LAKE WALES, Fla. — Local leaders are moving forward with a massive new development in Lake Wales. This, despite several members of the public strongly speaking out against it.
"As of when you should have stopped building, you should stop building now. Most of us live here because it's a small town and that's what we want. If you want to live in a bigger town, move,sell your house, and move," said a member of the public.
WATCH: Massive Lake Wales development moves forward amid strong opposition
The rural area is between Godwin Road and South Acuff Road near SR-60. It’s also close to Lakes Wales Municipal Airport.
It’s known as Stoneridge and it includes almost 3,000 homes. Space for shops, restaurants, and industrial space for future job providers.
However, several city residents brought up objections to this plan for hours during a city commission meeting on Wednesday evening.
"We have enough houses approved here. We don't need more. Let's be real, it's a lot harder to build the economy that we need to give jobs to the people we've already invited here than to just pass more and more and approve more and more houses. As far as I can tell, the only people who want this project are a handful of power brokers, maybe a little more than a handful, but it's, it's power brokers in the city that want it, it's not the people," said another member of the community.
Meanwhile, supporters, including several leaders, argue the development will do wonders for the economy of Lake Wales by bringing good-paying jobs.
"Because now I know many of you have said, well that's not the way economic development works. Well,if you go back over the history of Lake Wales for the last 15 years,we haven't had jobs,you know why? Because we haven't had people move into the city, and no one is going to come and start a business because everyone who's in businesswanna make money," said a city leader.
The representative for the developer said they plan to have future meetings in order to mitigate impacts and complete a “traffic study.”
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