leondecollao

Locals are against everything in Daytona. I understand where they are coming from but Daytona sorely needs investment dollars to come in and this would be the first hotel developed south of international speedway in 35 years. Hard to make the case that building is out of control or that one more restaurant in a beachside that desperately needs it is gonna overwhelm traffic, etc.

I think people are still vastly underestimating the big deal this could be…..I was at MCO two days ago and all American Airlines flights were delayed or cancelled, including two direct flights to Miami. People were literally sitting at the airport for HOURS waiting for a flight after security for a trip that is just a 3.5 hour drive. All of them appeared to be well to do foreign tourists that were flying for the “convenience”. There’s a market for this rail.

Would be awesome but hard to see us getting international hub status with anyone before Miami does. Perhaps British airlines considering the number of Brits visiting Orlando regularly but hard to see Asian flights here imo.

Avelo is also doing service out of Melbourne. I guess they are really betting on Florida which I completely understand but get the nagging feeling they are expanding too fast.

I too am very impressed with Brightline. It’s everything we wish sunrail would be - free shuttles to sporting events, late night service, weekend service, etc. Pleasantly surprised to see a train project managed and planned so well.

British folks complaining about our airports is hilarious. I just flew into and out of Manchester England and that airport makes me never want to travel again.

Another vantage point of the project from the Gallery parking garage.

It is an interesting question, especially considering they got rid of the fourth lane and street parking on the right side of the road for an extra wide bike lane. That bike lane (or I guess they call it a multi-modal transportation lane) might be my favorite transportation improvement in town. That couple blocks corridor feels fresh, green, urban even.

Wild to me how much this view has changed in the past 10 years.

I confirmed Orlando is a small town? Huh? It’s a verifiable fact that we are a large city and growing faster than any other large city in the whole country. I don’t get the small town talk at all. The reason we don’t have any corporate presence to speak of is because we lack history. We literally grew from a cow town to 2.6m in 50 years. It’s the same reason Florida only has 19 Fortune 500 companies. It’s easy to forget but this whole state was swamp backwater until relatively recently. As one example, we didn’t even have a single major league team in any sport until the 60s with the dolphins and we didn’t have a single MLB team until 1993. yeah, a city like Pittsburgh (just one random examples but there’s a lot similar examples) might have more corporate presence but it’s not about city limits, it’s because companies like Mellon, PPG, PNC, Kraft all grew up with the city over the last two hundred years. In order for us to to have those type of local corporates, we’ll need to wait another 100 years or convince some to move here. Last point I’ll make - I LOVE how quaint our downtown has managed to stay. I don’t ever want to see our downtown turn into the hell hole that is Houston, for one example.

So strange to see people on this thread talking about Orlando being a small town or about the population within city limits as if that matters at all. Orlando is the 22nd largest MSA per the latest census data (with a population of 2.6m) and is growing faster than any of the 21 MSA’s above it. We will be a top twenty city very soon. Orlando is not a small town guys. We don’t have any skyscrapers because there is zero reason to build any. I may be wrong but I believe Darden is the only Fortune 500 company in the city. Heck, the whole state of Florida only has 19 Fortune 500 companies last I checked. Without a large influx of corporate money into this town, any major office space builds would shock me.

I kinda can’t believe how nice the food hall at the Yard is.....WHOAAAAA! https://www.instagram.com/p/CWZQmcVMMoK/?utm_medium=copy_link Grand opening tomorrow it seems.

Plus some much needed parking for the area.

Banners are being put up right now for what looks like a six or so story building called “upshot medical center”. Was not able to grab a pic driving by.....

I actually think we’d agree on a lot over a beer. I agree Orlando is a botched mess of sprawl but I save that type of hate for places like Horizons West while hoping Lake Nona can turn out to be something more.

I strongly disagree. Mini-hubs in a 15-minute city model appear to be the part of our urban planning future and Lake Nona is the best we got and one of the more interesting in the whole country. It is incredibly rare to have large swaths of land owned by a single entity and for that entity to have some level of vision for it. We once had one such opportunity in Baldwin Park (and previously with Disney) and yes, people do study it as a model for modern neighborhood planning. There are only a couple other neighborhoods like Baldwin Park in the whole country (issaquah Highlands in Seattle comes to mind). When you have a large blank slate like Lake Nona, it is an opportunity and I hope it succeeds. I certainly hope the town center can become a hub for south Orlando, hope it can attract more companies to Orlando, etc. imo, large “more mature” cities have a ton of systemic problems they are dealing with and that’s why de-infrastructure is a real thing these days. Nothing I’d be jealous of.

I’m shocked people are dismissive of LN especially on Urban Planet because I’m watching the development of Nona with the same interest i’m watching the development of Egypt’s new capital or with the same interest I read about other large scale urban-suburban projects in the past like Brasilia or some of the new cities that popped up overnight in China. LN is a fascinating experiment and the only one I can think of that was kick started by one private company rather than a government. I’m gonna go out on a limb - if LN proves to be successful, urban planners will certainly study it in the future.

The land in Nona is not cheap anymore. But developers needed large swaths of empty land to develop and Lake Nona offers plenty. Anyone that has tried to develop anything near DTO will tell you there is no land anywhere near downtown that’s available, affordable, and meets required specs. Any land close to downtown is sky high expensive and forces developers into developing only a handful of things that can make money on relatively small lots. Lake Nona is a thing for a lot of reasons and I’m shocked that people on this forum are dismissing it. You could have dismissed it 10 years ago but it is now an extremely successful development with a lot going for it. I suspect most of the growth in the next 5-10 years in the Orlando MSA will be in Lake Nona and Horizons West and it’s not because “rich people want to be isolated”. Rich folks live in Windermere and Winter Park and almost nothing will get developed in either expect for some retail and maybe a hotel or two eventually. Developers and people with some disposable income have to look elsewhere and Lake Nona offers a middle to upper middle class quality of life that’s hard to match anywhere else in Orlando. Lastly - now that hybrid and remote work are here to stay, hard to make a case for downtowns going forward. Little mini downtowns that are self sustaining are probably the future - the “15 minute city” idea is really taking off and Lake Nona is the best example we got but it’s also the reason downtowns across central Florida are flourishing (winter garden, Sanford, etc)....we just don’t need one central place that everyone needs to drive to as much anymore. I for one will root for Lake Nona and hope it turns into an exciting mix of urban and suburban. It’s well on its way.

Incredibly important development for downtown Orlando but man oh man, I think Central Station might have been a more interesting project to track....at least we could complain about the wood construction with Central Station. This thing is basically just a Maitland office park.

Agreed. We are lucky that part of town was undeveloped for so many years. We got a part of town with actual character out of it.

I gotta say, I feel like the grime is def part of the charm with Mills 50. Not every development or busy part of town needs to be shiny and new. Mills 50 reminds of a time when not everything needed to be spic and span and I think it’s refreshing. I think it has the perfect amount of grime

A soccer team needs multiple full size fields in a practice facility so they need far more space than available next to the stadium. I do recall the team had announced plans to turn the lot next to the stadium into a park and a pre-game festivities area. I know they ran into remediation issues when they first started excavating but haven’t heard anything for a couple of years. Guess they must have abandoned those plans.

I’m sure you can take shots that make the Orlando downtown library look ok too.

I didn’t even know there were startups working on supersonic flight. I just lost my last thirty minutes reading about the space and companies in it....thanks for sharing the link.

Completely agree with your point that opening now would be disastrous but no one is talking about opening now. It’s going to be a while before this thing opens and we will hopefully have mass immunity by then.