jliv
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Posts posted by jliv
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55 minutes ago, Alleri459 said:
Not sure how feasible this location can be with track curves and the existing structures, but I think a Miami Central style station here could work.
This month, Universal bought the tract of land south of Destination Parkway and east of the bus superstop. The tract includes the land to the east with the retention ponds. I’m guessing this land will part of the donation Universal plans to give for the station.
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23 hours ago, jrs2 said:
I remember when the right side of this photo was the downtown skyline! (And when they built “Barnett Plaza” to the left)
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23 hours ago, orlandocity87 said:
The article linked to this presentation, which I think is the most informative I've seen for the different SunRail options. The last option (3A + 3B + 3D) seems like a no-brainer.
That ridership estimate for 3A+3B (existing Sunrail to MCO and OCCC) doesn’t make sense to me, as it says there would only be 700,000 additional riders in 2026 if the leg was added from Sunrail to OCCC. That number strikes me as a bit low, considering how many arrivals at MCO I assume would opt to take a train closer to their destination and take a last-mile transportation option from there. The convenience is undeniable for a hassle-free vacation.
I’d also like to see plans for transit-orientated development near these proposed new stations. This oddly is missing from the discussions. I’d hope for something the scale of MiamiCentral or more, given the sheer number of people who would be looking for a place to stay nearby and a bite to eat. There’s something exciting about stepping out of a train station in a new place and switching to “vacation” mode. I would hate if all one can look forward to is a parking garage and a bus depot. -
11 minutes ago, jack said:
RCID made sense because at the time, our rural and poor state could not provide the necessary infrastructure for Disney.
Universal and Sea World both are in the urbanized areas of Central Florida. Their districts do not make as much sense now that all of the infrastructure are in. But if they could carve out an area and pay 100% of their own policing, fire, roads etc, god bless them and let them do it.
I am a big fan of these types of districts and support the creation of them. It is the only way to guarantee tax dollars stay very local.
My suspicion is an expanded special district will be needed to allow for additional property tax assessments on the properties which will benefit the most from the Sunshine Corridor, since a sales tax increase is a more difficult mountain to climb. A $4 billion line mostly benefiting tourists is going to be a hard sell for Orange County voters considering a sales tax increase. However, there is a clear case that adding more lanes to I-4 will never solve that traffic clusterf***, and a fixed guideway system is the only way to move the growing number of visitors (and I think there is a lot more growth possible). Property tax increases are probably the only other likely options.
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6 hours ago, jrs2 said:
there's a lot of construction in and around the I-Drive strip or swath, if you will, from Premium Outlets south, which affects Oakridge, I-Drive, Carrier, and Universal Blvd.
Yes, that streetscape north of SLR does suck...a lot. But a bunch of "no man's land" projects have been built and are u/c to reduce the number of those empty tracts and parking lots for the better. So much has been built in the past 5-6 years it’s insane.
I’ll celebrate when they demo that building with the big flying saucer on top!
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16 hours ago, codypet said:
Incidentally another one to two story hotel at International Drive and Kirkman just burned to the ground so that could either become something new or it could just sit there as a burnt husk for the rest of the decade.
You know, I-Drive has been a hot mess from inception. It started feeling seedy back in the 80’s, even when most of the development was still new. I remember being dragged to those outlet malls as a kid and thinking, what a dump! It needs a Steve Wynn (without the casinos, of course) to bring in more exciting mixed use developments, to replace all of the aging junk. You’d think, with 80 million annual visitors, there would be more vision and funding in place. They could at least redo the streetscape of north I-Drive!
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4 hours ago, codypet said:
Yea it'll force a redesign of the building, claim it'll cost $$$$$$ to redesign the building when it'll really cost $$$ or they were planning on redesigning anyway for one reason or another. The more they play the victim, the more leverage they get over the City to pay swiftly and generously.
It would also be a waste of a highly-visible space for such a bland building you could easily plop into Maitland. That stretch of Orange Avenue has been in need of some love for decades; it could be a great pedestrian thoroughfare with restaurants, cafes and shops as an alternative Park Avenue (with a focus on homewares and design). Instead, you get another Lego piece dropped into the mess of medical office buildings and drive-through banks which suck the life out of too many intown main streets.
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Westcourt? Is it a downtown entertainment district mere blocks from a failed district from the past, or is it a facility for your aging loved ones, whether they need the autonomy independent living can provide, or the specialist services of assisted living and memory care? Westcourt has facilities across the state of Florida where you can keep them close, and even join them for our Friday fish dinner in the cafeteria!
