Hundreds of new luxury apartment units are coming to Lakeland. They’ll be built on 10 acres of land between the city’s police station and the in-town bypass, also known as Highway 98.

• Tampa group agreed to purchase property for $3.67M
• Plan to build 306 pedestrian-friendly, pet-friendly apartments, townhomes
• Group will spend $58M on construction

The Framework Group, out of Tampa, has agreed to purchase the property for $3.67 million. It will also receive $1.76 million in incentives, and the property will have underground utilities.

Lakeland Commissioner and Community Redevelopment Agency Board Member Jim Malless said he was impressed with some of Framework’s other properties in Tampa, including Varela and Novus, located in Tampa’s West Shore Business District.

"I drove by a couple of their projects. I think they do a quality job," said Malless. "I think they have a track record of over 20 years. I think this is what they do. I think they were the right person at the right time."

The Framework Group plans to build 306 high-end apartments and townhomes that will be pedestrian-friendly and pet-friendly. The project is expected to have more than 500 tenants.

Construction is expected to begin in 2018, and be completed a year and a half later.

The company’s development manager, Nick Herring, said the company wanted to be apart of Lakeland’s redevelopment in the area, and has been interested in purchasing the land since 2015.

"It's the connectivity," Herring said. "It's a huge swath of beautiful, dry land. There's no flood planes or anything like that in a downtown location. This is a rare opportunity."

Herring said Framework plans to spend $58 million on construction, and he predicts the new units will average around $1,200 a month, although that's not set in stone.

Pricing residents out?

That's bittersweet for Debra McCall, who lives across the street. Her new landlord, a different developer, told her he's not renewing her lease and she can't afford the new apartments.

"It's going be great, all of the redevelopment that they're doing,” said McCall. “I'm just, I won't be apart of it. I don't want to move. I want to be apart of the new Lakeland."

"Downtown Lakeland is great," McCall continued. "The stores, they know me. The farmer's market is very vibrant."

The Lakeland Community Redevelopment Agency paid $8 million to acquire the land starting in 2004. Back then, it was a neighborhood with houses and an apartment complex, and filled with crime.

CRA manager Nicole Travis said the CRA decided to borrow money from the city to purchase the land and relocate some of the people living there.

"We're never going to recoup all of the money we invested in that," said Mayor Howard Wiggs. "We bought at a very high part of the market. We had not only the intention to build a project, but clear up what was at the time the most crime ridden portion of our community.”

“It was a deal that was a little hard to do, because we bought this land when it was apartments and houses, so it had economic value," Malless explained. "We tore all of those houses and apartments down. So that economic value went away. That’s why we sold it for less than we paid for."

Mayor Wiggs still has some reservations about this new project, even though he voted in favor of it because he appreciated how hard the CRA staff worked on it.

"Knowing what’s going on in that area, the improvements that are already on the way -- for example, a new homeless coalition project that we’re about to roll out that will address the homeless issue in that area -- the fact that we’ve already had conversations with the movement of one of the homeless organizations in that area, with the development that's already begun in that area, I only saw the projects becoming better, that a year or two from now, an even better project might be forth coming,” said Wiggs. “When I say a better project, I want to see a mixed use project with some retail and office buildings.”

Malless said the CRA plans to sell vacant land its owns on Massachusetts Avenue, near where the new apartments and townhomes will be built, to someone willing to make it commercial properties.