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Construction Thread-Orlando-Paramount


Aga11940

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I noticed this thread from Jacksonville, being all jealous about the amount of activity on Central Avenue and the Publix. The photos are a little bit dated, but hey, you can see Jacksonville envy for Orlando.

http://www.metrojacksonville.com/content/view/429/119/

That article is really funny. Just goes to show that haters hate and lovers love.

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I noticed this thread from Jacksonville, being all jealous about the amount of activity on Central Avenue and the Publix. The photos are a little bit dated, but hey, you can see Jacksonville envy for Orlando.

http://www.metrojacksonville.com/content/view/429/119/

"...no where near the urban fabric, history or premier physical location, as Jacksonville... Orlando."

fascinating quote from that site.

if what they mean by urban fabric is that Jax has way more slums adjacent to their downtown, then, yes, I agree. as for location, yeah they have the St. Johns, which came in handy when they needed to ship in hotel rooms for the Superbowl that their daily economy couldn't support. and as for history, Orlando, like most Fla. cities, was founded in the mid-1800's, has an agricultural history from back then; it also has a very important military history since WWII, and military establishment history since the 1950's with the advent of Martin et al., and the interplay with nearby KSC.

So... where's the "way more history"? And what about a downtown park? Chicago has Grant Park, their front lawn. With a shoreline the size that St. Johns gives, where's their front lawn? Orlando has one... a big one, with one of the two largest city fountains in the US.

sorry all, I'm tired of those pre-rehearsed soundbites from other Fla. cities. I feel like this is the presidential debates.

Oh, and most importantly, the biggest difference between Jax and Orland downtown is that our retail and restaurants are inside actual downtown buildings; the bulk of theirs are inside a cheesy Late '80's entertainment complex. how's that for urban fabric?

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"...no where near the urban fabric, history or premier physical location, as Jacksonville... Orlando."

fascinating quote from that site.

if what they mean by urban fabric is that Jax has way more slums adjacent to their downtown, then, yes, I agree. as for location, yeah they have the St. Johns, which came in handy when they needed to ship in hotel rooms for the Superbowl that their daily economy couldn't support. and as for history, Orlando, like most Fla. cities, was founded in the mid-1800's, has an agricultural history from back then; it also has a very important military history since WWII, and military establishment history since the 1950's with the advent of Martin et al., and the interplay with nearby KSC.

So... where's the "way more history"? And what about a downtown park? Chicago has Grant Park, their front lawn. With a shoreline the size that St. Johns gives, where's their front lawn? Orlando has one... a big one, with one of the two largest city fountains in the US.

sorry all, I'm tired of those pre-rehearsed soundbites from other Fla. cities. I feel like this is the presidential debates.

Oh, and most importantly, the biggest difference between Jax and Orland downtown is that our retail and restaurants are inside actual downtown buildings; the bulk of theirs are inside a cheesy Late '80's entertainment complex. how's that for urban fabric?

"...no where near the urban fabric, history or premier physical location, as Jacksonville... Orlando."

fascinating quote from that site.

if what they mean by urban fabric is that Jax has way more slums adjacent to their downtown, then, yes, I agree. as for location, yeah they have the St. Johns, which came in handy when they needed to ship in hotel rooms for the Superbowl that their daily economy couldn't support. and as for history, Orlando, like most Fla. cities, was founded in the mid-1800's, has an agricultural history from back then; it also has a very important military history since WWII, and military establishment history since the 1950's with the advent of Martin et al., and the interplay with nearby KSC.

So... where's the "way more history"? And what about a downtown park? Chicago has Grant Park, their front lawn. With a shoreline the size that St. Johns gives, where's their front lawn? Orlando has one... a big one, with one of the two largest city fountains in the US.

sorry all, I'm tired of those pre-rehearsed soundbites from other Fla. cities. I feel like this is the presidential debates.

Oh, and most importantly, the biggest difference between Jax and Orland downtown is that our retail and restaurants are inside actual downtown buildings; the bulk of theirs are inside a cheesy Late '80's entertainment complex. how's that for urban fabric?

NICE!!!!!

