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Jack noted, "I am not familiar with a city that used City Hall to successfully bring in retail. Generally, it seems they lucked into it." We did - both Publix and Plaza Cinema Cafe came about because of development incentives. So did Greenville, Kansas City and a host of other cities. As to luck, we know that's right - as both Lincoln did during the Civil War and FDR did during the Depression, you keep "throwing things at the wall and see what sticks." When it comes to retail, there's no one even trying to throw anything at the wall. It's important to note, however, that luck is the residue of design. Someone who has a successful retail background will not only have the knowledge, but more importantly know the players to say, "how about giving us a shot?" We know that Simon, for example, pulled off retailers like H&M and Brooks Brothers because of their record, even when the properties they put them in were by no means the best selection. As I was taught long ago in the fund-raising business, "people give to people, not to causes."

 

Now, if Jack is correct that Mr. Chatmon has some grand and glorious retail history, so be it. The research I've done indicates a background in government in Albany, GA (if anyone knows of Albany as the cutting-edge example of downtown redevelopment, I sure have missed that story and I've heard about other successful places like Lynchburg, VA.) In any event, Mr. Chatmon has been in place here for several years and retail has gone backward, not forward. Whatever his history, it hasn't resulted in success in Orlando.

 

"Cities and neighborhood generally get the retail they deserve." Of course. Pine Hills has a Walgreens. Is Pine Hills a more successful area than downtown? Retailers are herd animals, they have to be led. No one is trying to lead them downtown and the results are predictable. Again, we've debunked with examples in city after city the excuses used as to why downtown Orlando retail is the one element missing. The bottom line is simple - no one is trying. And if the market is all you need to bring retail, why did Orlando/Orange County spend millions on infrastructure to bring forth Millenia and gave $1 million to Cousins to tear down Colonial Plaza Mall? The bottom line, Orlando gets what it wants, just like the money that came out of nowhere to pay for a soccer stadium that was on no one's radar. The bottom line is priorities - and I'll address that in just a moment.

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First, I come to praise Buddy Dyer, not to bury him. Much of the reason we are having this discussion is because of the forward movement Buddy has engendered. He changed the "stuck in a rut" attitude of the latter-day Hood administration toward downtown and brought forth what Walt Disney called the "wienies" to draw people back to the core.

 

So, everything should be hunky-dory downtown today, right? But it isn't. And the question is, why not? If a community is a balanced, living, organic thing, what is causing downtown to seem out of plumb? Interestingly, if you go down the list of what you expect to see in successful communities, we have most of what you need. We certainly have residents now, we have plenty of jobs, we have a pretty good mix of schools from pre-school to law school (it could be better with an undergraduate facility, but that is quite an undertaking.) We have churches, entertainment, a great supermarket, we have bars, bars and more bars.

 

Hmmmm - could it be that, like Florida lakes overrun by algae or aquatic nuisance plants, the balance of the downtown ecostructure has tilted to an invasive species? Now, do we, like the towns around Lake Apopka, just ignore the problem well into the 1980's because we don't want to upset the powers that be and it's to hard to fix anyway? Or, do we, as they've done with Lake Apopka, finally identify the problem and start to try solutions, even though we know some of them may not work?

 

With apologies for mixing metaphors, I'm also reminded of NASA and, as The Planetary Society has noted, wondered if we had had a goal after Apollo ended, and we just moved forward an inch or too each year toward that goal instead of just throwing money at one unrelated project after another, might we be much closer to colonizing the moon and heading toward Mars today? Buddy's successful support which led to the opening of Publix and Cobb gave us one of the proudest days in Orlando history. Then we had a dead stop, instead of developing a plan to add a drug store, hardware store, bike store and little by little work our way up to something like an abbreviated Macy's or Target. Instead, residents developed the habit of getting in their cars (which they had to buy to survive) to shop (meanwhile, workers and non-residents wondered why downtown didn't thrive during the prime retail hours) and the bars continued to proliferate block by block. And the 7-Elevens too (gotta have smokes to go to the bar, you know)!

