Lakeside Village and Spanish-Style Dixieland Home Earn December Beautification Awards

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Lakeside Village is decked out with festive decorations and a massive new Christmas tree with synchronized lights that dance to holiday music.

But that’s not the reason the shopping plaza at Harden Boulevard and the Polk Parkway won the commercial beautification award this month, according to Stacy Smith, Lakeland’s chief horticulturist.

“Over the years, if you’ve watched them, if a hurricane came through and some trees disappeared because of that, they got replaced,” Smith said at the Dec. 1 City Commission meeting.

Lakeside Village opened in 2005. Continental Realty Corporation purchased it in June 2023 for nearly $78 million. The Baltimore-based company has continued to fill the beds with seasonal flowers and replace ailing plants.

“They’ve always maintained their landscape very well, so we’re proud to award them with this beautification award,” Smith said.

Residential beautification award

The residential beautification award for December 2025 went to Luka Mernik’s home at 509 W. Park St. in Dixieland, built in 1932.

“It’s a Spanish-style house, and they recently landscaped it very appropriately with some Adonidia palms and yuccas, some aloes — things that you would expect to see in the landscape for a house like that,” Smith said. “It’s done very well.”