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Orlando Extended Metro Developments (Volusia/Brevard/East Polk)


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14 hours ago, aent said:

I've heard the Villages (proper) is running out of land... I'd expect the retirement communities to move south... going more north is too far from the airport.

 

Edit; Upon googling, turns out the villages managed to get another 1127 acres from Leesberg

They just bought a large tract from an off-roading (like trucks and Jeeps) ranch up there, too.  Not sure if that is included in the 1,127 or not.

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Daytona Beach news:

Some major improvements could soon be coming to Daytona Beach's boardwalk.

A developer is now sharing a multimillion-dollar plan to draw more people in and clean up the area, extend the boardwalk 270 feet and make renovations, while building two new hotels.

The plan is to build the new hotels and extend the boardwalk down to the Harvey Avenue approach.

The developer would pay for that expansion in exchange for a $3 million tax credit from the city.

The city is working on a deal with Avista Properities to build two Marriotts and extend the boardwalk an extra 270 feet to the south of the pier. The hotels would be 12 stories.

Avista will make improvements to the boardwalk, including lighting, guardrails and a drainage system.

The city will credit Avista $3.1 million for the improvements.

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Report w/video: https://www.wftv.com/news/local/daytona-beach-development-plan-could-bring-new-hotels-boardwalk-expansion/916372138

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4 minutes ago, JFW657 said:

Daytona Beach news:

Some major improvements could soon be coming to Daytona Beach's boardwalk.

A developer is now sharing a multimillion-dollar plan to draw more people in and clean up the area, extend the boardwalk 270 feet and make renovations, while building two new hotels.

The plan is to build the new hotels and extend the boardwalk down to the Harvey Avenue approach.

The developer would pay for that expansion in exchange for a $3 million tax credit from the city.

The city is working on a deal with Avista Properities to build two Marriotts and extend the boardwalk an extra 270 feet to the south of the pier. The hotels would be 12 stories.

Avista will make improvements to the boardwalk, including lighting, guardrails and a drainage system.

The city will credit Avista $3.1 million for the improvements.

dbbwlkext01.jpg

dbbwlkext02.jpg

dbbwlkext03.jpg

Report w/video: https://www.wftv.com/news/local/daytona-beach-development-plan-could-bring-new-hotels-boardwalk-expansion/916372138

The question is, will they keep the features that make it the Broadwalk, with arcades, rides and such (not to mention using the coquina of the original), or just turn it into another boring oceanfront mall like they did with the original Marriott?

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41 minutes ago, spenser1058 said:

The question is, will they keep the features that make it the Broadwalk, with arcades, rides and such (not to mention using the coquina of the original), or just turn it into another boring oceanfront mall like they did with the original Marriott?

I'd put my money on option #2. :unsure:

I miss the old coquina stuff.

.

Edited by JFW657
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13 minutes ago, spenser1058 said:

I always found Ormond Beach to be boring and this is the latest attempt to turn Daytona into Ormond. It's like trying to turn SoBe into Pompano. They just don't get it.

I always felt they were trying to turn DB into Orlando.

Or more precisely, Disney World.

I liked the DB of the 70's and early/mid 80's.

Kinda like 42nd St around Times Square. Even though it used to be seedy,  it had character. Now it's just another fakey, plastic, Disneyfied tourist dollar magnet.

.

Edited by JFW657
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I'm not sure you guys have been there recently. The Speedway area may be like you describe, but the beach area is FAR from Disney like and is in bad need of a clean up. Business is dead. Tourist are not coming back and neither is the DB of the 70's thru mid 80's. The current condition is not seedy, it is disgusting. I've got some business property in the area and go there a couple time a month. As much as I have historical ties to the city, I would not vacation here in the current condition. Boardwalk business owner have been begging for this to happen as has the convention center. Believe me, this is a good thing.

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25 minutes ago, AmIReal said:

I'm not sure you guys have been there recently. The Speedway area may be like you describe, but the beach area is FAR from Disney like and is in bad need of a clean up. Business is dead. Tourist are not coming back and neither is the DB of the 70's thru mid 80's. The current condition is not seedy, it is disgusting. I've got some business property in the area and go there a couple time a month. As much as I have historical ties to the city, I would not vacation here in the current condition. Boardwalk business owner have been begging for this to happen as has the convention center. Believe me, this is a good thing.

