Qualified Opportunity Zone Investment · Olive Street Development

9.1 Acres  |  Qualified Opportunity Zone  |  Lakeland, Florida

The product this ground becomes. Concept rendering, subject to final entitlement. Every image in this portal expands when tapped, and you're welcome to print any plan or rendering.

If you've recently created, or expect to create, a substantial eligible capital gain, your problem isn't finding another deal. It's placing that gain into a credible, tax-advantaged investment without making a reckless bet. That is the problem this portal answers: a previously approved PUD, every study complete, two written offers above $4M in the file, and a developer looking for the right partner. Prefer to own it outright instead of partnering? That's a conversation too, everything here still stands.

First, in plain language · What is an Opportunity Zone?

Explained like you're eight: an Opportunity Zone isn't something you earn or apply for. Either your land has it, or it doesn't, the federal government drew the map in 2018 and it hasn't been redrawn since. Only a small fraction of America's census tracts ever received the designation, and this property carries not one but three federal designations we never applied for: a Qualified Opportunity Zone (place an eligible capital gain here and the tax treatment changes dramatically), a Qualified Census Tract (unlocks affordable and workforce housing advantages), and a Targeted Employment Area (opens additional investment programs). Three designations, one site, by luck of the map. That is genuinely rare.

If you're holding a large capital gain, this is why you're here. And if you're not, and you simply want a strong real estate investment, keep reading anyway, the story and the facts stand on their own.

1 · What is this property?

Step one, the offering: the 9.1 acre parcel, outlined. Tap to enlarge.

Step two, the ground itself: raw land, cleared of guesswork, every study below already run on it.

Step three, what's already approved: the PUD site plan, 96 multifamily units, engineered and approved. This is not a concept, it's the entitlement you're buying. Tap to read the sheet.

Download the One Page Executive Summary Download the Investor Brief · Version 3 · PDF Request Documents · Schedule a Call

2 · Why this opportunity

• Qualified Opportunity Zone, deploy against a known 2018 designation
• PUD approval in hand, entitlement feasibility already demonstrated
• Significant entitlement work completed
• Utility coordination completed, exact tie-in points identified
• Engineering completed · Environmental completed, Phase I and II, the site is clean
• Existing consultant team familiar with the project, available to the buyer
• Owner available to assist through the transition

3 · What's already been done

Ten of twelve boxes checked before you arrive. Only the development order and building permits remain, and both paths are timed below.

4 · Proof of Opportunity Zone

The site sits in a census tract designated as a Qualified Opportunity Zone in 2018; designations currently run through December 31, 2028, with the next round effective January 1, 2027. Don't take our word for it, verify it yourself in two minutes: go to HUD's official Opportunity Zones page, open the map, and type in 1506 N. Olive St., Lakeland, Florida. You'll see it: approved, designated, qualified. The independent OZ map shows the same. Parcel ID and census tract come with the buyer package.

The Opportunity Zone map, the site inside the designated tract. Tap to enlarge, then verify it yourself at the HUD link above.

And one more layer of certainty: my tax attorney is an Opportunity Zone specialist and is available to answer any OZ question your group has, structure, timing, deployment deadlines, all of it, in conversation.

5 · PUD approved · 96 units, and the path to more

The site holds PUD approval for 96 multifamily units today. Want more? The City of Lakeland's own correspondence documents the path to up to 108 units through the defined modification process, estimated 4 to 6 months, shown in the department's email below, not our characterization. And a word on why we planned a modification at all: reworking the conceptual plan brings construction cost down dramatically, which is exactly why we didn't build garden apartments, the numbers told us not to.

6 · Alternative development vision

The short version: the approved PUD drew plenty of speculators. Garden apartments wouldn't pencil on their proformas. So I built a second path.

I come from architecture and construction. The second path: about the same count of smaller residences, built on Frank Lloyd Wright's Usonian principles. Two bed twos and one bed ones.

