale sign on a piece of land, and something in me would not let it go. The real beginning, though, was decades earlier.
Before any of that, there was just me and my mom. I didn't meet my biological father until I was nineteen. For most of my childhood it was the two of us, and we came from the Jacob Riis projects in New York City. Where I'm from, owning a home isn't a dream people talk about. It isn't even a thought.
My mom brought us to Florida when I was about six, maybe seven. She met an amazing man named Eli Cruz. They dated, they fell in love, and they got married.
Not long after the wedding, the man I call my dad picked me up, set me on the table, and asked if he could adopt me. I asked what that meant. He said my name would be Cruz. I thought it over the way a kid thinks over anything important: Cruz starts with C, Padilla starts with P, and the chocolate milk line went in alphabetical order. So I said of course. Front of the line. That was the whole ceremony, and it was perfect. Franklin Padilla became Franklin Andrew Cruz.
My mother, Nancy Cruz, and me. For most of my childhood it was just us.
Then my dad showed her something she thought was impossible: a home of our own, as a family. Coming from the projects, that was everything.
The home she never imagined she could own.
My mom would not stop talking about that home. We had friends over. We had movie nights. I remember watching La Bamba with my uncles. People would come over and stay for hours. My mom cut hair at home. Everything happened at home. She loved it. We were happy.
The only letter I have from her. In her handwriting: Mom Nancy, happy we are all together as a family. Franklin playing ball with Popie Eli. We love you and miss you son. May God bless you always. P.S. Miss you and write to me. OK. Kisses to all. The biggest thing she drew was the home.
When I was ten, my mom was pregnant with my little brother Jordan. That weekend we won our baseball tournament. I was the star player. I turned a triple play in front of her. I stayed the night at my friend Bubba's house, and the next morning the call came: come see your brother be born. When I got there, everybody was crying, and I kept thinking something had happened to my brother. Then my dad came to me and said the words I have carried ever since. Your mom just died.
Jordan lived. She didn't. I was ten years old. I never got to say goodbye, and I never got to hear her say she was proud of me. I knew she loved me. Her letters told me that. And since that day I have known one thing for certain: nobody is promised tomorrow.
What stayed with me through everything since is how happy she was in that home. It wasn't a big home. It wasn't fancy. It was hers. That is what a home is supposed to do. A home is not supposed to be stress, or tension, or a bill you're afraid to open. A home is supposed to be safety, privacy, peace, and your own land under your feet.
So when the Army taught me discipline and real estate taught me the business, one question drove all of it: how do I build that feeling for people like my mom? I could easily rent all ninety nine of these out and never sell one. Never. Not my heart. These homes are for owning.
Nancy Cruz. My mother. My first why.
I'm Franklin Andrew Cruz. U.S. Army war veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom, and a real estate developer with a passion for architecture: Frank Lloyd Wright's organic principles, Gene Leedy's indoor outdoor living, and Mies van der Rohe's less is more. I happen to live in Lakeland. The mission goes further. I've run my own crews for years and built everything from a Habitat home to a 41 home community, and much more. If you want the full story, it's at franklinandrewcruz.com. When you join this community, you're not dealing with a sales office. You're dealing directly with me, developer to buyer, start to finish, together with a team I chose to make sure your experience is amazing.
I was a big Back to the Future kid. After I built Cruz Court and sold it to KB Home, every national home builder bid on that property, and I talked to all of them. What I learned changed my life: we are never getting the homes of the future. Not one of those builders had any plan for style, for a Frank Lloyd Wright, a Mies van der Rohe, a Gene Leedy. Not one. Ever.
The kid in me wanted the future. · Two miles from our site, the banner says it: the largest single-site collection of Frank Lloyd Wright architecture in the world.
Elon Musk saw the same thing about space. He knew we were never going back to the moon or on to the stars the way things were going, and instead of complaining he did something about it. I decided to do the same thing with homes. So I started learning. And the first time I stood in front of a Frank Lloyd Wright home, it blew me away. A house built in the 1920s looked like it could have been built yesterday. That's when I understood that great architecture doesn't age, and great architecture can actually inspire you to be a better person.
