The Villages
Five villages, one plan
Horizon West isn't a subdivision that grew — it's a 1995 county master plan being built out village by village. How the pieces fit, and where the town center is rising.
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The local angle
A community built from a county plan
After hard freezes ended citrus growing here in the 1980s, Orange County adopted the Horizon West Special Planning Area in 1995: five mixed-use villages — Bridgewater, Lakeside Village, Hickory Nut, Seidel, and Ovation — each ringed by greenbelts, surrounding a Town Center now being developed as Hamlin. Neighborhood names you'll hear, like Waterleigh and Independence, live inside those villages.
The practical upshot: parks, trails, and schools were planned before most rooftops arrived, and the county — not a city hall — runs planning and services. Mail says "Winter Garden" because of the ZIP code, but Horizon West sits in unincorporated Orange County.