 

It's time to restore the balance to downtown. The missing key is retail to fill in the hours between 5 and 11pm and on the weekends, and most importantly, to ensure that none of our thousands of downtown residents has to leave to fulfill the essentials of daily life. Let's do it - call City Hall today and tell Buddy and your City Commissioner that it's time to finish the job downtown.

Edited by spenser1058
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"The bottom line, Orlando gets what it wants, just like the money that came out of nowhere to pay for a soccer stadium that was on no one's radar. The bottom line is priorities - and I'll address that in just a moment."

 

Do have to reply:

 

it's been very clear for over two years that the team has wanted to build a stadium, so the term nowhere is not fair.  the team has never denied not trying to build a soccer specific home from day one many months ago.  in fact, soccer stadium proposals date back for 10+ years for downtown

Edited by tm68
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7000 sqft of retails in the Vue (prime location) sitting empty

 

Just wanted to let you know that this space (7,766 square feet) was purchased by the law firm Stovash, Case & Tingley back in October of 2010.  This was one of the first units to be sold by the developer who purchased at auction the unsold inventory during the bankruptcy foreclosure of the original developer.  Fitting that a law firm snagged it for their offices.

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The accomplishments you mention happened when the City was flush with cash. They have been barely hanging on since the recession started. The CRA, who was so generous during the good years, had to dip into reserves to keep operating. 

 

Thomas worked for a Downtown organization prior to Orlando. Before that he was a business man. 

 

I tried to get Walgreens once a few years ago. The regional head had been looking at Downtown but chose not to pursue it. He liked the CBD during the week but the weekends were a little dead. He like the Eola region during the weekend, but during the week, the numbers were not there. 

 

I remember another broker was working with CVS at that time and they could not find a suitable location. The only good spots would have been teardowns and prices were too high. 

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As someone who recently has gone through the process of finding downtown retail space and going through the hoops of opening I do think the mayor's office has the right general ideas, just not sure they have the manpower to actually do it all right now.

After we opened (not very helpful to me but still appreciate it) Frank and a lot of others from the mayor's office came in and we ended up talking about my frustrations with permitting services, etc. Two days later I am pulled into a meeting with Chatmon and others from different departments about how to make the process more business friendly. Now I haven't been through it all again to see if any suggestions or anything were used but I do appreciate the opportunity to be heard and hopefully see improvement.

My personal opinion is there is a real smart, creative class under 35 dying to improve the city. Based on the last few months of trying to push forward new projects myself the real obstacle is landlords and their brokers who would rather sit on real estate for years than have it fill it up because they want $35 a sqft instead of $33. I can't understand it but I know it has kept myself off two downtown projects, plus additional Hyppo locations in other parts of the city (WP and UCF) over literally $2-300 a month. Once landlords show interest in leasing a lot of these empty spaces we'll see things fill up. There is a reason a landlord like Post is full and right next door at Paramount even with Publix they are almost all empty. Hoping this attitude changes because there is a ton of potential in the area.

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As someone who recently has gone through the process of finding downtown retail space and going through the hoops of opening I do think the mayor's office has the right general ideas, just not sure they have the manpower to actually do it all right now.

After we opened (not very helpful to me but still appreciate it) Frank and a lot of others from the mayor's office came in and we ended up talking about my frustrations with permitting services, etc. Two days later I am pulled into a meeting with Chatmon and others from different departments about how to make the process more business friendly. Now I haven't been through it all again to see if any suggestions or anything were used but I do appreciate the opportunity to be heard and hopefully see improvement.

My personal opinion is there is a real smart, creative class under 35 dying to improve the city. Based on the last few months of trying to push forward new projects myself the real obstacle is landlords and their brokers who would rather sit on real estate for years than have it fill it up because they want $35 a sqft instead of $33. I can't understand it but I know it has kept myself off two downtown projects, plus additional Hyppo locations in other parts of the city (WP and UCF) over literally $2-300 a month. Once landlords show interest in leasing a lot of these empty spaces we'll see things fill up. There is a reason a landlord like Post is full and right next door at Paramount even with Publix they are almost all empty. Hoping this attitude changes because there is a ton of potential in the area.