I've been part of 30 plus developments and hundreds of real estate transactions. I went through a divorce after a 15 year marriage, and I raised two boys who are young men now, 17 and 24. At this stage of my life I want to give back. Modern homes for ordinary people, built on Frank Lloyd Wright's Usonian principles, something that inspires the people who live in them. That's what my mother's joy taught me a home could be. Oaks on Olive is how I keep that promise.
This is me with the guys during the butterfly roof build. I like being outside, on site, in the middle of it. We built the Habitat house in four months with me and four guys: sheathing, roof trusses, roofing, framing, drywall, flooring, the kitchen. I bought every material and called in every inspection myself. I want to know every detail, so I don't miss one. That's who is building your residence.
Land. Peace. Privacy. 2 bed 2 bath from $259K.
Every compound is a walled 30 by 93 foot lot. The arrival is a sequence, not a door: covered carport, covered entry courtyard, covered walkway, and then the living core opens to a central courtyard at the heart of the home. The primary suite gets its own rear private deck. Modern Japanese inspired, organized around nature, light, and privacy. Every space is intentionally placed to create peace, connection, and a sense of expansiveness beyond its square footage. Pending final entitlement with the City of Lakeland.
Two layouts, same home · Where a mature oak stands, the courtyard is built around it. Where there isn't one, the courtyard opens to the sky · Not one tree comes down. We build within nature, not against it · Still improving it, this is the general idea · Built and developed by Franklin Andrew Cruz
Three colorways in study · Blackened wood · White and black · Stained cedar · Concept renderings, subject to final entitlement
Concept rendering · Subject to final entitlement
Not a spec sheet. Principles, the ones that have carried the best architecture for a hundred years. Honest materials shown in their true form, homes that flow the way your day flows, and the discipline to build all 99 the same way so the price stays within reach of a working family. That's the whole recipe. Here it is, the way Wright would explain it to an eight year old:
The bones of the home are honest. Natural materials shown in their true form: wood is wood, metal is metal, concrete is concrete. Nothing pretends to be something it isn't. When materials tell the truth, a home never goes out of style.
Inside, the rooms flow into one another the way your day does. In and out, thought through, designed as one idea. The same true materials carry from outside to inside, so the home feels whole, never like a costume.
The kitchen is your workspace, and it's designed for in and out: cook, clean, done, back with your people in the gathering space. A kitchen shouldn't trap you. It should return you.
Bathrooms flow organically, the way you actually move through your morning. Calm, simple, easy to live with, hard to date.
You've got air conditioning. That's about all you'll ever think about, and that's the point. Everything else works quietly behind the walls so the architecture gets to do the talking.
The landscape merges in and out of the flow of the property. It isn't decoration placed around a building; it's a relationship with it. The oaks stay, their roots stay undisturbed, and the land and the home read as one.
Conceptual design for study purposes. Final materials and design verified by architect and engineer, and published to the Priority List first.
The product board, version 11: the butterfly roof residence, the flow, the specs, the materials. It's a rendering, we're still refining it. Tap to enlarge, and you're welcome to print it.
The two story courtyard compound. From $399K.
Same walled compound, the residence roughly double the size. Same arrival sequence, carport to entry courtyard to covered walkway. Same central courtyard at the heart of the home. Then the residence goes up instead of long: 1,600 SF of interior across two stories, four bedrooms, three baths, and roughly 3,200 SF of total covered space under butterfly crossing roofs, engineered at opposing angles for drama and drainage. Built smart and efficient on purpose: simple rectangular footprint, repeated materials, efficient structural spans, local labor. That discipline is what holds the price. Pending final entitlement with the City of Lakeland.
Concept rendering, at night · Different color variations coming, same as the single story · Subject to final entitlement
Concept rendering · Subject to final entitlement
Premier homesites to $269K
800 SF interior · 2 bedrooms · 2 baths · 30' × 93' walled lot · ~2,000+ SF total covered space
Covered carport, entry courtyard, and rear courtyard. Central courtyard at the heart of the home. Spaces that flex as your life does. True materials throughout: concrete, cedar, black metal, glass.
Upgrades and options published with final pricing. Estimated delivery announced with entitlement.
The two story courtyard compound
1,600 SF interior · 4 bedrooms · 3 baths · same 30' × 93' walled lot · ~3,200+ SF total covered space
Same arrival sequence, same central courtyard, twice the sky. Crossing butterfly roofs. Primary suite with private deck. Same honest materials, same discipline.
