Concrete Contractor in Wedgewood, Lakeland

Which Wedgewood this is: the four Golf and Country Club plats

County records put the Wedgewood name on more than one set of plats. This page covers the four plats the Polk County Property Appraiser records as "Wedgewood Golf and Country Club Phase 01," Units 1 through 4, recorded between March 1982 and June 1984. Wedgewood Lake Estates and Wedgewood Office Park are separate plats and aren't what we mean here.

These lots sit in north Lakeland off Carpenters Way, west of US 98 North, inside the City neighborhood called Carpenters Home and fully inside city limits. Staffordshire Drive, Derby Drive, Rockingham Road, Chelsea Lane and Fenton Lane run through it. The zoned schools are North Lakeland Elementary, Sleepy Hill Middle and Lake Gibson Senior High, and Douglas M. Cook Park is the nearby City park. Our Lakeland service area page lists the rest of the city we cover, and our driveway replacement page covers tearing out an older slab.

Immokalee, Smyrna and Myakka sand: ground that stays wet

The USDA soil map, as served by Polk County's soils layer, puts about 52% of these plats in Immokalee sand and 34% in Smyrna and Myakka fine sands, with Ona fine sand and a small depressional Placid unit making up the rest. The Immokalee series description calls it very poorly and poorly drained. Smyrna and Myakka are poorly to very poorly drained, and Ona is poorly drained. Put plainly, every mapped acre in Wedgewood is flatwoods sand rated poorly drained.

That changes how a slab should go in. The Florida Building Code sets a fill rule for house slab floors: fill free of vegetation and foreign material, compacted for uniform support. It doesn't govern a driveway, but it's the standard we can hold a driveway or patio base to here. Grade matters as much as compaction. A slab that sheds water toward the street or a swale, not toward the house, keeps the sand under it from staying soaked. The soil map is an older survey, so we look at your own lot before we price the base work.

What It Costs

These are our typical ranges. In Wedgewood, tear-out of a 1980s slab and base work on wet sand move the total most.

Each job gets a free written estimate after we see the site, and the written quote comes within 48 hours.

Sixty-four fairway lots and a golf course that closed in 2021

Here's what sets Wedgewood apart. The appraiser codes 64 of the 139 Wedgewood homes as "SFR Golf course front." The Florida Department of State says the Wedgewood Golf Club opened on January 1, 1931, on land of the National Home of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America, and reopened in 1983 after a redesign by Lakeland architect Ron Garl. These home plats were recorded in step with that redesign.

The course closed in 2021. LkldNow reported that in December 2022 the City Commission voted 6 to 1 to approve 954 residences, called Gibson Trails, on the former course. That land lies next to these home plats, not inside them.

So if your back yard faced a fairway, it now faces land approved for building. Owners who planned a back patio around the view can still pour one; it just makes sense to size it for privacy plantings or a future screen room. Lake Gibson, a protected lakeshore under the City code, is about 420 meters away, so its 50-foot structure setback doesn't reach these lots.

Staffordshire, Chelsea, Derby and Fenton: the City's curb, the City's permit

The City's street centerline layer codes the interior streets of Wedgewood as City-owned, about 1.4 km in all, including Staffordshire Drive, Chelsea Lane, Derby Drive and Fenton Lane. Wedgewood Estates Boulevard and Carpenters Way on the edges are City streets too. Golf Village Loop is coded private, not City-owned.

On a City street, the apron between your lot line and the curb is right-of-way. The City's Public Works Engineering page requires a Right-of-Way Use Permit before any work there, and apron work has to meet the Engineering Standards Manual. The Building Inspection Division processes residential driveways and Public Works inspects them, with notice at least 48 hours before work starts.

Wedgewood isn't in a historic district, so the City's standard driveway rule in Land Development Code Sec. 4.11.4.6 applies: a driveway 10 to 24 feet wide and one curb cut per lot unless there's an improved alley. A circular driveway 10 to 14 feet wide on a lot with 75 feet of frontage is exempt from that one-cut limit. Our Lakeland concrete permit guide covers the full order of steps.

How Your Job Goes

1. Tell us the street

   Staffordshire, Chelsea or Golf Village Loop changes the apron paperwork, so we ask first.

2. Look at the ground

   We check the old slab, low spots and where water sits after rain.

3. Quote in writing

   You get thickness, base, joints, finish and price in writing within 48 hours.

4. Permit, pour, clean up

   Permits and notices come first. Then we tear out, pour and leave a clean jobsite.

A 1988 driveway on wet sand: tear-out, thickness and the lien notice

The median Wedgewood home dates to 1988 on the appraiser's records, with most built in the 1980s and a later group in the 2000s. An original driveway here has carried cars for more than three decades over sand that stays damp. If panels have sunk or cracks keep widening, we can tell you at the estimate whether patching or a full tear-out makes more sense.

A replacement means breaking out and hauling the old slab, which adds $2 to $4 per sq ft to our driveway range, then rebuilding the base and pouring. Going from 4 to 5 inches adds roughly 20% to the concrete cost and nearly 50% more load capacity, worth it if a truck or trailer parks there. Control joints go no more than 10 feet apart on a 4-inch slab, cut a quarter of the depth, and the new driveway stays clear of cars for at least 7 days.

Florida's lien law adds paperwork. A Notice of Commencement must be recorded with the County Clerk before work starts on a direct contract over $2,500, and over $5,000 a copy goes to the building department before the first inspection. Our driveway cost guide for Lakeland breaks down the numbers by size.

Eight lots touch a flood zone: walks, stamped work and the $7,500 rule

FEMA's flood hazard layer puts 99.94% of the Wedgewood plats in Zone X, on panels 12105C0301G, 0302G and 0304G. Still, 8 home parcels touch a Special Flood Hazard Area polygon, and that detail matters for Florida's HB 803. Since July 1, 2026, owners can request a permit exemption for qualifying non-structural work under $7,500 on a single-family home, but not if any part of the property is in a flood hazard area. Those 8 lots likely don't qualify. Everyone else still files the request and gets written approval first, and the building official decides whether a concrete job qualifies.

That rule comes up on smaller jobs. A side walkway to the back gate, a stamped border to dress up an older driveway, or a shed or workshop slab can all land under $7,500. A slab under a building follows the structure for its permit, so a shed or workshop pad is not a stand-alone flatwork question. Check your parcel on the FEMA map before you count on the exemption. We pour simple pool decks too. Nearby, we also work in Hampton Hills, Terra Largo, Webster Park North, Robson Street and West Socrum.