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Lake Nona - Medical City


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8 hours ago, IAmFloridaBorn said:

For the record, I HATE Lake Nona. The name, the idea, everything about it.

Just because it's a charmless empty field under an airport runway that is devoid of any character?

Developers need to end their fascination with cheap land.  It's heartbreaking to see them push further and further out, while ripping out every piece of vegetation in their way.  

Trees rock.  

Edited by I am Reality
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Wow, I never knew I had so many neighbors from downtown living near me on this board.

Because, if you live in College Park, Audubon Park, Colonialtown, not to mention anything beyond areas like that, they all began as suburbs with cheap land built by developers.

As to building by the airport, there's a whole substrata of urban economics that suggests we'll see more and more of that for a timeless reason.

Cities like New York and Boston were located alongside harbors that became ports. Places like Cincinnati and Sanford grew up alongside rivers (Jacksonville was originally Cow Ford because it was a shallow spot where you could cross the St Johns.) Atlanta, Orlando, Winter Garden? All along railroads.

Today, the primary forms of transportation that will be important to locate near are airports. Lake Nona gets the bonus of being less than 30 minutes from both a traditional port (even closer than Houston is to the Gulf and similar to LA's access to ports in LA and Long Beach) AND, from something truly unique but that will be important in the future: a Spaceport.

Most importantly, though, is easy access to Florida's busiest airport.

Now, Tavistock could have gone about it like most of our sprawl and just built endless residential cul de sacs as far as the eye can see. 

They didn't do that, though. Instead, they made it possible for UCF to get a medical school earlier than was projected and greased the skids in DC to finally get a VA hospital. They also convinced Jeb! to locate one of his sweetheart deals (Burnham) here (why do folks on here ignore that when it was ok as a way to get SunRail? I confess I don't know.) They also made plans for a town center rather than just another strip center. 

There's the USTA. There's KPMG that we're wringing our hands about just "being another resort."

Interesting thing about that: Orlando began to grow after WWII because airmen stationed here liked what they saw (not to mention the weather) and moved back after the war.

Now, here are all sorts of educated, well-paid accountants and consultants who will get to find out about the "half" they don't know about and the fact they could have easy airport access, be close to the beach and send their kids one day to a STEM school that gets better every year.

Let's be truthful: even Richard Florida, he of the "Creative Class," has acknowledged most of these types of folks LIKE suburban, single-family neighborhoods with great schools. Whether it's Research Triangle in Raleigh-Durham, Route 128 in Boston or places like Plano, Texas, that's the places they gravitate to, especially as they age.

Now a cool, hipster downtown is great to visit but it's rarely where they choose to settle down (despite all the hoopla about getting back to the cities, that's still less than 15% of the growth in most MSAs.)

I'm certainly not one to hate on downtowns- I've spent more of my life living in them than most folks. I would no more want to live at Nona than I would Lake Mary. I am firmly aware, however , that I'm definitely in the minority. The awesome thing is that Central Florida is offering both choices. To me, that's a good thing and promises continued success for the region.

 

Edited by spenser1058
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I've never heard a defense of urban sprawl before. 

Interesting, but we will have to agree to disagree.

I didn't bring up the bigger cities.  But while we are talking about NYC, Boston and Atlanta, let's also discuss the reasons why they grew the way they did:

- population densities requiring outward development

- public transit making outward development possible

- corporate communities that provide centralized downtown development, as well as quality in-fill development, making the inner and intermediate cores cost-prohibitive.

I fail to see any similarities.  Orlando is not a dense city, by any measure; its transit system sucks, and downtown development lags.  

It's sprawl for the sake of sprawl.  I would not be so quick to rubber stamp anything Orlando-related. 

 

 

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I think Lake Nona is nice. It’s another addition to Orlando as far as suburbs, and it’s new with a lot of development. Yeah the land is cheap but wasn’t all land at one point? Idk to me it’s coming along nicely. I’m just a 20 year old though. Lots of learning to do. 

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13 minutes ago, DreS0803 said:

I think Lake Nona is nice. It’s another addition to Orlando as far as suburbs, and it’s new with a lot of development. Yeah the land is cheap but wasn’t all land at one point? Idk to me it’s coming along nicely. I’m just a 20 year old though. Lots of learning to do. 

Development alike it tend to put a strain on the road network.  Living farther away from employment centers leads to longer drives and leads to an increased number of people on the roads at any one time. It’s simply inefficient. 

 

Oh, and it isn’t good for the environment.  Where all those developments are used to be natural Florida swamps, grasslands, and forests.  It’s why I’m personally opposed to the whole Saddle Ranch proposal. Is that still happening btw?

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1 minute ago, WAJAS98 said:

Development alike it tend to put a strain on the road network.  Living farther away from employment centers leads to longer drives and leads to an increased number of people on the roads at any one time. It’s simply inefficient. 

 

Oh, and it isn’t good for the environment.  Where all those developments are used to be natural Florida swamps, grasslands, and forests.  It’s why I’m personally opposed to the whole Saddle Ranch proposal. Is that still happening btw?

But therein lies the point. Lake Nona IS an employment center. Tavistock didn't just plop down thousands of houses like Waterford Lakes or Hunter's Creek, they brought in Medical City along with other businesses. 