Upgrades and options published with final pricing. Estimated delivery announced with entitlement.
A plain word about pricing: prices may adjust through the project as construction costs, market conditions, and demand move. That isn't a trick, it's how every well-run development protects the long-term value of the community you're buying into. Priority List members lock their place in line and see every price before the public.
Narrow and deep is how great city homes have always worked, from Charleston to New Orleans. The width buys privacy walls on both sides. The depth buys a carport, a residence, and a courtyard in a straight, honest line. You own all of it and maintain almost none of it.
A backyard is leftover space. A courtyard is a room. Walled, covered, shaded, and connected to the living core through 8 foot glass, it is where coffee happens, where the dog runs, where dinner moves outside ten months a year.
This is Florida. Sun and rain decide whether outdoor space gets used. Roof it and it becomes real square footage, every day, in every season. That's why ~800 SF of this compound's covered area sits outside the conditioned walls.
Nobody looking into your yard. Nobody watching you come and go. The wall isn't about keeping the world out so much as giving you one place in it that is entirely yours. In an overcrowded world, privacy is the ultimate luxury.
Native plants, crushed rock, pavers, and the oaks we build around. The landscape isn't decoration added at the end. It is the fourth wall of every room, and the community keeps it maintained so it always reads as designed.
People don't just buy architecture. They buy neighbors. The standards protect quiet evenings, respect between neighbors, and the look of the place decades from now. They exist so what you buy on day one is what you live in on day five thousand.
Most people have never bought a newly built residence, so here is the whole process in plain words. Every development on earth goes through these six phases. I'll tell you exactly where we are at each step, in my Weekly Field Notes and right here.
Before you buy land, you study it. All of ours are done: 📐 boundary and ALTA surveys, 🌳 a full tree survey mapping every protected oak, 💧 wetland and environmental site assessments, Phase I and Phase II, confirming no contamination, and 🪨 geotechnical borings telling us exactly what the soil can carry.
CompleteSecuring the ground. We control the opportunity and we are in active negotiation on the acquisition right now, working to close at the best possible price, because every dollar saved on land protects the price of your residence.
In NegotiationGovernment approvals. The land carries existing entitlements, and our plan goes through a major modification with the City of Lakeland, who have reviewed our direction and indicated support. When this ends, the land is what developers call shovel ready.
Estimated 4 to 6 monthsEverything under and between the homes: roads, water, sewer, power, sidewalks, lighting, landscaping. The unglamorous half of a community that decides whether it works for a hundred years.
UpcomingBuilding the residences, in phases. The first four residences go up together, an estimated 4 to 6 months of construction, while the community keeps building around them.
UpcomingWalkthroughs, closings, keys. Once construction begins, first move-ins are estimated at 8 to 12 months, possibly more. Priority List order decides who chooses first, and community completion follows in phases.
UpcomingStraight talk: we have not acquired the land yet. We control the opportunity, the studies are done, and we are negotiating the acquisition now. This tracker moves as milestones are actually reached, not before. You'll watch it happen in real time.
These aren't promises, they're documents. Tap any of them to see it full size.
The survey with topography and every protected tree · The utilities map, we know exactly where to tie in · The easement map, every easement located · Tap to enlarge
Every compound draws from four masters and one rule. Frank Lloyd Wright's Usonian principles, two miles from his Florida Southern campus. The raw architecture of Gene Leedy, the father of raw architecture and founding member of the Sarasota School, who made Winter Haven "Leedy Land" with exposed structure, honest materials, and glass walls that erase the line between indoors and out. The less is more discipline of Mies van der Rohe. A little Paul Rudolph. Combined with our own modern flair and one rule: the oaks stay the tallest thing on the land. They've been here for over a hundred years, and I don't plan to be the one who chops them down.
I wanted something truly organic, and it has to make financial sense too. Both are possible. That's the whole project.
Before anyone said the words attainable modern, Paul Rudolph drew the Revere Quality House on Siesta Key, Florida: limit the walls, put the courtyard inside the home, lay the roof long and low, and let the covered carport and porch carry the living outdoors. It won national awards and showed the whole country that modern, affordable, and beautiful could be one building. That is precisely the inspiration we're building on, seventy-eight years later, two hours south of where he drew it.