Priced to sell below the local cost of renting. Or hold them all at market rents. Either exit models strong profitability. The trade bids are already in hand.

From my own modeling, plainly: a conventional apartment complex at this density is hard to make work without affordable housing subsidy, unless Opportunity Zone treatment changes your math.

This vision is an illustration, never a requirement. For the right group, it could also become a partnership instead of a sale. The modeling is shared in conversation. Allow roughly 4 to 6 months for the major modification if you pursue it.

The lineage behind the alternative vision: Frank Lloyd Wright's organic principles, Gene Leedy's indoor outdoor Florida modernism, Mies van der Rohe's less is more.

Concept rendering and conceptual site plan, alternative for-sale path. Tap either to enlarge.

7 · Due diligence · complete, and shown

Plain-language explanations, the same standard we hold everywhere: you should never nod at a document you don't understand. Tap any image to see it full size.

The full library conveys under NDA or during the diligence period following an acceptable purchase agreement:

8 · Location · Lakeland, between Tampa and Orlando

The site · see the route from the site to Bonnet Springs Park on Google Maps

Lakeland sits on the I-4 corridor, roughly an hour to Tampa and an hour to Orlando.

Bonnet Springs Park, voted the #1 city park in America, USA Today 10Best Readers' Choice 2025, minutes from the site.

Florida Southern College, two miles away: the largest single-site collection of Frank Lloyd Wright architecture in the world, the campus Wright planned as his "College of Tomorrow."

Minutes to Downtown Lakeland. Convenient to I-4 via the Polk Parkway, Lakeland Regional Health, and Lakeland Linder Airport.

9 · Where it stands · Your two timelines

10 · The product · If you'd rather build than flip

You've seen the entitlement and the studies. Here's what the alternative vision actually looks like built, and if the partnership path interests you more than a purchase, the full investor story lives at oaksonolive.com/investors.

The compound by day · The two story courtyard compound at night · Tap either to enlarge.

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.

What follows is the same story every buyer reads on oaksonolive.com, the layout, the principles, the lineage, and the century of history under this ground, so you can see exactly what this site wants to become.

The Private Compound

Your private residence compound in nature.

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

2,700 SF

Your lot · 30' × 93'

~2,000+ SF

Total covered space

800 SF

Residence interior

3 Outdoor Rooms

Entry court · central courtyard · rear deck

Three colorways in study · Blackened wood · White and black · Stained cedar · Concept renderings, subject to final entitlement

The program. The flow.

• Covered carport, then a covered entry courtyard, then a covered walkway. Arrival is a sequence.
• Living, dining, and kitchen, 20 by 16, open to a 14 by 14 central courtyard
• Two bedrooms, two baths, 800 SF interior, utility room with sink
• Primary suite with walk-in closet and its own rear private deck, 14 by 8
• Spaces that flex and change as your life does
• Indoor outdoor living, connected to nature at every step

The design principles.

• 8 foot doors throughout, for height and flow
• Privacy walls create a compound, with a concealed entry
• Indoor outdoor living is the core
• Sharp lines and slanted roofs, a modern Japanese aesthetic
• Vertical cedar screens for scale
• Spaces that flex as life changes
• Simple, durable, low maintenance, materials connect to nature

Concept rendering · Subject to final entitlement

Our principles. Said simply.

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:

Structure

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.

Interior Finishes

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.

Kitchen

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

Bathrooms flow organically, the way you actually move through your morning. Calm, simple, easy to live with, hard to date.

Mechanical

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.

Landscape

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 Design Lineage

Wright. Leedy. Mies. Rudolph. And our own flair.

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.

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

Not a house. A compound.

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.

Leedy showed the way, right here in Polk County.

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.

Frank Lloyd Wright

Usonian and Organic Principles

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.

Gene Leedy

Indoor Outdoor Living

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.

Mies van der Rohe

"Less is more."

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

A Century in the Making

From a 1925 plat to a plan the city helped shape.

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.