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15 hours ago, sethM said:
You have to zoom out and look at the guy running it and see what he was wanting to get out of it. The idea was to open a radical new concept, generate a ton of buzz and investor interest, and then immediately expand all over the country. By doing this you can do the tech company approach of disrupter followed by figuring out how to make money later. Traditional food hall is the obvious choice but then investors would be basing their choice to invest based on the financials which I'm sure were piss poor.
Unfortunately for the guy it looks like investors were smart enough to also realize the full service food hall concept is stupid.
Tech company “disruptors” do a lot of prototyping and testing before general release of products. This concept seemed to be half-baked out of the oven!
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10 minutes ago, codypet said:
??? So is the downtown location dead?
Dunno…the article says there are two locations in the works. My suspicion is they’ll cancel the downtown location…
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The Parliament House is coming to Ivanhoe! Where TF are all these people going to park?
https://www.bizjournals.com/orlando/news/2024/04/19/parliament-house-doubles-plans.html
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4 minutes ago, jgardnerucf said:
What about the Hampton Inn over the loading dock out back?
My understanding is there are plans to build a residential tower with an 800-seat theater at the base in the back. Doesn’t strike me as a good location for another theater (or a residential tower); there are plenty of spaces around downtown you could put it which are more prominent.
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16 hours ago, Ivanhoe said:
The "lawn" of the performing arts center was not completed as per the original vision. Given that it is quite literally the front lawn for Orlando, I think it deserves attention it is not getting.
The original vision was for plots on the left and right of the “lawn” to be commercially developed. That plan failed, so they’ve changed tact. Not sure an amphitheater is the best use of that space.
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9 hours ago, Ivanhoe said:
Completion of the vision for the performing arts center should be a priority before expansion of Lake Eola.
I thought they already completed the vision with Phase 2. “Phase 3” seemed to be a last minute attempt to get a horse in the race IMHO.
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1 hour ago, Alleri459 said:
Lack of land available land resorting to large redevelopment projects, high population density, more urbanized environment. All of this has created a critical mass for quite a long time now in a place like Broward, which is close to 2 million people alone.
Also, a large property developer (Hines) who can get projects of this scale funded, because of their track record. The current owner of the Sentinel property is not a developer in Orlando; he basically buys valuable plots and subdivides it piecemeal to other developers to build. (See Midtown Miami and Society/Central Station). So you won’t see a massive project like that, and I’m not sure there are other plots of that size in the central core to do something like that.
It reminds me of Water Street in Tampa, another project built by well-capitalized developers.
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1 hour ago, codypet said:
I think there's been a few major missteps that hurt the City long term.
I dunno. I don’t think there were many great options for FTU/UCF at the time close in town, as with the convention center 20 years later. You only need to look at a Google Map of downtown to see how difficult it would’ve been for either to scale up to the size they are today in a downtown location, without wiping out the redlined areas west of Division (but that’s a whole other story). FTU was supposed to be a feeder school for the nascent Brevard space industry, so there was probably a compromise in location given Orlando’s own need for engineers working in defence.
i blame the city planners (did they have any?) in the 1920’s for not having the foresight to preserve land for a 60,000-student university campus while they were subdividing lots for those Craftsman bungalows during the land boom.
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45 minutes ago, shardoon said:
I am doubtful locals would take the train to the port. It is too close and a waste of time to park at the airport, wait for the train, get off 20 minutes later and get into a bus for the last 8 miles to the port. The out of towners that land in the airport for their cruise will be the primary utilizers. Honestly, this Cocoa station is in a location that is of no real use for people other than cruise traffic. It is not like it is near a nice downtown city area and it is nowhere near the beaches.
It sounds to me like the Cocoa station will be the sole train station in Brevard (at least, initially). If Amtrak service is added (as mentioned in an earlier post), the Cocoa station becomes much more vital as a transfer point for a number of destinations. Another potential service not previously mentioned: SunRail service to Brevard. The Sunshine Corridor proposal, as it currently stands, includes a line from Disney via MCO to a new Sunrail station near the 528/Innovation Way, anticipating Sunbridge growth in the future. It’s not an incredible leap to consider an extension to Cocoa and Melbourne/Palm Bay for SunRail, into another large population center currently without any passenger rail service.
Here’s a link to a study done in 2016 to identify potential train station sites, if you’re interested:
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This quote is from the Wall Street Journal recently;
Before the pandemic, some in the Orlando business community felt anxious about the spread-out nature of the city’s development and the lack of dense office space downtown, says Tim Giuliani, president of the Orlando Economic Partnership. “We were concerned there should be more towers going up,” he says.Now, though, the more-suburban nature of the city’s economic development seems better-suited to the current economic moment, he says. More companies are opening new locations in Orlando in areas ranging from aerospace to clean tech, with 35% of their inquiries coming from overseas and California, he says, an increase from years past.
