leondecollao

Embry Riddle’s new student union looks amazing!

What other area would you write about? Mills 50 and Audobon are definitely the most trendy (millennial wise) parts of town. I recently advised a travel writer to write about mills 50 and Audubon (plus Ivanhoe) so I am clearly part of the problem lol.

I know Orlando is notorious for slow approvals but what does this have to do with the city? The developers probably don’t have the financing in place or they would have moved faster.

I thought we were discussing the size of companies headquartered here? I didn't realize we were discussing the quality of healthcare......

Since you mentioned Adventist, Adventist is #6 (last I checked) on largest non-profit hospital systems in the nation (most hospital systems are non-profits). While a "private" company, they are more than likely the most important HQ in town. And just for fun - Florida Hospital downtown is the 2nd largest hospital in the nation. while ORMC is the 7th largest. My 2 cents on this whole discussion - anyone that doesn't see the tremendous growth and opportunity in this city needs to get their eyes checked.

That’s fair but that’s how everyone of these deals work. That’s neither a positive or negative at this stage. Even if the richest person alive was behind this, he/she would still be looking for equity investors. I do think it is very unlikely they find those necessary equity partners - “grand” projects are terrible investments. These days, grand projects are very unlikely worldwide unless they are financed by a sheikh or the government of China.

I’m pretty sure the wave park was open at artegon back in the day. However, you guys all make a great point that I stress every time I hear the tourism industry in Orlando is overbuilt. There’s no reason we shouldn’t have everything Dubai is creating right now - we will most likely be the most visited city in the planet at some point. Imo, the city should double and triple down on tourism and encourage all ancillary industries to tourism to base operations here. I like the tech innovation push but I think most of our efforts should be spent where we have clear advantages (tourism, space, healthcare). We should also consider focusing on industries that will benefit from our robust population growth (healthcare and education have already hugely benefited from population growth alone) Tourism can also mean more than just theme parks, one example might be medical tourism, which would take advantage of our central location, good airport connections, strong local health systems, and robust lodging infrastructure. Just a couple random thoughts.....

Activity on both the Magic lot and Church Street plaza today.

The developers are doing these projects to make money, that's it. As a previous poster pointed out, if it made sense to build taller, they would.

This. This is clearly not an Orlando-only phenomenon. All downtowns across America basically died 40, 50, 60 years ago. We can reminisce all we want about how urban downtowns used to be but it was generations prior that killed off downtowns. It's taking a gargantuan effort to try to bring back urbanism to downtowns in this country but it's pretty hard when most downtowns are a shell of what they used to be from a population standpoint. For example, the population of Boston is lower now than it was 100 years ago! Downtown Boston used to be incredibly vibrant pre-suburban America, pre-malls.

The space in front of Dr. Phillips performing arts center is becoming such a unique, great space for the community. Happy to see it.

Only solution would be to get more corporations to move to Orlando. Every city in the country has a ton of office buildings in the suburbs. I'd like to see office space breakdowns between downtown and suburbs for other American cities to see where we stand. How much office space can be expected to be downtown versus suburbs in most MSAs? 20%, 30%? just throwing numbers out there since I have no idea.

Take this with a grain of salt but word on the street is a well known home builder is in final negotiations to build town homes in this development. Would be a high-end project so could be a nice shot in the arm for the area and Ravaudage.

I agree with Pete. I can only go to 5-7 games and trying to decide which ones I will purchase. All my soccer fanatic friends are on the same boat and they were all at the first game. 40k is not sustainable, IMO. I think opening up the corners and leaving it at 23k is probably best. I would only consider opening up more if people were literally beating down the doors. We need to make sure we can walk before we run.

I love coffee, love outdoor seating, and I love a good rooftop deck. Still, Segafredo has completely exceeded my expectations. Great coffee, food is good at a good price and one of the best almond croissants I have had in years (only served in the morning). Full liquor bar as well which was a bit of a shocker to me but the place def does a good job doubling as a lounge at night. Highly recommend checking it out.

I'm going to have to agree with tm68, went there last week and loved it. The chicken sandwich with bacon and egg was a steal (I thought) at 6.90 and tasted great. I thought the atmosphere and service was pretty nice as well. On the lots of salt bit - that's kind of a Brazilian and Latin America thing. Argentinian and Brazilian steakhouses all load up on the salt. And it's not just restaurants, people cook that way at home too from my experience. I'm from Chile and every cook out is a salt fest. Could see that being an issue for some but it's to be expected.

As much as I would like this, there's no way Nordstrom's succeeds downtown. Do we really think that they would have better performance downtown with little to no foot traffic to speak of versus Florida Mall which is extremely busy?

I haven't been there yet so can't comment from experience but if you were to describe to me a German restaurant with long wood tables and benches I would think that's very "Bavaria" and very "Oktoberfest" of them and not "Epcot-ish". Perhaps there is more to the place that gives it an epcot vibe but those two items you describe scream Bavaria to me.

If they are indeed necessary to offset costs then build them by all means but I would much rather prefer the block across DPAC to remain park land like Bryant Park in NYC. We have no space like it in Orlando.