Camillo Sitte

Yeah, about those “free burritos all day”, nope - not even close. I’m inclined to call this a ripoff but false and deceptive is probably more accurate. Desipte today being their “grand opening”, they actually aren’t open, so say the hastily posted signs on their doors. As for the free burritos, those are only available during two 2-hour blocks; 11AM-1PM and 5PM-7PM.

But if they did that, where then would the future local murders be displaced to?

Given the direction this thread has recently taken, this seemed like the best place for this:

They absolutely needed to do something about that intersection [light, 4-way, whatever] and have needed to do so for years. I have been hit twice at that intersection, once while going west on Central and once while going east, both times by people on Eola assuming that it already was a 4-way stop and assuming that I was going to/required to stop. The first resulted in a bit of front bumper cover damage, the second resulted is some pretty significant body work. Both times the idiots in the other cars jumped out and immediately copped an attitude, acting all indignant as to why it was that I ran the 4-way stop. And both times I replied as politely as I could muster "Because you dumb mothereffer it isn't a 4-way stop!" - a fact both drivers didn't fully embrace until after the responding OPD officer had issued them each failure to yield and at-fault citations.

The Embassy Suites is the building edge on the extreme left-hand side of that rendering, though the hotel and that corner look nothing like the way it is shown in the rendering.

Yep. That corner was an odd mix back in the day. A Domino's pizza and a strip club in the same building, a shade tree BMW, Merc, and Jaguar mechanic next door, and a Maryland Fired Chicken across the street. Now that I think about it, save for the strip club no longer being there and the old Maryland Fried Chicken building now housing a pizza joint that would shock even the good folks at Dirty Dinning , it really hasn't changed that much. I would imagine that the proximity to the juvie detention center likely keeps the property values down and limits the type of development in the immediate area.

Yes, of course. I had "churches" on my mind and wrote Church Street. Now corrected, thanks. Oh it was there, though it might have closed as early as '79. As I recall being told, at the time, it was illegal in the city of Orlando then to publicly show movies depicting penetration so "XXX" was likely more hopeful advertising than real. As I was in Junior High in the early 80's I was unable to verify this for myself. But all those great places are gone now. The Fairvilla XXX Twin up by Orlando Country Club, the Fox Hunter Lounge on Orange next to "Orange Memorial hospital" which promised a "Classier Gentleman's Experience", and the strip joint on Michigan and Ferncreek in the same building as central Orlando's only [at that time] Domino's Pizza, which had a big sign encouraging their patrons to "Bring your camera for a private glamour session". All gone. But not forgotten.

The world where [1] the six floor orange brick building on the corner of Pine and Magnolia used to be part of "First Baptist Church of Orlando" before they moved , even though it is no longer owned by "Downtown Baptist Church" [there is an objective reality that existed before 1985] and across from which to the west on Pine said XXX theater was located and where [2] humor is a respected and appreciated human quality.

When Frederick was mayor, this was before he was trading shots with a shoplifter in the Ronnie's parking lot, there was a XXX theater just across the street from First Baptist Church Orlando. Today that place is just another bar. Is that progress, or a push? Design in Orlando in the 80's always struck me as the result of someone taking an entourage pattern book from their first-year design studio and using it as a design guide. So awful. Of course today it really isn't any better. When the best space in the metro area built in the last ~40 years is Isozaki's off-limits to the public sundial, things really haven't changed for the better.

Yeah, it's certainly a bit better than it has been in recent years but the whole area needs a top-to-bottom redevelopment. And not to hate, but I am thoroughly unimpressed with what is happening at Curry Ford and Bumby. YMMV. My friends and I saw Airplane! in the Conway Twin [where the Dollar Store is now], I got my learner's permit at the DMV which used to be located where Gabriel's Subs used to be before they moved. One of my favorite restaurants was the original South Seas Seafood where you had to wait for an hour or more for a table, which used to be next door to an Entenmann's which both used to be where the Walgreen's is today and before South Seas built their giant flying saucer restaurant [and almost immediately went out of business], which is where the WaWa is now. My parents dropped off maybe twenty rolls of film a week for processing at the Eckerd's, which used to be next door to the Winn-Dixie. And in high school the Dino's pizza joint [hands-down best pizza in Orlando], located next to the DMV, was our daylight hours Al's or Peach Pit, depending on your age [Ronnies was reserved for group dates and after-dance chilling] . I wish the area would have developed along the lines of Edgewater in College Park, but Curry Ford is too wide and too busy for that. I would not however be unhappy to see the area redeveloped along the lines of what is happening on Orange between Michigan and Gore.

Really? Huh. Because I live in one of the four neighborhoods that I mentioned and I [used to] shop there. I’ve even walked there a few times. And I know for a fact that many of my neighbors still shop there though like me they would prefer a more pleasant, higher quality experience. Now granted, my data set is about n20, so not exactly scientific. If the Colonial and Paramount Publix stores can profitably coexist within a mile or so of each other, so too could the Markerplace Publix and a new store where the current Winn-Dixie is, replacing the old and slightly less decrepit store at Conway and Curry Ford. I assure you that my fellow Bel Air, Lancaster, and Davis residents would gladly go there rather than fighting Orange and Michigan traffic to get to the Marketplace Publix or SoDo Target, etc. I doubt that’s going to happen anytime soon though. But it would be nice and I would love to be proven wrong.

Actually, that Curry Ford Winn-Dixie is just a few blocks away from four of the most affluent neighborhoods in the city of Orlando; Bel Air Shores, Lancaster Park, Lake Davis and Lake Cherokee. Weekley Homes just sold the last of 6 houses they built on the site of the old Church of the Nazarene property three blocks away on Walnut, priced between $650K and $1.2M. And $1M+ houses have been selling in Bel Air, Lancaster, and Lake Davis for years.

