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Can the needs of higher education and the community at large coexist with neighbors’ desires to be left alone?
That’s a question raised as Lakeland’s Planning & Zoning Board approved Southeastern University’s latest expansion at its March 18 meeting, endorsing plans for a 13,000-square-foot early childhood education center.
While the board’s unanimous decision generated excitement within SEU’s College of Education, the response from some of those who live in the area wasn’t as enthusiastic.
Charlotte Garrison and others worry about the increased traffic the childhood education center will create and what effects it might have on their property values.
“I have nothing against the college,” said the 82-year-old Garrison. “I just think they are making the wrong choice with what they are doing with [the land].”
Garrison’s morning view out of her bedroom window stands to change drastically if Lakeland’s City Commission grants final approval for the center, which it could do as soon as its April 7 meeting.
That’s the final step SEU needs before construction at the corner of Smithfield Avenue and South Crystal Lake Drive can begin in late summer or early fall.
A center for all ages: SEU’s early childhood education center comes on the tail end of a five-year plan spearheaded by SEU President Kent Ingle.
“A key priority of our strategic plan is addressing the real and pressing needs of our community,” said Ingle, who has been at the helm of the private non-profit Christian university since 2011.
“As our community grows, so does the need for high-quality childcare that reflects families’ values and empowers parents to remain active in the workforce.”
The center will serve as a daycare facility for as many as 160 children, from newborns to preschoolers, while also doubling as a laboratory for education majors.
“Our early childhood majors, in particular, but also our elementary ed majors will get opportunities to go over and observe [the children enrolled at the center],” said Assistant Professor in the College of Education Ted Church.
“We have two classrooms specifically designated in the building that will be utilized by the university for that purpose… so we can hold class there and then go right into the field.”
Chief advancement officer Julie Paul said SEU college of education graduates are sought after in the teaching community, particularly locally; approximately 80% of its College of Education graduates work in Polk County.
“The more that [students] are able to get to know the community and start impacting it and making connections, the more likely they’re going to stay,” Paul said.
“Polk County is going to receive the benefit of these great teachers.”
A changing view: Charlotte Garrison has called her residence on South Crystal Lake Drive, just south of SEU’s main entrance, home since 1958.
She moved there with her family when she was in middle school before eventually buying the house and taking over the residential florist business that she and her mother ran from the house.
Through the years she has watched the area grow from three houses to the humming residential and business community that it is today.
She has also watched SEU grow and slowly stretch out. Once a resident a couple of blocks away, SEU has now turned into Garrison’s next-door neighbor.
The early childhood education center will bring SEU’s campus right outside her bedroom window, and with it 160 children playing, yelling and doing what children that age do.
Those children will all need to be dropped off and picked up, adding more traffic to the two-lane roads that surround the area.
“I just feel like the college has encroached on the neighborhood,” Garrison said.
Other residents in the area echoed Garrison’s sentiment at the Planning & Zoning meeting, while also expressing fears that their property values could plummet because of added traffic in the area.
Good neighbors? Matthew Lukens of The Lunz Group, the architecture firm designing SEU’s new education center, tried to ease the concerns of local residents at the Planning & Zoning meeting.
Lukens assured them that the center has been designed with great consideration of parking and drop-off and pick-up traffic. Lukens said he also anticipates staggered start times for different age groups, allowing no more than 60 cars on the property at one time.
Lunz and its subcontractor for construction “are doing a great job in … making sure that it’s not going to be a burden on the people that live in the area,” Paul said. “We want it to be an attribute, not something that’s going to cause issues.”
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I live in the SEU on Hester Drive. I’ve lived here for 8 years. I do not see a problem with a childcare center that will help families and help SEU train future teachers. Both are necessary. As an elderly person, if I didn’t want to be around children and their activities, I’d move to a 55+ type of restricted community.