Regional Report

Twenty years ago, when Lakewood Ranch existed only on paper, it was almost unfathomable that this 8,500-acre master-planned community would become home to 15,000 residents living in seven distinct villages and 1,200 businesses providing more than 10,000 jobs, and that it would receive the blessing of the U.S. Postal Service for its own postal zone: Lakewood Ranch, Fla.  

Lakewood Ranch is one part of the 30,000-acre Schroeder-Manatee Ranch, which began in the early 1900s when Milwaukee entrepreneur John Schroeder began acquiring the land. In 1922, relatives by marriage, the Uihlein family—owners of the Schlitz Brewing Company (the beer that made Milwaukee famous)—bought the property from Schroeder for a reported $2 an acre. It remained a working ranch until the 1970s, when ranch managers learned that the route for the then-proposed I-75 was going to pass just to the west. They made the strategic decision to develop a community of homes and businesses. At first, they called it Cypress Banks, but a marketing firm suggested Lakewood Ranch and that name stuck.

When the first homes in Summerfield Village opened in 1995, prices started at about $89,000. Families with children were immediately attracted to the nearby schools, parks, preserves and lakes that were created by filling in SMR’s shell-mining operations. Parents could commute to work on I-75, or they could look for jobs in the commercial and retail businesses that were beginning to sprout up in and around Lakewood Ranch. In succeeding years, with the introduction of villages such as The Country Club and The Lake Club, homes became much larger and more expensive. Lately the tough economy has Lakewood Ranch returning to affordable, workforce housing—“as inexpensive as common sense allows us to get”—according to SMR CEO Rex Jensen, who announced the company would be building 3,600 homes north of S.R. 70 in the next 18-24 months, as well as an age-targeted community.