neighborhoods Audubon Park/The Garden District/Baldwin Park

[spenser1058]

Just in time to warm up - Bungalower is reporting Lobos Coffee Roasters will open at 3000 Corrine Drive this week (in the old Marathon station):

https://bungalower.com/2020/11/30/lobos-coffee-roasters-opening-this-week-in-audubon-park/

 

[nite owℓ]

On 12/1/2020 at 10:25 AM, spenser1058 said:

Just in time to warm up - Bungalower is reporting Lobos Coffee Roasters will open at 3000 Corrine Drive this week (in the old Marathon station):

https://bungalower.com/2020/11/30/lobos-coffee-roasters-opening-this-week-in-audubon-park/

 

I really love to see old gas stations and neglected buildings renewed into something thoughtful and purposeful. Repurposing encourages unique design architecture than what we would normally otherwise get with cookie-cutter, generic storefronts.  BBD on Colonial turned out nicely - I think it was also used as a Cuban restaurant. I keep hoping someone will do something creative with the old gas station on Robinson and Orange one day.

[codypet]

49 minutes ago, nite owℓ said:

I really love to see old gas stations and neglected buildings renewed into something thoughtful and purposeful. Repurposing encourages unique design architecture than what we would normally otherwise get with cookie-cutter, generic storefronts.  BBD on Colonial turned out nicely - I think it was also used as a Cuban restaurant. I keep hoping someone will do something creative with the old gas station on Robinson and Orange one day.

The old Gulf station there I hope survives, as I also hope Ho's garage does on Mills and the Green's garage in WP, also a Gulf (Going so far as to replicate the sign.)  I like the Triangle in WP, Orlando Auto Imports and Dynasty Garage keeping some semblance of the old garages alive as well.  There's also Wally's (which we recently learned was an old gas station) and the Phillips 66 that's an ACE check cashing store at Crystal Lake and Curry Ford.   Isn't Tako Cheena in an old service station, as is Floyd's 99 in Mills 50 and Winter Park?

Then there's the most high profile Gulf in the City would make a great bar and eatery and I'm sure everyone in the city wishes it would just happen already.  

A la Carte has done amazingly to make you feel like you're in a former gas station, and you'd think this would have been a so much better location for something like that.

[spenser1058]

2 hours ago, codypet said:

The old Gulf station there I hope survives, as I also hope Ho's garage does on Mills and the Green's garage in WP, also a Gulf (Going so far as to replicate the sign.)  I like the Triangle in WP, Orlando Auto Imports and Dynasty Garage keeping some semblance of the old garages alive as well.  There's also Wally's (which we recently learned was an old gas station) and the Phillips 66 that's an ACE check cashing store at Crystal Lake and Curry Ford.   Isn't Tako Cheena in an old service station, as is Floyd's 99 in Mills 50 and Winter Park?

Then there's the most high profile Gulf in the City would make a great bar and eatery and I'm sure everyone in the city wishes it would just happen already.  

A la Carte has done amazingly to make you feel like you're in a former gas station, and you'd think this would have been a so much better location for something like that.

As a kid, there seemed to be more Gulf stations in town than any of the other brands (that seemed to be true for much of the South).

My favorite local Gulf station was the one at Ferncreek and Colonial ( where the 7-Eleven is now but it sat further back on the lot). Unlike the white tile that was the norm for the ‘50’s and ‘60’s era stations, it was primarily a blue-tinted glass.

There was also a huge Gulf sign to attract folks to the station just off the now defunct Robinson St. I-4 exit that I liked. The sign was all out of scale compared to the relatively small building at Robinson St and Orange Ave.

Celebrity trivia: my journalism teacher at Evans was the daughter of Gulf’s CEO in the ‘70’s . My sister’s boss (he was the liaison between Gulf and WDW when they were the official oil company) had been Melanie’s baby in Gone With the Wind and he was married to Sen. Barry Goldwater’s daughter.

[codypet]

@spenser1058 This one? Or was there a Gulf here before this station existed?  I always remember it as a Mobil and later a Marathon.

This station does remind me there's the old Mobil next to Pulse and I got my headliner done at an old Amoco on Michigan and Mills (which still has the pumps even)

[spenser1058]

43 minutes ago, codypet said:

@spenser1058 This one? Or was there a Gulf here before this station existed?  I always remember it as a Mobil and later a Marathon.

