Synthetic turf for a small, fast-growing Lake County city

A small city building fast on flat ground

Mascotte's population went from 5,101 at the 2010 census to 6,609 in 2020, and estimates put it near 8,536 by 2024, a pace few Lake County towns can match. Unlike Groveland a few miles east, Mascotte sits mostly on level ground rather than the sand ridge, closer to the flatwoods soil that dominates Osceola County than to the excessively drained hills near Clermont.

That growth is landing as named subdivisions rather than infill on existing streets. Stanley Martin Homes won city approval for a 134-lot community at Mascotte Empire Road and Pearl Street, and Park Square Homes has built out a 78-lot community of three- and four-bedroom houses between roughly 1,300 and 1,900 sq ft. Both sit alongside older SR 50 corridor lots and rural acreage still running on wells and septic systems, so a crew can work three very different lot types in the same afternoon.

Permits: a contracted building official, not an in-house office

Mascotte doesn't run permitting in-house the way Groveland does a few miles east. The city contracts its building official work to Willdan Engineering, and applications route through the same general line, 352-557-8888, or the city's online iworq portal. As of September 2026 we found nothing published naming synthetic turf specifically in Mascotte's code, so a phone call before scheduling a crew settles what a search of the code can't.

Since Mascotte is its own permitting jurisdiction rather than unincorporated territory, the Lake County turf permit page we maintain is background reading, not the office that actually reviews a Mascotte address. the statewide May 2026 turf rule still sets the floor here regardless of which office holds the file: capped irrigation heads, a washed-rock subgrade, and turf kept out of any swale or wetland buffer.

Water: the same district as Groveland, a different set of lakes

Mascotte's own Water Division page lists the St. Johns River Water Management District among its resources, and the city has taken district money for infrastructure before: a 2018 cost-share grant put $500,000 toward replacing roughly 2.5 miles of aging water main. That puts Mascotte's utility on the same side of the line as Groveland's, even though several of the town's small lakes drain toward the Withlacoochee River system that the Southwest Florida district manages instead.

Under the St. Johns district's current shortage order, odd addresses may water Saturday only and even addresses Sunday only, with irrigation barred outright between 8 a.m. and 6 p.m. None of that matters once a synthetic lawn's heads are capped, which the state turf rule already requires everywhere in Florida.

About as far from Kissimmee as we go

Mascotte sits roughly 35 miles from downtown Kissimmee by straight line, at the outer edge of the roughly 40-mile radius we cover. A job here typically rides along with other Lake County stops rather than getting its own trip, often the same day as a visit to Groveland or Clermont a few miles closer in.