Thursday night, plans to turn open spaces into thousands of new homes passed another hurdle in Sarasota county. Now the only people standing in the way of Lakewood Ranch Southeast developers are county commissioners. The planning commission unanimously approved a zoning request, the third in two weeks for different parcels owned by those developers. Lakewood Ranch spans across parts of Manatee and Sarasota counties and is home to more than 35,000 people. Some planning commissioners signaled opposition to the plan but felt compelled to approve it. “We have a very specific job to do, which is to uphold the comprehensive plan,” said commissioner Emmalee Legler. One commissioner said he didn't agree with plans to turn hundreds of acres of former Sarasota farmland into the next phase of Lakewood Ranch but that his duties forced him to approve the zoning change. “I voted no originally on the comprehensive plan amendment,” said commissioner Justin Taylor. “But as the rezone's presented, it checks all the boxes as county staff's identified.” Developers convinced the county to change the county-wide comprehensive plan, turning the land from rural to more residential, clearing the way for a total of 5000 new homes. Michael Hutchinson lives nearby and sued the county and developers over the switch and the case will go before a state appellate judge later this month. “You, as a planning commission, should have seen numerous times the complaints from us, people out east, on how bad it is,” he told commissioners Thursday. “Right now, they want to take away the right to have rural living and convert it to urban. So in effect, future generations can't live the way I live.”