The Revere Quality House, Siesta Key, 1948. The courtyard inside the home, the walls kept minimal, the roof doing the work. Our lineage, already built and already proven. More of Rudolph's original drawings live on the history page.
And here is what the masters taught me about constraints. Wright didn't complain about difficult sites. Leedy didn't complain about small budgets. Mies didn't complain about less material. They let the constraint create the architecture. Our 30 by 93 foot lot isn't a compromise. It is the design driver: a private linear compound where every foot works, instead of a pretend suburban lot where half of it is lawn you mow but never use.
The compound takes the whole site · Pavilions, courts, carport, and canopy designed as one · Design reference: one of Gene Leedy's design properties in Winter Haven, Florida
Each residence is designed as its own compound: privacy walls around your own ground, glass opening to the courtyard, the structure holding the land instead of towering over it. Lots run 30 by 93 feet so every compound gets its own walled world under the oaks. And a custom furniture collection, designed to flow with these homes, is in the works.
Gene Leedy, the father of raw architecture, proved seventy years ago with his Winter Haven courtyard houses that Florida living happens in the space between indoors and out. His work was called radical then: open plans, exposed framing, sliding glass instead of walls. It reads as timeless now. We're building in that lineage, twenty minutes from where he built his.
The home of moderate cost, built in harmony with the land instead of on top of it. Broadacre, Usonia, and the largest single site collection of his work two miles from our gate. The blueprint for everything here.
The father of raw architecture proved it in Winter Haven: Florida living happens in the space between indoors and out. Exposed structure, honest materials, glass instead of walls. We build in his lineage, twenty minutes away.
His words, our discipline. Structural restraint and module discipline. Nothing decorative, nothing wasted, every line earning its place. When the structure is honest, the building doesn't age. It settles in.
Gene Leedy · The frontal home entrance and courtyard living · Reference photos, for design study
Farnsworth House, Mies van der Rohe · RiverRock House, the last home Frank Lloyd Wright designed · These principles are the inspiration behind what we're doing
Wright drew the plan. We're building the residence.
In 1935, Frank Lloyd Wright published a plan called Broadacre City in Architectural Record. Every American family on its own ground. The home as the family's economic engine. Work and income produced on your own lot. Architecture bowing to the landscape instead of towering over it. Critics called it impossible.
Wright wanted every family to have a full acre. In 2026, an acre inside a city with a home on it runs two to three million dollars. That version of the dream priced itself out.
But the idea underneath it never expired. Your own ground. A home that produces income instead of only consuming it. Wright wrote that the landlord is no happier than the tenant. The private compound ends that argument, because here the working family owns the ground, the walls, and the roof. That is Broadacre economics at a price a working family can actually reach, starting at $259K, two miles from Wright's Florida Southern campus.
The direction is locked: 99 private compounds, single story and two story, pending final entitlement with the City of Lakeland. Lots run 30 by 93 feet, set in rows around the trees, and the property is ringed by an organic perimeter wall. What you see below is the working concept: a court driven layout where front doors open to shared greens, cars stay at the edge, and a central green with a veterans memorial anchors the community. The final layout is being completed in partnership between Franklin Andrew Cruz and the City of Lakeland.
What I mean by compound · A Gene Leedy property, Winter Haven, Florida · Sample reference only
Every block on this plan is a private compound: a walled lot with a carport at the street, a residence in the middle, and a courtyard at the rear. Rows face shared green courts. Pervious green streets instead of asphalt, and stormwater handled on site.
Both parcels, one vision · The 9 acres and the 4 acres across Olive Street
The plan includes the 4 acres directly across Olive Street, the planned home of the clubhouse campus: a coworking space for residents who work from home and a full training gym. Your residence sits inside its own walls. Your address is a lot bigger than that.
The layout of the land decides the architecture, not the other way around. Some residences run lower and longer, raw and honest in their materials, structure you can actually see, in the spirit of the architects who let concrete and wood speak for themselves.
Inspired by the past. Built for the future.
This land was platted in April 1925 as part of Lakeland's original Westgate community, and it has sat essentially untouched for a hundred years. Since then we've drawn more than 30 conceptual plans for this property and spent years working side by side with the City of Lakeland to get it right. What survives all that iteration is worth reserving.
