SouthWood in Tallahassee, Florida

SouthWood is a master-planned community in southeast Tallahassee developed by The St. Joe Company.

St. Joe describes SouthWood as a master-planned, conservation-minded community in Tallahassee where residents can use more than 1,000 acres of green space, including parks and hiking and biking trails, and a 123-acre Central Park and Lake. Its page lists the Merchants Row Town Center, a community center, pool, tennis, a tot lot and parks, along with neighborhood schools and community events, and takes inquiries at (866) 417-7133. These are the developer's own descriptions, and its page notes that development plans are subject to change.

The spelling differs by source. St. Joe writes SouthWood with a capital W and registers it as a service mark, while the City and County planning documents, including the Southeast Sector Plan, write Southwood. Both refer to the same property.

SouthWood was approved as a Development of Regional Impact with Planned Unit Development zoning, and it sits inside the Southeast Sector Plan.

The Southeast Sector Plan says the City and County adopted it in keeping with their commitment to the Southern Strategy and to meet the Comprehensive Plan's requirement for a comprehensive development plan for the Southwood property within the urban service area. Objective 10.1 took effect May 20, 1996, with revisions effective August 25, 2008 and April 27, 2026. For the Southwood, Colin English and former Southside DRI lands, the plan serves as the Planned Development Master Plan.

The plan states that Southwood has an approved DRI development order and PUD zoning, and that those approvals set the project's development entitlements and master plan; for that reason, Southwood's entitlements and phasing are not repeated in the sector plan's phasing table. The City of Tallahassee's Comprehensive Plan page lists the Southeast Sector Plan and the Capital Circle Office Complex PUD Master Plan among the planned development master plans adopted for Tallahassee and Leon County.

The Capital Region Community Development District is the special district created in 2000 to serve the SouthWood lands, which covered about 3,287 acres after a 2006 expansion.

A 2006 Florida Land and Water Adjudicatory Commission notice says the district was established by rule effective February 28, 2000, covered about 3,241 acres within the City of Tallahassee and unincorporated Leon County, and petitioned to add about 45.94 acres, bringing it to about 3,286.94 acres. The related notice of proposed rule says all land in the expansion parcel is included in the Southwood Development of Regional Impact and that the district's development plan stays the same.

A later notice of rule development, with a workshop set for September 18, 2007, described a district petition to remove about 1,081.55 acres, which would leave about 2,205.39 acres. That notice does not record the outcome, so the district's present acreage should be confirmed with the district itself. The notices list the district's registered office at 123 South Calhoun Street in Tallahassee. The 2006 legal description of the district boundary runs along the southern right of way of State Road 20, Apalachee Parkway, takes in land beside State Road 363 (Capital Circle) and reaches the right of way of Tram Road, and it excludes the rights of way of Southwood Plantation Road and Old St. Augustine Road.

The Southeast Sector Plan requires a mix of homes, business, community uses and open space, with at least 22 percent of the Southwood PUD kept as open space.

The sector plan applies its land use mix separately to Southwood: 40 to 60 percent of the land in residential use, 10 to 30 percent in commercial, office or industrial use, 10 to 15 percent in community facilities, utility easements and recreation, and 20 to 30 percent in open space and greenways, with open space at a minimum of 22 percent of the Southwood PUD. Development must also comply with the applicable affordable and inclusionary housing ordinances.

Its building blocks are named districts. Neighborhood Village Centers are meant to anchor neighborhoods and discourage strip development along roads, and they sit beside Traditional Neighborhood Districts so residents can walk to shopping. Both allow 4 to 16 dwelling units per acre, and village centers carry a minimum floor area ratio of 0.5 and a maximum of 1.0 on parcels larger than 20,000 square feet. The plan says two of its school sites shall be on the Southwood property, each of which may hold a pre-kindergarten through grade 8 school with the agreement of the Leon County School Board, and it bases its school planning on a projected build-out population of about 30,000 for the sector.

SouthWood is part of Tallahassee's planned southeast growth area, where the sector plan steers offices toward Capital Circle and low-density homes toward Old St. Augustine Road.

The Southeast Sector Plan places any industrial development in the southwest quadrant of the planning area, mainly using Tram Road and Capital Circle, and says that quadrant may have none at buildout. Office and commercial uses go mainly to the northwest quadrant around Blair Stone Road and the Capital Circle Office Center, medium-density housing near the office center, low-density housing mainly in the northeast quadrant near Old St. Augustine Road, and large-lot single-family homes mainly in the southeast quadrant. No acreage inside the Urban Service Area may be added to the planning area except by a Comprehensive Plan amendment.

The land itself changes here. The City's area history page says that south of the city the hills yield to the flat terrain typical of peninsular Florida, and that most of southern Leon County is flat, sandy lowland. The same page lists Old St. Augustine among the seven roads in Leon County officially designated as canopied roads, with limits on roadside development to protect the trees; the others are Old Bainbridge, Meridian, Centerville, Miccosukee, Sunny Hill and Old Centerville. By contrast, the downtown ridge around the Capitol complex, City Hall and the County Courthouse rises above 200 feet, and the county's wildlife reserves lie in the hilly north and in the Apalachicola National Forest to the south.

The Southeast Sector Plan was revised effective April 27, 2026, and a new PUD under its rules is before the City Commission in October 2026.

The current sector plan is posted as the master plan for Southwood, the Colin English properties and the former Southside DRI lands as of April 27, 2026. For the Colin English lands in the same sector it sets Phase I at 603 acres with up to 6,030 residential units and 3,606,000 gross square feet of non-residential space, and Phase II at 458 acres with up to 4,580 units and 2,740,000 gross square feet, and it requires an elementary school site of 30 acres on the English property.

The City's zoning page lists a PUD concept plan implementing the sector plan's Medium Density residential district, changing zoning from Critical Planning Area to Planned Unit Development, with a Planning Commission hearing held September 1 and a City Commission public hearing set for October 21 at 6 p.m. in the City Commission Chambers at 300 S. Adams St. Planning staff answer questions about that project and other active land use cases at 850-891-6400.

Last verified: October 18, 2026, by reading the April 27, 2026 Southeast Sector Plan, three Florida Land and Water Adjudicatory Commission notices on the Capital Region CDD, the City's Comprehensive Plan, zoning and area history pages, and St. Joe's SouthWood page.