This station does remind me there's the old Mobil next to Pulse and I got my headliner done at an old Amoco on Michigan and Mills (which still has the pumps even)

It was a Gulf station before it was a Mobil. (Let’s see if I can get this right - in the beginning, there was Gulf. Then Boone Pickens made a run at Gulf, who went to Chevron as a white knight. Chevron then had too many stations in the South and sold them to Sohio. Shortly after, BP bought Sohio, about the time they got Amoco. Mobil then traded with BP for stations up around Seattle and thus our former Gulf stations ended up as Mobil and the station above flew their Pegasus flag proudly. Then Exxon bought Mobil and decided they had too many stations and started ditching older ones. Then this became a Marathon.)

 

 

 

[spenser1058]

More baked goods coming to Audubon Park:

https://bungalower.com/2021/06/01/new-baked-goods-shop-opening-in-audubon-park

From The Bungalower 
 

[spenser1058]

Scott J stops in at Junior’s Diner & Mexican Grill. As he notes, I remember when it was Roger’s back in 1988 . I ate there almost daily during the first campaign I managed (sadly, we lost - It was hard to take on a Republican incumbent locally back then).

Although the menu and the owners have definitely changed, in many ways it’s much the same as it was back in the Frederick era. Things change so quickly in O-town that it’s good to have a few workaday spots that keep on going year after year.

https://www.scottjosephorlando.com/reviews/65-mexican/5703-junior-s-diner-mexican-grill

Edited July 6, 2021 by spenser1058

[JFW657]

The House of Representatives has passed a transportation bill that, if approved by the Senate, will send $28 million to Central Florida for various road and infrastructure projects. Included, will be money for the long planned Corrine Drive improvements in Audubon Park...

The current transportation law expires on Sept 30, so the US Senate will need to act and approve some form of the House Bill within the next three months.

[spenser1058]

Here’s something we need a lot more of - Joybird Books is opening a used book store on Corrine Drive in the heart of the Garden District:

https://bungalower.com/2021/10/22/used-book-store-opening-in-audubon-park/

From Bungalower 

[spenser1058]

Don’t just stand there - GET ORLANDO MOVING AGAIN! Early Voting 10/25 -31 at the Supervisor of Elections Office in beautiful downtown SoDo.

[AmIReal]

The City agreed to take ownership of Corrine Dr during the January meeting. This should open the door to the proposed improvements- road diet/ narrowing, bike lanes, etc.

https://www.yourcommunitypaper.com/pageview/viewer/2022-02-01#page=4

[codypet]

“It’s actually 75 feet wide in places, which is crazy for a neighborhood service road,” Sheehan said. “They actually widened it to bring tanks and bombs into the Naval Training Center. That’s why it’s so crazy wide, but a really, really wide road like that encourages speeding, so it’s always kind of been a problem.”

Holy Crap, I didn't know that.

[FLheat]

On 2/1/2022 at 10:22 AM, AmIReal said:

The City agreed to take ownership of Corrine Dr during the January meeting. This should open the door to the proposed improvements- road diet/ narrowing, bike lanes, etc.

https://www.yourcommunitypaper.com/pageview/viewer/2022-02-01#page=4

This stands to make a major transformation to this neighborhood!  With the wide sidewalks and bike paths, it will make this stretch seem less commercial.  I know they got a large funding last spring, but I am wondering how close they are to the full cost.

[Alleri459]

On 2/1/2022 at 10:22 AM, AmIReal said:

The City agreed to take ownership of Corrine Dr during the January meeting. This should open the door to the proposed improvements- road diet/ narrowing, bike lanes, etc.

https://www.yourcommunitypaper.com/pageview/viewer/2022-02-01#page=4

This is great news! It would have a similar effect to Edgewater Drive through College Park when the City took ownership of the road from FDOT. 

[JFW657]

Well, I guess I'll continue to be the forum heretic on the subject of road diets.

I am all for beatification projects and in the case of really wide roads like Corrine Dr, narrowing them A LITTLE BIT to accommodate wider sidewalks and bike lanes.

But I would hope that they don't overdo it.

Corrine Dr is and always will be a commercial thoroughfare. Period.

Making it look like a small town main street is not going to change that and there aren't any real alternative e/w routes in that area for vehicular traffic to use instead.

Cut that road down to 2 lanes and what are drivers supposed to do? 

[codypet]

31 minutes ago, JFW657 said:

Well, I guess I'll continue to be the forum heretic on the subject of road diets.

I am all for beatification projects and in the case of really wide roads like Corrine Dr, narrowing them A LITTLE BIT to accommodate wider sidewalks and bike lanes.

But I would hope that they don't overdo it.

Corrine Dr is and always will be a commercial thoroughfare. Period.

Making it look like a small town main street is not going to change that and there aren't any real alternative e/w routes in that area for vehicular traffic to use instead.