Does that mean downtown development is dead in the water for the foreseeable future?
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22 hours ago, jrs2 said:
it may be the catalyst to allow FEC to get Federal $$$ to pay for upgrading that stretch of track...
(a little side topic) Going back to the Amtrak study, another thing I would hope they’d consider is replacing the old clunky Viewliner and Superliner sleeper cars with the new Siemens sleeper cars as implemented for the new European NightJet service. I haven’t taken the NightJet yet, but I want to. There’s something to be said for a leisurely train journey! Video here:
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On 3/4/2024 at 4:00 PM, cubanbread said:
I don't know where to post this info but Amtrak is looking to restore Florida to Chicago service. It would also stop in Atlanta, Nashville, and Indianapolis. There's a bit of an uproar in Tampa because it would bypass Union Station and instead head straight to Miami from Orlando. https://www.wusf.org/transportation/2024-03-04/amtrak-bypasses-tampa-chicago-to-florida-service
Considering they're estimating it will take 33hours from Chicago to Miami adding another couple of hours to that trip doesn't seem like that big of a deal so it doesn't make a lot of sense not to include Tampa. Plus, couldn't this be a way for them to increase daily service between Tampa and Orlando or Tampa and Miami?
Amtrak is also studying the possibility of adding service from Dallas to Miami via Jacksonville, but…here’s the kicker…the trains would use the Florida East Coast Railway and bypass both Orlando and Tampa while adding new service to Daytona Beach and Palm Bay. This might be a net win for Florida mobility: it could hasten both double-tracking of the rest of the FECR from Cocoa to Jacksonville, along with building the Tampa extension via the Sunshine Corridor. It may be that the Chicago-Miami route also uses the FECR, with Disney or Tampa-bound passengers transferring at a Cocoa station for their onward journey into central Florida. As someone who has taken the Silver Meteor from DC to Miami (in a sleeper car) I found the Tampa-Lakeland detour a bit awkward. A smartly-timed transfer to one of the new Amtrak Charger trains (or even a Brightline train), using new Brightline tracks, strikes me as a more comfortable and faster option than those rickety ol’ CSX freight tracks!
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There was a time when the most violence came from Courtney Love when she punched those dudes in the front row from the stage at the Edge. I blame rap and “EDM”. Mostly dumb forms of music which draw scores of dumb people on coke. I wonder how much mafia money has flowed downtown in recent years.
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3 hours ago, codypet said:
Maybe retiring the 32 was an attempt to butter up our friend into buying the team? Maaaaybbeee?
Please, no….I’m still bitter from the 90’s…
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On 2/8/2024 at 5:01 PM, jrs2 said:
oh...you're thinking maybe this whole entertainment complex deal is for a package deal to unload the team to a new owner... well, that could explain why they never moved forward with any real meaningful development beyond some demo and plans being filed...
It makes sense. It might have been an intention back in the day by RDV Sports to boost the overall value of the sports business, but now everything is in the hands of the DeVos idle heirs, who may not have the same passion as Dick Sr. for the Magic and their host city (unless they were called the Grand Rapids Magic).
I look at how the new breed of sports owners are aggressively investing in their communities (look at Jeff Vinik in Tampa) and wish Orlando had a figure like that. Someone with both deep pockets and a love for their community. A team sale might actually lead to more progress with a more ambitious project.
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Here’s an interesting possibility: the development is being made “shovel-ready” for a potential package deal in the near future to be sold along with the Magic, to unload the land without controversy. They’ve sold off the Maitland Sportsplex, declined to renew Amway naming rights…nothing strikes me as the DeVos family increasing their footprint in Central Florida…. what’s next?
There are probably some legal agreements RDV Sports has to continue to honor with the city as part of the original land deal, but it continues to strike me as dubious. Like that great “business opportunity” your new friend wants to show you during a party he’s hosting for some of his other new friends. (Don’t mind the gentleman in the suit with a big binder and case full of cleaning products).
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SunRail
in Orlando
Posted
I was just reading about the history of Walt Disney World, and it’s amazing how the district floated through the Florida Legislature in the 1960’s through the power of good ol’ boy networking, with many representatives not even reading the bill. It was basically “If so-and-so says it’s needed, I trust him.” Special districts were not unusual in Florida back then; it was the scale of powers the state was essentially granting to a private corporation through a “super-district” which was controversial. Orange County had immense problems with it, of course.