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Elon Musk's Tesla inks lease for Orlando dealership

This. I think that even if the train were to operate at a slight loss, it would behoove officials to push for such a train if only to keep drunk drivers off the road. Promoting a "drunk train" service paired with the likes of Uber or Lyft to get riders home from the station during that last mile would go a long way.

With more active threads being active on the front page of the Orlando forum, I figured it was time to unpin the archived Downtown Orlando project discussion. It still exists but you'd have to dig deep to find it, seeing as the last post in that thread was over a year ago. Here's a direct link to it for anybody interested in checking it out.

Snagged a couple of renderings from the latest MPB staff report:

^ I just created a new thread for this project here.

Novel Lucerne GDC Properties, on behalf of Orlando Health, requests a Planned Development amendment to the Columbia Park Medical Center PD. This amendment would allow for the redevelopment of the Lucerne Hospital property with a mixed-use project consisting of a 200 room hotel, several low- and mid-rise residential buildings with 660 dwelling units, 80,000 sq. ft. of commercial space, 60,000 sq. ft. of office space, and 1,137 parking spaces within three parking garages. The +/- 10.7-acre subject property is spread over three blocks on the north side of Gore Street, between Orange Avenue and Lucerne Terrace. It is currently developed with the 233,000 sq. ft. Lucerne Medical Hospital facility, consisting of the three story Lucerne Medical building, three story medical facility, two story office building and parking lot. The property is currently developed with a 139,046 sq. ft. Lucerne Medical Building, a 94,934 sq. ft. medical facility, a 9,940 sq. ft. office building and associated surface parking. Lucerne Promenade is proposed as a two-phased project with the following development program: Phase 1: Parcels 1 and 2, between Kuhl Ave. and Orange Ave. Residential: 252 multi-family dwelling units in a four-story building along the central promenade. Vehicular access (drop off) will be from Main Lane. Pedestrian access will be from the promenade. There will be an amenity area on top of the third floor. Residential units will also be atop the commercial buildings along Orange Avenue and lining the front of the parking garage between Kuhl Ave. and Main Ln. Office: 60,000 sq. ft. office along Gore St., within a three-story commercial building, with pedestrian access from the promenade. Commercial: 80,000 sq. ft. within all buildings along Orange Ave and wrapping to the west along Gore St. on both sides of Main Lane. A grocery store is envisioned at the corner of Orange Ave. and Gore St. Hotel: 200 hotel rooms within a ten-story, 132 ft. tall hotel at the north end of parcel 1, along Lucerne Circle. A vehicular drop off will occur at Main Lane. Promenade (outdoor civic/plaza): The backbone of Lucerne Promenade will be the 55,000 sq. ft. central walkway, stretch- ing from Lucerne Circle south to a fountain, then west through parcel 2 and into parcel 3 (part of Phase 2). Parking: 643 spaces within a five level parking garage on the north end of parcel 2. Phase 2: Parcel 3, between Lucerne Terr. and Kuhl Ave. Residential: 400 multi-family dwelling units within four mid rise (+/- 45-56 ft. tall) buildings oriented around a fountain, including parking garage lined with residential, facing promenade Promenade: Additional 25,000 sq. ft. continuation of the walkway, terminating at Gore St. Office: 1,000 sq. ft. Parking: 494 spaces within a five level parking garage at northeast corner of the block.

I love arcades and have always thought that they would be a practical architectural feature in Florida given how oppressive the sun and unpredictable the rain can be in the summer. A colonnade may help promote pedestrian activity, though perhaps at the expensive of increased vagrancy and less visible storefronts.

The OBJ article stated that the garage would be for hotel guests only.

Slow demolition of 'Round Building' mars new arts center

UCF's goal to open downtown campus in fall 2017

Orlando City posted some construction photos to their web site yesterday. Here are some of them:

I moved the conversation about general downtown retail (or lack thereof) to this thread in the Coffee House. Let's keep the discussion in this thread about the University Club Tower. Retail talk is fine, as long as it is directly related to this building.

I snapped this photo of the Orlando Eye this afternoon as I was driving by:

This is my concern. I'm crossing my fingers that by "first floor" the writer means "the first floor above ground level" as in buildings outside of the US where the ground floor is referred to as 0. One can hope.

New thread created here for discussion about the new University Club proposal (what the article UPSDAN linked to is about).

University Club approves 340-unit high-rise plan for downtown Cliffs Notes: - 26-story, 340-unit residential tower proposed for the University Club site at the SW corner of Rosalind Ave. & Central Blvd. - 260-feet tall. - The University Club will move into a condo taking up the entire first floor and the first floor of the 7-story parking garage. - Developer is Texas-based Mill Creek Residential. - Estimated to be completed in 2017. - A representative of the University Club sounds optimistic about getting the city to approve a density greater than 340-units. - No official renderings just yet.

StarFlyer, Vue at 360 set for Orlando

While I love the idea of turning Magnolia into a Lincoln Road type of pedestrian mall, I think it's a bit unrealistic at this point in Downtown Orlando's adolescence, unfortunately. As FLHeat mentioned, there are too many obstacles that would get in the way of a continuous flow of retail along Magnolia. Between the different civic buildings, churches, major intersections, useless spaces like the old AT&T building, redirecting Lymmo and luring retail which is already reluctant to set up shop in downtown, I just think it will be too difficult to pull off successfully right now. That said, I'd love to see Magnolia turned into a open-air "restaurant row" between Church St. and Central. The location would be so central to the work crowd, downtown residents, theater- and club-goers. Then once those 2 blocks are bustling, perhaps the concept could be expanded up Magnolia and incorporate some retail.

Downtown Orlando streets could be reworked to slow traffic, encourage walking and biking Orlando Sentinel Article - - - - - FDOT shares new I-4 Ultimate design, construction milestones Orlando Business Journal Article

The Tampa vs. Orlando debate has been moved to The Coffee House. Let's keep this thread on-topic.

You raise a good point and I feel the same way. I'll try to clean things up a bit and move the recent DPAC commentary to its respective thread. From here on out, I ask that we limit posts in these threads to photo updates and relevant commentary. Let's keep the construction updates in the threads dedicated to the projects under development and use this thread for photos of the city's skyline, streetscape, etc.

You're thinking of ArtCenter South Florida and coincidentally it was just announced on Tuesday that the building it is housed in has been sold for $88 million.

Looking forward to seeing what's in store for the University Club site. That's such a prime lot for development, linking South Eola and the CBD. Should be great views in every direction.

Source?

+1000 And it's promising that the the most intriguing elements of the project--the towers and grocer--are planned for what is now a massive parking lot, whereas the rest of the site is home to structures that would need to be demolished. So even though the project is a multi-phaser, it appears as if we'll receive the most exciting phase first.