That’s the same arguments used to level South Beach (thank goodness the community rebelled). We can all agree that Daytona Beach,whose government has been totally under the control of the tourism industry and the France family for decades, totally dropped the ball on redevelopment of the beachside for years. 

If it wasn’t a high rise, it got ignored. They destroyed the neighborhoods with endless special events and basically did whatever to make a few people wealthy at the expense of the community.

Basically, they built I-Drive on the beach.

When they’re done, let’s hope NASCAR can keep the beach alive, because no one else will find it worthwhile to drive to a beach town that looks like hundreds of others.

Let Ormond be Ormond - let Daytona be Daytona.

As for me, I just shifted to the funky Flagler district of NSB years ago.

I kept waiting for them to bring back Daytona, but instead they just gave us endless vistas of concrete.

Edited by spenser1058
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The way I understood it, DB's problem is mainly one of the homeless hanging around all hours of the day and night, and what to do with them/where to send them.

But as far as what has been built there, around the boardwalk it's all newer, modern highrise hotels with all the cool, old stuff long gone.

They really need to get that shelter built.

 

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10 minutes ago, AmIReal said:

I'm not sure you guys have been there recently. The Speedway area may be like you describe, but the beach area is FAR from Disney like and is in bad need of a clean up. Business is dead. Tourist are not coming back and neither is the DB of the 70's thru mid 80's. The current condition is not seedy, it is disgusting. I've got some business property in the area and go there a couple time a month. As much as I have historical ties to the city, I would not vacation here in the current condition. Boardwalk business owner have been begging for this to happen as has the convention center. Believe me, this is a good thing.

I grew up in DB. Decades ago, it was a wonderland for an impressionable kid. Now ? I’m not saying it’s fallen on hard times, but there is a rumor it’s being considered as a set for a Hunger Games sequel.

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23 minutes ago, JFW657 said:

There are some really good videos on YouTube with old film footage of Daytona Beach from decades past. Many from the 70's, 80's and 90's, and some even from the 50's and 60's. I think there's one with footage from the 30's.

I’m a member of the I Grew Up In Daytona Beach Facebook group. 

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3 hours ago, JFW657 said:

The way I understood it, DB's problem is mainly one of the homeless hanging around all hours of the day and night, and what to do with them/where to send them.

But as far as what has been built there, around the boardwalk it's all newer, modern highrise hotels with all the cool, old stuff long gone.

They really need to get that shelter built.

 

big problem, the vagrants.  even in the '80's they were there at the Boardwalk and area shopping centers along A1A.

Spenser1058 mentioned Flagler District in NSB- great place- AND, there are no homeless or vagrants over there...NONE!  Amazing.

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3 hours ago, Dale said:

I grew up in DB. Decades ago, it was a wonderland for an impressionable kid. Now ? I’m not saying it’s fallen on hard times, but there is a rumor it’s being considered as a set for a Hunger Games sequel.

 

The funny thing is that only the locals seem to have that perception. Foreigners/tourists still seem to have the mental image of Daytona Beach when it was in its heyday. I had a friend visit from Iceland who insisted that we go to DB and wouldn't listen to my protests... we made the most of it, but I felt very uncomfortable there. When visiting family in Toronto, someone asked if I lived near DB and I did my best to steer her towards other options but I doubt she's going to listen lol.

 

Edited by nite owℓ
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17 minutes ago, nite owℓ said:

Foreigners/tourists still seem to have the mental image of Daytona Beach

and this is exactly why you can't compare DB to NSB.  DB is a tourist beach. NSB, and Ormond and Pompano are locals beaches and people outside of the local community have never heard of them. That's a good thing. 

Btw, did anyone read the article about the panhandling ordinance. I think they are attempting to address that- which is also a good thing.

5 minutes ago, JFW657 said:

This is the spot where the proposed hotels are supposed to go

and so I ask, how is putting up a hotel and improving the boardwalk not a good thing to do on a vacant lot.

