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Page 4
April 2014
LAKELAND UPDATES
Commitment to HighQuality Development
Lakeland prides itself on
great neighborhoods and has
a reputation for high-quality
residential development.
Recent commercial projects
have followed suit and
several more are upcoming
that will prove to be great
additions to Lakeland. There
has been an increase in
construction activity in
Lakeland that we expect to
continue. There are also
several new exciting projects
that have been discussed that
will be moving forward in the
next several months.
In order to take advantage
of the increased development
interest, several changes are
proposed to various City
ordinances and regulations to
help make the City’s
development process more
efficient, while maintaining a
commitment for high-quality
development.
Lakeland Development
Corporation
The City of Lakeland is in
the process of establishing an
Industrial Development
Board that will replace the
Economic Development
Commission in spearheading
the City’s eco no mic
development activities. The
name of the corporation will
be
the
Lakeland
Development Corporation
(LDC), which was selected
based on its historical
significance in Lakeland.
Some may know that Louis
Garner founded Lakeland
Development Corporation as
a means to open “Lake
Land”, the amusement park
that once encompassed the
area surrounding Garner
La k e . M r . G a r n e r ’ s
corporation is now long gone,
but the name will live on.
The new LDC will have a
series of tools at its disposal,
including the ability to create
tax increment financing
districts (TIF), tax
abatements, and other
method s o f sp urring
redevelopment of existing
areas and bringing new, highquality commercial
development to Lakeland.
Keep Lakeland
Beautiful
A quick way to give a
‘face-lift’ to several areas of
the city is to control the litter
problem. Besides being an
eyesore, litter hurts our
economic development
efforts – new businesses will
hesitate to locate here if they
believe that the litter problem
could harm their reputation.
“Keep
Lakeland
Beautiful” is the newest
affiliate of Keep America
Beautiful program and only
the second in Shelby County.
A huge ‘thank you’ to the
Natural Resources Board and
our local coordinator,
Lakeland employee Evelyn
Okunbor, for getting this
program going. This will be a
great resource for fixing our
litter proble