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"...no where near the urban fabric, history or premier physical location, as Jacksonville... Orlando."

fascinating quote from that site.

if what they mean by urban fabric is that Jax has way more slums adjacent to their downtown, then, yes, I agree. as for location, yeah they have the St. Johns, which came in handy when they needed to ship in hotel rooms for the Superbowl that their daily economy couldn't support. and as for history, Orlando, like most Fla. cities, was founded in the mid-1800's, has an agricultural history from back then; it also has a very important military history since WWII, and military establishment history since the 1950's with the advent of Martin et al., and the interplay with nearby KSC.

So... where's the "way more history"? And what about a downtown park? Chicago has Grant Park, their front lawn. With a shoreline the size that St. Johns gives, where's their front lawn? Orlando has one... a big one, with one of the two largest city fountains in the US.

sorry all, I'm tired of those pre-rehearsed soundbites from other Fla. cities. I feel like this is the presidential debates.

Oh, and most importantly, the biggest difference between Jax and Orland downtown is that our retail and restaurants are inside actual downtown buildings; the bulk of theirs are inside a cheesy Late '80's entertainment complex. how's that for urban fabric?

I come this evening to stand in defense of Jacksonville. Please don't flame me here - no one has worked more diligently and is more proud of what we have accomplished in downtown Orlando than I. From the day in 1980 when Bill Frederick bemoaned that the center of downtown was a burnt out gay bar and a bunch of wig shops, what many people have been able to accomplish is stunning. But, especially if you haven't been watching every day (and especially since you have only to go back to Glenda Hood's administration to wonder if it was all a pipe dream), it would be easy to go "how the heck did they do that?"

The competition to be the preeminent city in a region often does not occur by any steady process. As late as the 1950's, both Birmingham and Atlanta were both small southern cities, very much evenly matched. Atlanta, however, had two things that would allow it to jump forward at warp speed and become the capital of the New South. The first was Coca-Cola; during WWII, it became an international company as a result of promising a U.S. serviceman would always be able to find an icy-cold Coke not far away from wherever he was stationed in the world (pardon the sexism-they weren't thinking much about the ladies at the time). That marketing gimmick led Coke to truly be among the first international firms. After the war, Coke realized quickly that racial tensions heating up throughout the South could destroy all of that and they insisted Atlanta's leaders move beyond segregation. As a result, Atlanta, with the help of some great leaders on both sides of the racial divide (you may remember a young fellow named Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.), became the "city too busy to hate." The other factor was Billy Hartsfield's airport. Again, thanks to impetus by Coke to have easy access to the world from Atlanta headquarters, Mayor Hartsfield made sure, with a lot of help from Delta, that the Atlanta airport would become one of the most important not only in the south, but also the U.S. and later the world. Everything that flowed from that, be it Jimmy Carter as the first Southern president since before the Civil War, Ted Turner, Andy Young and the Olympics, flowed from those two important decisions.

Now, back to the point. When I was 15, my family moved to Jacksonville from Orlando. To us, relatively speaking, Jacksonville was the big city. At that point in 1974, Orlando was still just a very big town that happened to have Walt Disney World sitting down the road. Yes, Martin had arrived in 1957 and NASA had boomed over on the coast thanks to the space race, but none of those things really seemed to much impact our quiet little lives in the center of town.

In those days, as downtown Orlando was folding up, downtown Jacksonville still had all of its retail. Jacksonville's expressway system was the envy of the state (Florida was late to the completion of the interstate system). Jacksonville had the Gator Bowl (the Tangerine Bowl in those days was only 15000 seats or so), an amazing train station (soon to be closed in one of the stupidest urban decisions ever made), the port, the river and was, in fact, the oldest real "city" in the state. Did you know that before Hollywood became Hollywood, the nascent film industry was headquartered in Jacksonville until the burghers, aghast at the film colony's antics (and the desire of the studios for a more year-round climate), suggested quite strongly they leave? And oh, the bridges!

Anyway, Jacksonville got the state's first downtown peoplemover and Jacksonville Landing was viewed as quite a coup for downtown. Preservation of old neighborhoods was first really put in play in Florida by RAP (Riverside-Avondale Preservation), and thanks to a lot of old money in Jacksonville (at least by Florida standards; remember, Jax had 3 major banks and several major insurance companies headquartered there, not to mention the regional headquarters of Prudential - and the requisite skyscrapers to go with all that). It also had Ed Ball holding forth with a lot of the duPont fortune. And as important as McCoy AFB and Orlando NTC were to Orlando, they paled in comparison to Mayport, NASJAX and NAS Cecil Field. Meanwhile, the Davis family (of Winn-Dixie fame), brought the first branch of the Mayo clinic to town.