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32 minutes ago, nite owℓ said:

 

The funny thing is that only the locals seem to have that perception. Foreigners/tourists still seem to have the mental image of Daytona Beach when it was in its heyday. I had a friend visit from Iceland who insisted that we go to DB and wouldn't listen to my protests... we made the most of it, but I felt very uncomfortable there. When visiting family in Toronto, someone asked if I lived near DB and I did my best to steer her towards other options but I doubt she's going to listen lol.

 

Maybe they’re unburdened with never having witnessed its decline.

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1 hour ago, AmIReal said:

No, you did not.

I think what you might have been thinking of are some comments made by another poster and myself, about what could end up being built along the new, boardwalk extension, and whether or not it will look and feel like a real boardwalk with cool stuff like arcades and snack stands or like a boring strip shopping center.

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7 hours ago, spenser1058 said:

That’s the same arguments used to level South Beach (thank goodness the community rebelled). We can all agree that Daytona Beach,whose government has been totally under the control of the tourism industry and the France family for decades, totally dropped the ball on redevelopment of the beachside for years. 

If it wasn’t a high rise, it got ignored. They destroyed the neighborhoods with endless special events and basically did whatever to make a few people wealthy at the expense of the community.

Basically, they built I-Drive on the beach.

When they’re done, let’s hope NASCAR can keep the beach alive, because no one else will find it worthwhile to drive to a beach town that looks like hundreds of others.

Let Ormond be Ormond - let Daytona be Daytona.

As for me, I just shifted to the funky Flagler district of NSB years ago.

I kept waiting for them to bring back Daytona, but instead they just gave us endless vistas of concrete.

I remember that guy from CA or something that wanted to redevelop the Boardwalk back in the Nineties; they razed all those motels and houses between A1A and Ocean Ave just north of Main St., and did nothing.  The plans died out.  Of course, the merchants protested the redevelopment b/c they'd lose their spaces.  The only or one of the only buildings left from that era is the Streamline Hotel, which just got renovated.  It is a shame because there could've been more like that in that area.

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It’s ironic to me that Daytona had the most to work with (when I first came back to Florida in 1983, I used to wander around all the Daytona neighborhoods off Peninsula, Seabreeze and Main St. I had just come out at the time and after visiting the Zodiac found myself invited to all kinds of parties. Some of the townhouses in the neighborhood, not to mention the scale of the businesses that were just perfect for renovation.)

Where else but Daytona does the value of property decline on the beachside? It’s absurd but the powers that be did absolutely nothing to bring things back. Even someone as conservative as Mayor Bill knew that to bring downtown Orlando back they had to fix the neighborhoods. As homophobic as he was, he held his breath and worked with all the gay folks and straight allies to achieve the goal.

Meanwhile, the Frances and the Browns only envisioned concrete towers that no one could honestly say they loved. All they wanted was the money.

From the time A1A was first widened starting in the late ‘60’s it was all downhill. Jane Jacobs talked about having “eyes on the street” to keep up the neighborhood and when the width of the road and the foreboding towers made it impossible to do anything on Atlantic Ave. but cruise through it, that was the beginning of the end.

All the middle class folks who would have made the surrounding neighborhoods their own left until all you had was a Stalinesque strip of towers that people only came to because they needed a room for the races or the few meetings the Ocean Center attracted (which also devastated the neighborhood- would YOU want to live next to a convention center?

Then, the city insisted on special events for the “party ‘TIL you puke” crowds and did almost nothing to keep them out of the neighborhoods.

Thus began the downward spiral and now the new development in Daytona makes the palmetto scrubs by the interstate more attractive than what could have been a historic district.

The result? Hotel rooms in Daytona go for half of what they do in NSB. Whereas property values in Orlando’s historic neighborhoods are some of the highest per square foot in the metro, in Daytona they let those neighborhoods become a slum.

Oddly, the two coolest cities in Volusia now are DeLand and NSB, which were basically ignored before the tourist mavens let Daytona crater.

And now, their answer to save it? Do exactly the same things that have been killing it for 50 years.

And the purpose was to maximize profits. They’ve done exactly the opposite. It would be funny if it weren’t so tragic and worse, it’s typical of bean-counter suit mentality. It’s so widespread in the big project world and that of their bought and paid for politicians, it’s easy to understand why folks passionate for a more rational process end up looking like screaming lunatics as they try and hold back the deluge of incompetence.

Edited by spenser1058
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