Carrollwood Tutors

About Carrollwood

Carrollwood has a charming history all be it very short. The first homes started to be built in 1959 and continued into the early 1960’s.

The man behind the ‘original’ Carrollwood was Matt Jetton and his development company SunState Builders. They seized the opportunity to buy the land where the J.M.Ingram Fruit Corp. groves once stood when they came up for sale in the second half of the 1950s. This area held a special place in Matt Jetton’s heart because he used to play near the river as a child, riding his first bike up and down the length of Lake Carroll on his way to go swimming. This land combined with a few other parcels that they managed to acquire beside it became the land in which their new residential community would sit.

The idea was simple enough, and as Carrollwood tutors say, the simplest ideas are often the best. The neighborhood has stayed in tact as Jetton envisioned it, a safe environment for families in a beautiful rural setting with a private beach and a picturesque lake. What has kept the now highly sought after neighborhood thriving has been the close-knit fabric of the community following through with traditions and encouraging engaging in local activities and parties throughout the calendar year.

Jetton still lives in Carrollwood with his wife, and is naturally regarded highly by the community and was recently honored by the Carrollwood Cultural Center. Jetton hailed from nearby Tampa where his grandfather had cemented the family’s reputation in the building trade. In Tampa they still have a road named for his grandfather in the family name, “Jetton Avenue.” When Jetton decided on the Carrollwood development by Lake Carroll, there was an element of doubt in his mind as to whether people would move there, as it was a far distance from Tampa where most employment opportunities existed. Yet the beauty of the area spoke to him and he took the risk. Despite the beauty and serenity of the location being a great draw to the ‘original’ Carrollwood, Jetton freely admits that it was the decision that was made by the state to open the University of South Florida just a few miles away that helped sell all of the new houses they had built.

The name Carrollwood was chosen because of the areas proximity to Lake Carroll despite the hesitancy from SunState Builders’ advertising agency, that wanted to call it by a more common name used at the time e.g. Carroll Estates. Carrollwood tutors believe that they made the right choice, as the chosen name has since proven very popular and is now used for an area much greater than that of the original development. The name “Carrollwood” extending beyond the original Carrollwood village, to an area that now includes multiple zip codes.