The world's most admired communities weren't created by accident. They were designed with intention. Every historic building. Every timeless neighborhood. Every unforgettable space. Each one started with someone willing to think differently. We're applying those same principles to a new generation of attainable homes in Lakeland.
Westgate, Lakeland, Florida. Platted in April 1925 and recorded in Polk County. The bones of the neighborhood are a century old.
Roughly 9 acres inside the city, mature oaks standing, waiting a hundred years for the right idea.
An example concept only. We're still going back and forth with the City of Lakeland, and every version taught us something the next one kept. Tap the plan to see it full size.
This is a live, mature southern oak standing on the Olive Street property right now. We call it the magic tree. It is over 125 years old, and it is one of eleven mature oaks on this land. These are our photographs from the site, not images off the internet. The community is named for these trees. They were here before any of us and the plan is for them to outlast all of us.
The magic tree · A live southern oak on the site, over 125 years old, one of eleven · Our photographs, from our land
Our goal is to keep every mature tree on the property. Where a residence meets a tree, the residence adapts: pier and beam foundations lift the structure over the root systems so the oaks keep breathing. That's organic architecture the way Wright meant it, building as a grace to the landscape, not a disgrace to it.
Building around the tree, literally · Design reference, Gene Leedy era · This is exactly what I'm thinking
And we made the call the trees demanded: no two story structures anywhere in the community. Every compound is single story, so the canopy stays the tallest thing on the land. Ninety nine compounds under hundred year old shade, from day one. You can't plant that. You can only protect it.
The streets here are planned as organic roads: permeable surfaces, stone edges, grass pavers that drink the rain instead of shedding it into pipes. No curbs. Grass never holds a puddle for five days. Roads do, because they don't drain. Ours will.
Potential materials shown. Nothing is final. These are the kinds of surfaces we're testing with our engineers.
I won't chase trends. I will pursue timeless design.
I won't remove character. I will build around it.
I won't sacrifice quality for speed. I will create a community designed to improve with time.
Great developments aren't measured by opening day. They're measured by how people feel decades later.
Now you know if this is your place. Most people know in about ten seconds.
A 41 home subdivision on Carter Road, taken from one house to a full community. The street carries the family name.
Modern butterfly roof homes at 716 and 720 W. 14th Street. A third is under construction now.
Built in partnership with Habitat for Humanity. Community building is the operating history here, not the slogan.
Veteran Owned
Every path in, Founding, Waitlist, or Follow the Developer, gets my Weekly Field Notes: progress reports from Olive Street and every active project, written in first person by me, Franklin Andrew Cruz, not a marketing department. Photos from the site, decisions as they happen, the real numbers behind the build. You'll know more about your future residence than most people know about the one they already live in.
Trust gets built when you're teaching. So I'm going to teach you the whole build.
America put its greatest architect on the cover of TIME while his masterpiece was still rising behind him.
A home set over a waterfall. The building the American Institute of Architects named the best all time work of American architecture.
The largest single site collection of Frank Lloyd Wright architecture in the world is a five minute drive from The Oaks.
Wright wrote that almost a century ago. Star architects still build for the wealthy. The working family still gets whatever's left over. I decided to do something about it on Vermont Avenue. 709 N. Vermont was the first Frank Lloyd Wright inspired home ever built with Habitat for Humanity. I pushed for it, and I paid for the redesign out of my own pocket, because I wanted a Habitat family to live in something that inspires. The whole block changed around it, and it still turns heads today.
But none of that is what I remember. What I remember is standing near the finished house and watching a little girl walking with her older sister. She jabbed her sister in the side, hard, pointed at the house and said: "Look at that. Look at that. Look how cool that looks." And her sister said, "Yeah. It does look awesome."
Kids don't lie. They don't know how to. That little girl saw something beautiful on her own street, in her own neighborhood, and it stopped her cold. That moment put me on this road, and Oaks on Olive is where it leads: ninety nine modern compounds for the people who put their soul into their jobs all week just so they can spend the weekend with their kids.
Nothing against the wealthy. This one just isn't for them. This is for you.
That's the vision behind Oaks on Olive.
Most developments stop at "here's the rendering." You're not buying a rendering, you're buying confidence. So this part of the site is our due diligence center: spend thirty minutes here and walk away knowing we've thought through everything, because we have. No hidden information.