1925

The Original Plat

Westgate, Lakeland, Florida. Platted in April 1925 and recorded in Polk County. The bones of the neighborhood are a century old.

Today

The Land, Untouched

Roughly 9 acres inside the city, mature oaks standing, waiting a hundred years for the right idea.

30+

Conceptual Plans

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.

Organic Architecture

Meet the namesake. We build around these trees, not through them.

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.

Organic roads. Mother nature already solved drainage.

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.

11 · Where it stands · Timeline and current status

12 · The developer · The whole story

Whether you buy this site or partner on this ground, you're dealing with a person, not a pitch deck. So here's the whole story, the same one I tell every buyer.

From War Veteran to Real Estate Developer.

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.

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.

The part most people don't know.

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.

A hands on developer. Every screw, every trade.

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.

Built, not promised · Look at what's already standing

Don't take my word for anything. Every one of these is standing in Lakeland right now. Click any map link, drive by, walk the street.

Get to know me, anywhere you like

Trust isn't built on one webpage. Follow along wherever you already are, watch how I work, and decide for yourself.

Facebook Instagram YouTube franklinandrewcruz.com

Why I'm selling: this property represents several years of planning, engineering, entitlement work, environmental studies, utility coordination, and development preparation. While my long-term vision remains to develop the site, I am also open to selling to the right buyer who recognizes the value of acquiring a project with much of the upfront risk already addressed. Ask me anything about that directly, I'll tell you straight.

And if you want to see every plan this land has ever worn, 101 years, 47 concepts, from the 1925 plat to today: read the full history.

The questions you're really asking, answered straight

Can I trust the developer? Don't take my word, take the record: 30+ developments, hundreds of transactions, a site I entitled and sold to KB Home, a street that carries my family name because of it, award winning homes standing in Lakeland right now. The whole story and every address is below, verifiable on Google Maps.

How is my capital secured? Within the site itself. Structurally, partners participate through ownership and/or a first mortgage position under a lending trust on the property, papered with counsel. And the ground under it has already been valued by the market: two written LOIs above $4M sit in this portal.

Why didn't you just sell to those LOIs? Both were affordable housing developers, and if you've dealt with that world you know their funding is roughly a coin flip. Rather than bet the site on someone else's tax credit award, we build it ourselves: architecturally responsible, raw true materials, low cost basis, profitable either way, and a win-win for the buyer or the renter.

Does the project work without the Opportunity Zone benefit? One hundred percent yes. The proforma you can open in this portal is built on those numbers, the OZ treatment is acceleration, not the engine.

How long is my capital committed? Until the refinance event. Best case roughly 18 months, worst case roughly 3 years, and the ten year OZ hold applies only to the qualifying structure if that's the path you take.

What are the major risks? Construction costs carry contingencies already priced into the horizontal and vertical numbers. Our price point is deliberately low, staying inside the workforce housing ratio bypasses roughly $40,000+ per property in impact fees, which protects margin. The risk I name out loud is key-man risk: me. That's why a detailed operating manual is being built, exactly what happens, in what order, and who inside my company picks it up and keeps going if something ever happens to me.

How are distributions made? If we sell, distributions on each sale. If we lease, monthly distributions once the properties are leased. Stated in the operating documents, not on a handshake.

Who covers cost overruns? True Investors Development.

What if sales or rents underperform? We're priced roughly $30,000 below comparable sales on purpose. The cushion is built into the price, not bolted on after.

Why this Opportunity Zone investment instead of another? Go with what feels right to you. I don't convince anybody to do anything, and if this isn't your fit and I can help you evaluate your next one, that's good too. It's all good.

13 · The offer · Partner first, purchase possible

Who this is for, plainly: an experienced investor, business owner, real estate operator, or family office with meaningful liquidity, typically $2M to $10M deployable, who understands private real estate, can tolerate development risk and a long hold, and needs a credible Opportunity Zone home for an eligible gain. The architecture makes this memorable. The economics make it investable. The OZ treatment makes it timely. In that order.