Disagreeing with you ≠ "angry". My only "issue" is that the store is a complete $h!thole. The ceilings are stained from multitudes of leaks over the decades. The shelving is falling apart. The antiquated lighting buzzes and the stained and yellowed forty-year-old linoleum has an additional layer of yellowing on top of the first layer of yellow. Besides the health code violation of a deli and the joke of a meat department, the quality and selection of the produce is an embarrassment. I'm convinced that the reason the store's manager positions that park bench to block the west side entry doors during operating hours [what are codes anyway?] is because even they are embarrassed by their store and hope that blocking one of the entrances will discourage people from coming in and seeing just how bad it is. That place was past its sell-by date two decades ago. There is a reason why the Winn-Dixie chain and brand is on a death watch and that store is a perfect example of why. Tear it down and put something useful in its place.

That Curry Ford Winn-Dixie is an absolute craphole. I've seen photos of Soviet-era grocery stores in central Moscow that were cleaner and had a better selection. The deli is a ptomaine factory. The bakery is a sad joke. One would have to be certifiably insane to actually buy anything from that open sewer of a Mississippi Delta fish camp they call a seafood department. And the prices are no better than Publix. At least they don't charge extra for the indifferent-at-best service. Good riddance.

Harmon Photo has been where they are currently located for decades, though they did do a significant renovation in the early 2000s. The building you are referring to used to house Champagne Color & Camera, until they closed in 1995. Located behind and connected to the camera store is a much larger building, which used to house the regional Qualex overnight film processing facility. Champagne Color & Camera and Qualex were both owned by Kodak. When Kodak decided [for the second time] to get out of the retail business, they closed the camera store and moved the Qualex facility to a much larger building on OBT near Silver Star.

Whoever that is will have to have pockets deep enough to somehow convince Sprint that they need to move to someplace else the switching station/equipment center they have located in that bunker.

Initially sure, but when it finally came down to the two it was the over-representation of republicans at the polls created essentially by "tea party" activism that won the day. Obviously democrats both locally and nationwide were guilty of running many an awful campaign but I still submit that were it not for that atypical, tea party amplified turnout, that Jacobs would have had a much more difficult time in securing a solid victory. Not so sure about that - anymore. That may be her social circle but her political base - in terms of being reelected - dunno. The wingers, in bold fashion, have demonstrated time and again over the last few years that if a GOP candidate doesn't want to be run out of the party then they are going to have to embrace the crazy - at least to some degree - and I don't see Jacobs as being completely immune to that though I don't think that she is a swamp fever victim. Which is why I said that Jacobs might likely do some public pandering to the 'baggers and then work out a deal quietly and out of public view. I dunno... Angry people do tend to yell the loudest but my point was more an observation that most of Jacob's support there seemed to have a decidedly, Tell the government to keep their hands of my Medicare flavor to it. I really feel for Barton but I don't see anything to augur well for the quality of any eventual facility. I hope that someone steps up and drops some serious coin to ensure that the project is built as it should be but when Isozaki's sundial at Disney is the best architectural space in a city of 2 million people you know that a community commitment to or support of great design just doesn't exist. They tore down Rossi's tower for Christ's sake. If Kahn or Aalto had built in Orlando those sites today would no doubt have a couple of empty condo towers or surface parking lots on them.

DPAC is now a hostage to partisan politics. Jacobs is a republican who needed the teabaggers to push her over the top, Dyer is a democrat - the enemy. Jacobs, no matter how reasonable she may have been as a board member is now beholden to the 'baggers who got her elected. The best outcome now in order for construction to start anytime soon will be for Jacobs to get her pound of flesh in the press in order to appease the 'baggers while working out some accommodation with Dyer and DPAC quietly, behind the scenes. The comments posted to the Sentinel article while anecdotal are also indicative of why Orlando still has a long way to come. A significant part of the problem of course [aside from Central Florida's general cultural immaturity] is the fundamentally corrupt nature of Florida's 'tourist tax' and just how and to whom the receipts can and can not be allocated.

Actually the new AF [Air France] service is the direct replacement for the MP [Martinair] service. Air France-KLM Group owns Martinair and, with the re-branding of Martinair as an all cargo airline, are now rerouting their Orlando bound Central and Eastern European passengers through CDG on AF instead of through AMS on MP. Arkefly is Dutch charter airline that has started to do some regularly scheduled service though most of their business is still transporting people who have bought package deals through their own in-house travel and tour company. They have nothing to do with Air France-KLM Group S.A.

"The new service will provide the first direct flights between Orlando and Paris." Leave it to the Sentinel to get the facts wrong. First, a "direct flight" simply means the same plane from point A to point B with any number of stops in between. The significance of this new service is that it is a "non-stop" flight. More egregious however is the fact that Delta offered non-stop service from Orlando [MCO] to Paris [ORY] way back in the 90's.

This is correct - which is why I said, "not to mention [the restaurants at] Church Street Station." My point was that the CSS restaurants were also available to Magic fans. Downtown Disney and Universal CityWalk killed-off CSS as all three were trying to serve the same, limited demographic and CSS just wasn't hip enough at the time to beat out their newer competition. I am actually posting this on my Tilt while watching the Magic hang 40 on Chicago!

That

Hmm, I am not so sure. I am more than willing to be proven wrong but if I had to bet I would wager that a significant majority of fans, though in larger numbers, will do just what they do now, eat and drink at all of the new cafes and vendors inside the Center and/or in their club/mezzanine seating or luxury suites

Add Doc's to the ever-growing list of downtown restaurants closing. With Manuel