Thanks for sharing your experience and opinion. Hopefully you're right and this info will go on to help improve the process.

Coincidentally, a good friend of mine had been working to open a second location of her small but successful business in downtown Orlando. She had zeroed in on one of the very spaces you mentioned but it turned out to be a colossal waste of time due to a "less than easy to work with" listing agent and landlord. Feet were dragged, voicemails and emails went unanswered ... The entire process was overly laborious.

The business opened last week in Winter Park.

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"The bottom line, Orlando gets what it wants, just like the money that came out of nowhere to pay for a soccer stadium that was on no one's radar. The bottom line is priorities - and I'll address that in just a moment."

 

Do have to reply:

 

it's been very clear for over two years that the team has wanted to build a stadium, so the term nowhere is not fair.  the team has never denied not trying to build a soccer specific home from day one many months ago.  in fact, soccer stadium proposals date back for 10+ years for downtown

 

Thank. You. There's so much misinformation about the soccer stadium, it's reaching the point of annoyance. 

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Thanks for sharing your experience and opinion. Hopefully you're right and this info will go on to help improve the process.

Coincidentally, a good friend of mine had been working to open a second location of her small but successful business in downtown Orlando. She had zeroed in on one of the very spaces you mentioned but it turned out to be a colossal waste of time due to a "less than easy to work with" listing agent and landlord. Feet were dragged, voicemails and emails went unanswered ... The entire process was overly laborious.

The business opened last week in Winter Park.

My response to that is she should hire a broker. It really does not cost the tenant anything technically. 

 

Landlords can be a pain in the butt when they haggle over pennies. 

 

I talked to the City and they are in the process of reworking some of their permitting issues. I was looking at it from the development side but I am sure it would apply to TI improvements. 

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Thanks for sharing your experience and opinion. Hopefully you're right and this info will go on to help improve the process.

Coincidentally, a good friend of mine had been working to open a second location of her small but successful business in downtown Orlando. She had zeroed in on one of the very spaces you mentioned but it turned out to be a colossal waste of time due to a "less than easy to work with" listing agent and landlord. Feet were dragged, voicemails and emails went unanswered ... The entire process was overly laborious.

The business opened last week in Winter Park.

 

The listing agents are largely terrible in Orlando. Even the one who listed our space in Post sat on our proposal for 3 months before even bringing it to Post. Finally my broker managed to get things moved along enough that Post heard about it and we closed the deal quickly. Been running into the same issues yet again over and over. The gatekeeper attitude by these agents is definitely what I would put as the biggest issue over government right now.

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My response to that is she should hire a broker. It really does not cost the tenant anything technically. 

 

Landlords can be a pain in the butt when they haggle over pennies. 

 

I talked to the City and they are in the process of reworking some of their permitting issues. I was looking at it from the development side but I am sure it would apply to TI improvements. 

 

Sadly, she was using a broker and, truth be told, the experience there was also aggravating (although not nearly as much as dealing with the listing agent and landlord for the desired space).  In the end there was a happy ending but unfortunately downtown lost another small business.

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Sadly, she was using a broker and, truth be told, the experience there was also aggravating (although not nearly as much as dealing with the listing agent and landlord for the desired space).  In the end there was a happy ending but unfortunately downtown lost another small business.

 

Its always hard to know who really was at fault as well. Listing brokers/landlords are frequently told never to talk directly to their customer when they're represented by an agent, and the agents get very upset and try to push them to different properties if the sellers don't abide by that as they are afraid they could get cut out of the deal or not receive the full benefit that they otherwise could if agreements are made without going through them. There is advantages and disadvantages to each way. It all depends on the individuals on both sides. 

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It's Buddy's Downtown - You Just Live In It

 

http://orlandoweekly.com/news/you-can-say-a-lot-of-things-about-mayor-buddy-dyer-s-vision-for-downtown-orlando-but-10-years-on-you-can-t-say-he-didn-t-have-one-1.1569220

 

The Orlando Weekly reviews 10 years of Buddy, particularly as his agenda affected downtown and Parramore.