Compared to most of our suburban sprawl, this one actually sought to mitigate it by making it an actual live-work-play community.

There was always going to be development around a rapidly-growing airport (especially given how much the growth management statutes have been obliterated in Tallahassee over the last 20 years.) This is just a higher quality version.

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1 minute ago, spenser1058 said:

But therein lies the point. Lake Nona IS an employment center. Tavistock didn't just plop down thousands of houses like Waterford Lakes or Hunter's Creek, they brought in Medical City along with other businesses. 

Compared to most of our suburban sprawl, this one actually sought to mitigate it by making it an actual live-work-play community.

There was always going to be development around a rapidly-growing airport (especially given how much the growth management statutes have been obliterated in Tallahassee over the last 20 years.) This is just a higher quality version.

Lake Nona is probably the best that could have come. It is to be expected given what you stated, but I still wouldn’t eoncourage it.

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2 hours ago, I am Reality said:

I've never heard a defense of urban sprawl before. 

[...]

It's sprawl for the sake of sprawl.  I would not be so quick to rubber stamp anything Orlando-related. 

 

 

Urban sprawl occurs because a ton of people want to live in the suburbs, they want a backyard so they can let their dog out in the yard easily without a leash, setup a slip n side or private playground for their kids, have a bit more peace and quiet, etc... There are pros and advantages to sprawl just as there is for preventing it. Obviously I think most of us on here like to see it avoided where it practical (given this site is named Urban Planet and, as you've pointed out, we love to see tall buildings, which spawl discourages)

Lake Nona, for the most part, attracted a bunch of things that likely would have never considered a real urban area (Burnham Institute was very clear on this, the VA with its "security requirements" isn't really a good urban fit, and USTA flat out requires too much land to do what they wanted to do to make it practical in an urban environment). Now, I'll be fair, without Tavistock interfering, we probably could have attracted the UCF Med School downtown, but it probably would have been much delayed as Tavistock paid out prettily for that privilege.

57 minutes ago, DreS0803 said:

I think Lake Nona is nice. It’s another addition to Orlando as far as suburbs, and it’s new with a lot of development. Yeah the land is cheap but wasn’t all land at one point? Idk to me it’s coming along nicely. I’m just a 20 year old though. Lots of learning to do. 

I agree, and I'm personally of the opinion that Lake Nona is the start of a modern version of Winter Park, which I think nearly everyone feels adds to the Orlando ambiance. I know its not there yet, but they got the building blocks and are building really nice, and are doing rather narrow lots, lots of rear loaded garages so walking on the sidewalk doesn't mean crossing driveways every 20 feet, with ample parks throughout to make it reasonable to bike around the area. I think the main thing to remember is not everything can be ideal, and that can be part of the fabric and beauty of areas.

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I think Nona is a great example of well managed sprawl but it's still sprawl.  There are parts of Horizons West that are very well planned out by the County and those areas will be 1000X better sprawl than stuff from the 90's like Hunter's Creek but all these areas create hard to solve transportation problems for the future and they will hinder downtown growth.  I do agree that Tavistock did get some huge commitments for development in that area and it has been helpful for the region but definitely bad for downtown growth.

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5 hours ago, I am Reality said:

I've never heard a defense of urban sprawl before. 

Interesting, but we will have to agree to disagree.

I didn't bring up the bigger cities.  But while we are talking about NYC, Boston and Atlanta, let's also discuss the reasons why they grew the way they did:

- population densities requiring outward development

- public transit making outward development possible

- corporate communities that provide centralized downtown development, as well as quality in-fill development, making the inner and intermediate cores cost-prohibitive.

I fail to see any similarities.  Orlando is not a dense city, by any measure; its transit system sucks, and downtown development lags.  

It's sprawl for the sake of sprawl.  I would not be so quick to rubber stamp anything Orlando-related. 

 

 

Lake Nona is not sprawl for the sake of sprawl.  It is in the city limits for one.  Secondly, it is master planned.  Laureate Park is like Baldwin Park in density.  Add this to what Spencer1058 said.  Burnham was looking for this type of development in their agreement to move here, so, the City and Tavistock made it happen.  I personally like it because it is another “node” in Orlando metro separate and apart from the typical places along the I-4 corridor.

Also, Kissimmee, BVL, etc. is due south of there and that heavily populated and growing area will eventually merge north with this part of Orlando.  What is or will be sprawl is more so the Ranch property to the east and SE of there and their plans in the future, IMO.

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20 minutes ago, HankStrong said:

Not sure about all the hate for Lake Nona.  Of all the sprawl and all the pocket neighborhoods in Orlando, why get angry at the one that seems to be trying to do it right?

I'm pretty sure the reason is this development had a lot of buildings that seem like they could just be transplanted into an area in or near downtown, and some people blame Lake Nona for causing them not to be downtown (even though UCF medical school had a slot on the main campus for the medical school where it was supposed to go before Lake Nona stole it away), and many of the others simply would never locate in/near downtown, such as Burnham.

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14 hours ago, I am Reality said:

At long last . .  . an Orlando building project that is architecturally interesting.

Designed by Arquitectonica.

All the way down In Lake Nona.

Ugh.

 

 

IMG_0864.JPG

 

Maybe I'm being unreasonably greedy, but I'd love to have this as the terminating vista on the Rosalind wedge instead of "The Radius" project.

 

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