1506 N. Olive Street, Lakeland, Florida 33815. Explore it yourself:
What that address means day to day: about 5 minutes to Downtown Lakeland. Walking distance to Bonnet Springs Park. Minutes to Lake Hollingsworth. Near Florida Southern College and the largest single-site collection of Frank Lloyd Wright architecture in the world. Easy access to the Polk Parkway. Tampa in roughly an hour, Orlando in roughly an hour. Drive times vary with traffic; check the map above against your own life.
Don't take our word for the neighborhood. Here's where your weekends would actually happen, with links straight to the sources:
Bonnet Springs Park · 168 acres of botanical gardens, trails, playgrounds, and event lawns, walking distance from the site. One of the most celebrated new parks in America.
Downtown Lakeland · restaurants, coffee shops, The Joinery food hall, First Friday street festivals, about five minutes away.
Lake Hollingsworth · the three mile lakefront walking loop Lakeland is famous for, minutes away.
The Saturday Farmers Market · downtown Lakeland's Saturday morning tradition.
Florida Southern College · Frank Lloyd Wright campus tours · walk the same architecture that inspired this community, two miles from your front door.
Florida Children's Museum · at Bonnet Springs Park, plus the RP Funding Center for concerts and events, and Lakeland's museums downtown.
Bonnet Springs Park, walking distance from Oaks on Olive, voted the #1 city park in America, USA Today 10Best Readers' Choice 2025. More neighborhood photos coming as we shoot them ourselves.
School assignment in Polk County is address based and can change, so instead of printing a list that might go stale, we point you to the sources: use the Polk County Public Schools school locator with our address, 1506 N. Olive Street, and compare ratings and reviews for every public, private, and Montessori option on GreatSchools. If schools matter to your decision, we'll gladly walk through the options with you in conversation.
Before asking anyone else to live on this side of Lakeland, I did. I spent nearly two years here while converting an old church into a loft. I walked this neighborhood, worked here, slept here, and became part of the community. That's not a marketing line, it's the only way I know how to underwrite a neighborhood: with my own feet.
It's also why I've put my time where my money is: serving on the Habitat for Humanity board, representing Westgate as an association board member, and graduating Lakeland's Civilian Police Academy, Class 42. Those aren't trophies. They're the reason I'm personally comfortable investing my own years and my own dollars right here, and asking you to consider the same.
Every study, every survey, every report. Complete: the conceptual site plan, the boundary, topographic, and tree surveys, the Phase I and II environmental reports (roughly 600 pages; the site is clean), the 17 page geotechnical report, the GIS utility map with exact tie-in points, and the easement map. In progress: the market absorption study and traffic information, which will be published here as they're completed. The key documents are shown with plain-language explanations on our investors page, and every page of everything is available in conversation. Download links are being added as we publish each file. No hidden information, that's the whole policy.
Not everyone knows this history. Over the years, developers have looked at this property, and multiple concepts have been drawn for it, larger, denser plans included; some of those earlier concept drawings sit in our own files. After analyzing construction costs and this market, we believe the strongest long-term use isn't the biggest one. It's a smaller, attainable ownership community that preserves the century old oaks and gives working families land of their own. That's the plan we're carrying forward.
Housing demand, inventory, pricing, rental demand, population growth, and employment for the Lakeland market are being compiled into a market absorption study. When it's done, it gets published right here, downloadable, sources cited, the same open-book standard as everything else. Until then we'd rather show you nothing than show you a chart we can't stand behind. Want to talk through the market before the study publishes? That's a conversation I'll happily have.
We won't characterize the neighborhood for you; we'll hand you the sources and let you look at current data yourself. The Lakeland Police Department publishes resources and community programs, and public crime mapping tools like Community Crime Map let you review live incident data for any address, including ours. What we can tell you first hand: the Westgate neighborhood has an active association (I've served as a board representative), ongoing neighborhood improvements, and I graduated the Lakeland Civilian Police Academy, Class 42, because I believe you should understand how your city actually works. Look at everything. Then come walk it with me.
Single story compounds start at $259K, with premier homesites ranging to $269K. The two story courtyard compound starts at $399K. Priority List members see final pricing first and choose first, in order. Remember what you're pricing: your own walled lot, your own courtyard, modern design in honest materials, two miles from Frank Lloyd Wright's Florida Southern campus. Not an apartment. Not a townhome sharing walls. A compound.
