Ocoee is building a downtown

[sunshine]

Ocoee seeks approval of CRA master plan for hotel site

http://orlando.bizjournals.com/orlando/sto...924800^2268511#

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Hopefully it is a real downtown and not some cheap stuff like Fowler Groove or those crap by UCF...

[JRS1]

I think I've seen the old downtown for Ocoee before... I've passed by it... it's like 2 old brick buildings that are abandoned.

Winter Garden has a real downtown with a new City Hall at one end and the old awsome looking Baptist Church at the other end. That is a gorgeous strip about 4-5 blocks long. THat City Hall is awesome-- art deco throwback and quality looking structure.

Ocoee can get something like that going, but the problem is that it would have to be done on a massive scale to get the critical mass up and running all at once, otherwise, the businesses would fail-- UNLESS, they start off with, say, a Walgreens or CVS and go from there. You gotta get the magnet businesses in there first to get people used to going there.

[fenderbender]

I'm fairly excited about this. The old hotel, in addition to being an eyesore, took up a lot of land on a very busy corner. The south side of Ocoee, which is where this is going, already has plenty of businesses and density (by suburban standards) to support a project like this. Movie theater, Publix, CVS, restaurants, Hospital etc. There is office space proposed for this, which is needed in the area. And that corner of Maquire and SR50 could use a facelift - the other 3 corners are looking decent these days, compared to how they looked ~8 years ago with the abandoned gas stations.

I agree about Fowler's Grove - though it's convenient, I'm not a big fan of the design. Navigating from store to store requires far too much driving (well, in the rain anyway) - the place feels like one giant parking lot.

Anyway, I believe this is the website for the proposed project - or at least it was, a few months ago:

[url=http://thecityplace.info/home/]A central place to live, work and shop. Urban. Modern. Luxurious.

[JRS1]

Fowler's Grove is a mall and nothing else. It's one of the better looking malls I've seen, but it's not a "downtown" by any stretch.

this project ala the link above is cool. It's no "downtown" like I thought they were talking about. When I hear downtown, I'm thinking Park Ave and downtown Winter Garden... real downtowns. This place is merely building new buildings on empty lots. I would prefer they build in the existing downtown corridor of Ocoee and add to it.

this is no different than the Veranda Park development in Metrowest in spirit, and that development got nothing but criticisms from lots of people on these boards when it was being built (for whatever reasons).

[neon9]

Ocoee seeks approval of CRA master plan for hotel site

[Hopefully it is a real downtown and not some cheap stuff like Fowler Groove or those crap by UCF...