Jacksonville was also the first in Florida to take the bold step of completely consolidating city and county into one (even if the motives weren't always pure - one reason it happened in many cities that went that route was to stop the core cities from coming under the control of black majorities).

Now, we all know that a lot of that didn't work out for Jacksonville. Jax became more Republican and less progressive in its thinking. The Landing sucked the life out of the rest of downtown and left it empty and then Rouse and his entertainment centers fell out of favor. The city fathers really didn't do much to limit the sprawl occuring and taking over southside. The rest of Florida grew much faster and left Jacksonville pretty much in the dust.

But, there's still a lot of beautiful old neighborhoods and an amazing urban core that could be truly stunning with the right leadership.

So, again, if you weren't paying attention to all us worker bees buzzing away in our tiny little downtown Orlando hive, it would be easy to be shocked by an article like that. The proud residents of Jacksonville have a glorious past even though it has yet to translate into a glorious present. As for me, it only makes me all the prouder at what we've accomplished since Mayor Bill was first assembling his thoughts back in 1980.

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  • 2 months later...

The sales office has closed for the Paramount and I have heard they are converting to Apartment rentals. I have not heard how they are going to handle the pending contracts as well as those who already have closed. Not good news for such a nice building.

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The sales office has closed for the Paramount and I have heard they are converting to Apartment rentals. I have not heard how they are going to handle the pending contracts as well as those who already have closed. Not good news for such a nice building.

All I can say is, wow. Not good news at all for the building, or DT.

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The sales office has closed for the Paramount and I have heard they are converting to Apartment rentals. I have not heard how they are going to handle the pending contracts as well as those who already have closed. Not good news for such a nice building.

I have a friend that works for the Developer - the Sales office has NOT closed and is not closing and is still open for business.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Hello, this is actually my first post and thought I could contribute - please don't misconstrue this as spam for the Paramount - my roomate just happened to pick up a brochure yesterday.

For rentals the pricing goes from 1325 for a 1br to starting at 2950 for a 3.

I have the full page with specific fees and parking and stuff. PM me if you want the details because I'll really feel like I'm advertising for them if I add all that - but suffice it to say - they are renting out. Wish I could afford it.

Steve

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Hello, this is actually my first post and thought I could contribute - please don't misconstrue this as spam for the Paramount - my roomate just happened to pick up a brochure yesterday.

For rentals the pricing goes from 1325 for a 1br to starting at 2950 for a 3.

I have the full page with specific fees and parking and stuff. PM me if you want the details because I'll really feel like I'm advertising for them if I add all that - but suffice it to say - they are renting out. Wish I could afford it.

Steve

Welcome Steve, that sounds pretty close to what Dynetech is charging.

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1325 is reasonable for a 1br. About what I pay here at the solaire. You can't beat the location of paramount. How are the interiors? Are they considered better than The Solaire (which I would consider mediocre)?

The room layouts are good with nice, large windows. They seem fairly quiet contruction, but the upgrades look like leftover cabinets and light fixtures from when ZOM built the Waverly 10 years ago. Depending on the unit it can be a long hallway to the nearest elevator. The Lobby and the Pool area are exceptional.

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  • 2 years later...

Menchie's Frozen Yogurt is coming to the Paramount. I'm glad to see these retail spaces at the Paramount filling up, but a salon and now a frozen yogurt place? Ugh...stuff we already have in Thornton Park.

WP_000185.jpg?psid=1

Given that the DDB, DOP and City Hall refuse to lift a finger to bring the retail we need back downtown, we may need to resort to this:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/13/business/a-town-in-new-york-creates-its-own-department-store.html?hp

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  • 2 weeks later...

Given that the DDB, DOP and City Hall refuse to lift a finger to bring the retail we need back downtown, we may need to resort to this:

http://www.nytimes.c...t-store.html?hp

This would be a best case scenerio -- an entire community coming together for it's own welfare. I'm skeptical something like this could ever happen in a city that allowed a Walmart on the edge of one of its most desirable neighborhoods with fledgling local businesses (i.e. College Park).

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