Cut that road down to 2 lanes and what are drivers supposed to do? 

You're not gonna like Robinson and Bumby's Road diets then.   Robinson, I get a little bit since that road no longer has an exit off of I-4 so presumably the dairy truck traffic necessitating that is long gone, but Bumby?  That still sees a ton of truck traffic.  Even Robinson with its insane peak hour traffic is a hard sell.

Edited February 11, 2022 by codypet

[jack]

32 minutes ago, JFW657 said:

Well, I guess I'll continue to be the forum heretic on the subject of road diets.

I am all for beatification projects and in the case of really wide roads like Corrine Dr, narrowing them A LITTLE BIT to accommodate wider sidewalks and bike lanes.

But I would hope that they don't overdo it.

Corrine Dr is and always will be a commercial thoroughfare. Period.

Making it look like a small town main street is not going to change that and there aren't any real alternative e/w routes in that area for vehicular traffic to use instead.

Cut that road down to 2 lanes and what are drivers supposed to do? 

Use Colonial, Semoran, etc. 

[orlandocity87]

1 hour ago, JFW657 said:

Well, I guess I'll continue to be the forum heretic on the subject of road diets.

I am all for beatification projects and in the case of really wide roads like Corrine Dr, narrowing them A LITTLE BIT to accommodate wider sidewalks and bike lanes.

But I would hope that they don't overdo it.

Corrine Dr is and always will be a commercial thoroughfare. Period.

Making it look like a small town main street is not going to change that and there aren't any real alternative e/w routes in that area for vehicular traffic to use instead.

Cut that road down to 2 lanes and what are drivers supposed to do? 

I think the most recent plans still show Corrine as two lanes in each direction. The Virginia section will be one lane each direction, which is plenty because that road is surprisingly empty most of the time. 

However, as the Edgewater redo showed, you can actually move more cars on less lanes if you provide better turning opportunities, less curb cuts (e.g. into parking lots), and time the lights better.

[codypet]

36 minutes ago, orlandocity87 said:

I think the most recent plans still show Corrine as two lanes in each direction. The Virginia section will be one lane each direction, which is plenty because that road is surprisingly empty most of the time. 

However, as the Edgewater redo showed, you can actually move more cars on less lanes if you provide better turning opportunities, less curb cuts (e.g. into parking lots), and time the lights better.

IIRC The traffic counts showed that a good number of people went down Nebraska instead of staying of following Forest to Virginia.  So both roads are taking Corrine's volume.

[JFW657]

2 hours ago, codypet said:

You're not gonna like Robinson and Bumby's Road diets then.   Robinson, I get a little bit since that road no longer has an exit off of I-4 so presumably the dairy truck traffic necessitating that is long gone, but Bumby?  That still sees a ton of truck traffic.  Even Robinson with its insane peak hour traffic is a hard sell.

I'm not a fan of road diets in general. 

Do the beautification. Put in bike lanes, widened sidewalks, planters, trees, grass medians with trees, etc.

But narrowing already congested commercial thoroughfares just seems counterintuitive to me.

Without a good public mass transit system in place, car traffic is only going to increase. 

[JFW657]

2 hours ago, jack said:

Use Colonial, Semoran, etc. 

Poorest alternatives imaginable. 

IDK if you were being serious or facetious or sarcastic, but you might as well have just said "Park your car somewhere and sit in it untill the traffic dies down."  

[FLheat]

1 hour ago, JFW657 said:

Poorest alternatives imaginable. 

IDK if you were being serious or facetious or sarcastic, but you might as well have just said "Park your car somewhere and sit in it untill the traffic dies down."  

Every person sitting on colonial should be bugging the hell out of every representative to make the 408 a free highway, it's insane a city of our size does not have a free east-west beltway, we really are shortchanged on Interstate highway funding.

[codypet]

1 hour ago, FLheat said:

Every person sitting on colonial should be bugging the hell out of every representative to make the 408 a free highway, it's insane a city of our size does not have a free east-west beltway, we really are shortchanged on Interstate highway funding.

IMO that won't fix the problem and an LRT system should be running along Colonial, up 436 and then down University.  If not Along Colonial the whole way until you get to Waterford and then UCF.

[jack]

On 2/11/2022 at 1:12 PM, JFW657 said:

Poorest alternatives imaginable. 

IDK if you were being serious or facetious or sarcastic, but you might as well have just said "Park your car somewhere and sit in it untill the traffic dies down."  

A little bit of both. Seriously, that road is just a thoroughfare for most drivers. Getting to/from Baldwin Park/Winter Park to Orlando. If you live in Audubon, it has to stink that it is a cut through.