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Jeffrey Billman has taken the stance that just about any kind of new development in Orlando has been fraudulent. He's went on record to say that Orlando City management are a bunch of liars and that the new soccer stadium will create no new jobs or positive economic impact in our city. Anytime I see an article about Orlando with negative connotation nowadays, it's usually from Orlando Weekly, and it's 100% always from him. He is ruining the entire newspaper.

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Tribute will mark Orlando visionary Frederick's 50 years of public service

 

 

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/politics/os-bill-frederick-legacy-20131019,0,2368593.story

 

While Martin Andersen, Linton Allen and Billy Dial assembled the foundation for central Florida to grow (the Turnpike, I4, Martin, Disney and FTU), it was Mayor Bill who understood Orlando had to become a real city with a vibrant downtown in order to compete with America's major urban areas. He also knew that to make Orlando's downtown unique, it was important for the city to develop and hold tight to a long-term vision even when developers and more than a few politicians simply wanted to take the easiest, most profitable way out as quickly as possible. He did that despite (or perhaps because of) his background as an attorney for development interests. Although he'd say no, in our next round of art for downtown a statue is in order for this great Orlandoan.

Edited by spenser1058
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  • 4 weeks later...

ABC updates stores, adds several more

 

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/business/os-cfb-retail-11112013-20131110,0,6937340.story

 

Another move upscale for WP's 17-92 corridor and we can only hope Mr. Chatmon will encourage this locally-based retailer to come back downtown. In any case, with all the ABC's stores in the area, this is a very good thing to see them updating their stores.

 
Edited by spenser1058
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Walgreens has added growler stations to several of their Duane Reade drug stores in NYC - since there seems to be a belief the only successful retail we can have downtown involves alcohol, I'm all for it.

 

On a similar note, word has gotten out that Macy's is in talks for a possible Lake Nona store. It's interesting to ponder how many more people there are downtown than at Lake Nona so far, but yet, oddly enough, Macy's is already thinking about it. How could that be?

 

Well, it's because Tavistock is beating the drum and Mr. Chatmon and the DDB and the rest of the folks at City Hall seemingly could care less about lifting a finger to bring retail back downtown. It may be pointless, but we are in the beginning stages of refusing to support the re-election of any of our City's elected officials who aren't actively engaged in finding solutions to this market failure; conversely, we hope to support in any way possible those who do (Jim Gray, Robert Stuart and Daisy Lynum all are running for reelection in April, 2014). If you're interested, please send me a note.

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Two teams vying for redevelopment of Orlando Health’s Lucerne Pavilion

 

 

http://www.bizjournals.com/orlando/news/2013/11/11/two-teams-vying-for-redevelopment-of.html

 

 

There's actually a lot of potential here - especially now that they are (seemingly) willing to move Burke Rehab.  A residential mixed/use project here puts housing about the same distance from ORMC as the Health Village apts are to Florida Hospital Orlando, and while the 408 is a barrier, the location is still very close to DPAC and the new development that will hopefully surround it. 

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Walgreens has added growler stations to several of their Duane Reade drug stores in NYC - since there seems to be a belief the only successful retail we can have downtown involves alcohol, I'm all for it.

 

On a similar note, word has gotten out that Macy's is in talks for a possible Lake Nona store. It's interesting to ponder how many more people there are downtown than at Lake Nona so far, but yet, oddly enough, Macy's is already thinking about it. How could that be?

 

Well, it's because Tavistock is beating the drum and Mr. Chatmon and the DDB and the rest of the folks at City Hall seemingly could care less about lifting a finger to bring retail back downtown. It may be pointless, but we are in the beginning stages of refusing to support the re-election of any of our City's elected officials who aren't actively engaged in finding solutions to this market failure; conversely, we hope to support in any way possible those who do (Jim Gray, Robert Stuart and Daisy Lynum all are running for reelection in April, 2014). If you're interested, please send me a note.

 

That is very interesting. I don't see a Macy's out there but they must be looking at the upside of there is no competition. And they will draw from a wide radius. Still strange though. 

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