And here is my ultimate goal, stated plainly: at these price points, depending on your rate and down payment, owning here can compete with what many families already pay in rent. Same monthly number, except you own the land. When you see your price sheet, you'll see exactly where every dollar comes from. That's how I build and that's how I sell.
Once you fill out the application, we work directly with loan officers I trust to get you real numbers: monthly payment, down payment, insurance, all of it. And we're open to exploring flexible paths, including potential seller financing. Ask us.
No. There is no HOA and there is no board. I hate HOAs. What Oaks on Olive has is a Residence Membership, and it's mandatory, because it's how the community stays excellent. There's no voting strangers in and out who have no idea what we do every day. The developer, me, Franklin Cruz, owns it, runs it, reviews it, and optimizes it, so the services stay at the level you were promised. Here's what your membership includes:
You handle your own utilities. Membership dues will be finalized with pricing.
Oaks on Olive is at 1506 N. Olive Street, Lakeland, Florida, the first of many. Two miles from the world's largest single site collection of Frank Lloyd Wright architecture at Florida Southern College. Less than a mile from downtown Lakeland. Walking distance to Bonnet Springs Park. Close to schools, and set in a rising industrial edge district with the same trajectory as Channelside in Tampa, in early.
Yes. Movable wall panels slide open to expand the space. The shotgun plan keeps one clean sightline front to back, so the residence lives larger than its footprint. The rear courtyard under shade sails is a whole outdoor room, and at a starting price of $259K, the home that fits today doesn't trap you tomorrow.
That's the goal. You own the ground, the walls, and the roof, at a starting price that leaves room to live. A home shouldn't just be shelter for your family. It should strengthen your financial future while it shelters them. That's what we're building.
Not yet, and we won't take a dollar until it's right. Reservations open after entitlement milestones are met. The Priority List is free, locks your place in line, and chooses first, in order.
Yes. Oaks on Olive is built with investor partners, and the whole story, math included, lives on the investors page. Or choose "I'm an investor" on the Priority List form and I'll reach out personally.
Land acquisition is in active negotiation now. Entitlements are estimated at 4 to 6 months after closing, then horizontal construction with bids already in hand, then the first four residences at an estimated 4 to 6 months of building. First move-ins are estimated 8 to 12 months, possibly more, after construction begins. The full tracker on this page moves as we do.
These are real homes financed the normal way: conventional, FHA, VA, and other standard mortgage paths, subject to lender approval. When you join the Priority List we ask whether you're preapproved, and if you'd like help, my team connects you with financing professionals at no obligation.
Yes, buyer representation is welcomed. The commission structure publishes to registered Realtors first, in writing, before anyone else. Everything a Realtor needs is on the Realtors page.
The architecture and materials palette is standardized on purpose; that discipline is what keeps timeless design attainable at this price. Selection options, if offered, will be published to the Priority List first.
You own your compound, behind your own wall, with your own courtyard. Community rules will be finalized with the HOA documents, and the Priority List sees them first, but this community is being designed for real life, and for most families that includes a dog in the courtyard.
Here's how this works, from me to you. No application today. No deposit. No fine print. Give me your name, email, and phone, tell me which best describes you, and you're on the Priority List.
Here's what that gets you. My Weekly Field Notes, written by me, Franklin Andrew Cruz, not a marketing department. The design revisions as we work through city constraints, so you watch the plan get better in real time. Construction updates from the ground. Early pricing before the public. And first access when reservations open, in order. 2 bed 2 bath from $259K, premier to $269K. Two story 4 bed 3 bath courtyard compounds from $399K.
First name, last name, email, phone. Two quick questions after that: which best describes you, and whether you're already preapproved for a mortgage. Not preapproved yet? That's exactly what my lending team is for.
Oaks on Olive is a planned community by True Investors Development LLC, Lakeland, Florida. All renderings, floor plans, specifications, and timelines are conceptual and subject to change. Joining the Priority List is free and creates no obligation for either party. Pricing has not been finalized. When reservations open, deposits will be held in escrow and fully refundable prior to execution of a purchase agreement. This is not an offer of securities or an investment opportunity. "Usonian" refers to a recognized architectural style. Oaks on Olive is independently developed and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, sponsored by, or licensed by the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation.