leondecollao
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Posts posted by leondecollao
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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.
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3 hours ago, HankStrong said:
As an international hub. I think Orlando, especially an Orlando with a greatly expanded MCO, is a great spot for more international flights.
I can take Virgin Atlantic/BA to London or Aer Lingus to Dublin or Emirates to Dubai. I think there are a few Caribbean, Mexican, Central/South American, & Canadian (which aren't hard international flights) airlines that do one-offs . There are some seasonal non-stop flights to Europe, as well. Those are all limited.
JetBlue is really expanding their market and they might be our first hope. Although, they don't do Asia/Africa/Europe yet (outside of NY to London). I just think it would be nice for the massive millions of tourists to not have to layover in Miami, London, Atlanta, LA, NYC, or somewhere else.
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.
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16 hours ago, jrs2 said:
wow. a new airline servicing DAB
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.
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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.
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On 9/22/2022 at 10:25 PM, codypet said:
Looks to be going great!
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.
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Another vantage point of the project from the Gallery parking garage.
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On 6/17/2022 at 6:08 PM, Uncommon said:
Great pic. For some reason this makes me wonder if the plan is still to convert Orange to a two-way street like it was announced a couple years ago.
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.
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Wild to me how much this view has changed in the past 10 years.
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8 hours ago, jrs2 said:ok. you just made a bunch of statements that contradict each other: "The city limits population doesn't matter at all. Orlando is not a small town. We don't have any skyscrapers because there is zero reason to build any. Darden is the only fortune 500 company in the city. It would be shocking if any major office builds occurred without a major influx of corporate money."
So, why is it strange about the small town talk? You just confirmed that Orlando is a small town. Big cities don't have this problem.
Before you state that city limits population doesn't matter, compare a dozen cities who's MSA's are smaller than Orlando's yet their city limits are greater, and you will see more corporate presence, taller downtown skyscrapers, and more historically built up downtown cores.
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.
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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.
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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.
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1 hour ago, popsiclebrandon said:
Yeah Shores seems prime to re-development. You could fit 100s of apts in that area plus more retail.
Plus some much needed parking for the area.
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19 hours ago, cwetteland said:
Speaking of:
Drove by Mills Park today and saw them putting up construction fencing around the empty Upshot lot.
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.....
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1 hour ago, Uncommon said:
Legitimately could not disagree more with your final sentence. Wow. Orlando is the poster child for sprawl, auto-centrism, awful development, terrible design, and a glaring lack of urban fabric. I do like it here so I am not trying to dump on it but Orlando is a collection of suburbs and neighborhoods, not a true city and places like Lake Nona are everything that is wrong with the mindset of our leaders and residents alike.
We’ll just have to agree to disagree on this.
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.
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32 minutes ago, Uncommon said:
This is so strange and such a departure from the norm. I’m usually the one defending Lake Nona lol. Still, there’s absolutely nothing urban about Lake Nona and as far as being fascinating, I don’t mean to be rude but have you traveled much? Lake Nona is absolutely not special or unique at all, certainly not enough for URBAN planners to study it. Maybe it’s groundbreaking for Orlando but this is the kind of things larger, older, and more establish cities turn up their noses at.
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.
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11 minutes ago, Uncommon said:
Nothing I said was incorrect. Land was incredibly cheap when LN was first being developed and still is cheaper now than what’s available in the CBD. I stand by what I said about the people in Lake Nona not wanting to be near the riffraff in Orlando.
Also, who is dismissing LN? I certainly am not. I love LN. But you’re currently on URBAN planet. You’re really shocked that on a site that values urbanity, some wouldn’t be thrilled with Orlando’s version of Pleasantville? The same kind of sentiment exists regarding Avalon Park btw.
And idk if I agree that mini downtowns are the future. But if they are, where Orlando is failing miserably is linking these smaller downtowns together, making the entire region feel fractured and disconnected. Once again, I love LN and would prefer to move there if I could. But I can’t imagine it being that hard to see why folks do not feel the same way.
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.
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6 hours ago, Uncommon said:The land is far cheaper. Developers can purchase for pennies on the dollar and then sell at a premium to all the rich suburbanites that don’t want to live downtown. If they wanted to, they wouldn’t be suburbanites. These ones want to live away from the city, the poor, minorities, homeless, crime, and noise, into an oasis where everything is new, shiny, upscale, and (often) whitewashed.
There will always be a market for the rich that want to be isolated. As long as people like that exist, places like Lake Nona be always be popular with some.
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.
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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.
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14 minutes ago, spenser1058 said:
The thing to remember is that Colonialtown goes back to the ‘20’s. Also, when South Vietnam fell in the ‘70’s, those who moved to the area bought existing buildings and started small shops in the older buildings that were relatively inexpensive. As a result, you didn’t see the wholesale clearance of the area by developers to build big boxes (Thank God!)
Orange Ave. south of Lake Lucerne, otoh, didn’t come into existence until the ‘50’s when the Lake Lucerne causeway was built. As a result, it was new construction along that stretch from a different era.
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.
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1 hour ago, Uncommon said:
This is good news. Hopefully Mills 50 continues to get businesses and housing to fill those couple of empty lots and storefronts sprinkled throughout. Everyone talks about Mills 50 like it’s some hot, charming, up-and-coming district, but personally I think it’s kind of ugly. Lots of graffiti, grime, not very walkable. It could definitely use a facelift. Hopefully this is a good start.
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
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24 minutes ago, orange87 said:
It would have made much more sense for Orlando City SC to make use of all that vacant land next to the stadium.
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.
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1 hour ago, spenser1058 said:
Ohhhhh, the love:
I’m sure you can take shots that make the Orlando downtown library look ok too.
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1 hour ago, AmIReal said:
I wasn't aware there is a Melbourne based company that had raised $300M in VC money to build supersonic, business passenger jets. Apparently there is and they recently broke ground on their new HQ, the 110+ acre Aerian Park in Melbourne, right next to Orlando Melbourne International Airport.
https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/as2-supersonic-jet-florida-hq/index.html
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.
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5 hours ago, dcluley98 said:
I don't know y'all, I just don't see people going out of their way to drive to destination restaurants during a pandemic, which is why a lot of the places are closing. Will it recover, of course eventually. But why locate on Church street now when there is little going on around and not the critical mass there once was? I guess it depends on timing around things opening back up, the Magic games and events returning to Amway, and Orlando City pre-events, etc. as well as the future Under-I and MEC projects.
Long term, the food hall will work out. But right now?
I might just be projecting, but I do not go drive to restaurants at all right now and haven't for a while. I go get pick-up and take out and have gone to some that have outdoor seating such as Luke's and Rusteak, but I'm not driving to and walking into a food hall.
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.
Orlando Extended Metro Developments (Volusia/Brevard/East Polk)
in Orlando
Posted
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.