From: David E. Rose, Long time College Park resident, real estate agent, and activist July 2006 edition - copyright ©2006 Community Paper. All rights reserved.
See this article at www.Community-Paper.com/Archives/Rose7-06Letter.html
Regarding the block of Edgewater between Princeton and Smith Streets
From: David E. Rose, Long time College Park resident, real estate agent, and activist
Real Estate Collaboratives, developers of the Wellesley, have recently announced their plans for the block of Edgewater between Princeton and Smith Streets. Many of us have had a chance to review the plans , there was a public presentation of the plans at a special meeting of the College Park Neighborhood Association on June 28th in the gymnasium of the College Park Community Center.
The new building will consist of a mix of 105 residential units, 22,000 square feet of ground floor retail, and 30,000 square feet of office space all with 369 on site parking places. Both the residential and office space will be condominium in nature and CVS will be returning to the retail space with other tenants to be announced later. Like the Wellesley the building will be seventy five feet in height. It’s exterior is enough different that it does not appear to be the Wellesley’s twin. If you have not had a chance to view the plans Real Estate Collaboratives would be happy to make arrangements for you to do so. The plans are scheduled to go before the City’s Municipal Planning Board on July 18th and public comments are welcomed at that meeting.
I know that many of my friends and neighbors are having grave concerns and doubts about these "tall buildings" being built in our neighborhood and many of you know that I voiced concerns about the last development that was planned for Edgewater Drive. My concerns about The Ivy were, in a nut shell, that it did not comply with the plan that was in place for that location. Since I took the time and effort to voice my concerns about the The Ivy I thought it only fair that I publicly state my opinion concerning these latest plans.
Based upon the information that is currently available to me I believe that the plans for the development of this block fit the vision laid out in the Growth Management Plan of the City of Orlando and is in substantial compliance with the zoning that is currently in place. Stated more positively: the owner of the property is doing what we the citizens of College Park laid out as our desire be done with the property. We can not ask more of anyone.
I know many of my neighbors have concerns over the redevelopment of Edgewater Drive, and I appreciate those concerns. I would like to address some of the the most common themes that I hear.
First, is simply the concern over the height of the buildings. I have been involved with all of the planning for Edgewater Drive for more than twenty years and have, as a result, looked at the history of Edgewater Drive going back even further. The simple fact is that seventy five feet has been the allowed height on this site for as long as I am aware.
So any concerns I may have had over the height have long faded because of this awareness. We as a community had expressed, via our zoning laws, decades ago that we wanted the core area of our business district to be developed to a height of 75 feet and sold that right to those property owners.
Second, is certainly the traffic issue. Many of my friends are deeply concerned that these new and intense developments will add to our traffic problems here in College Park. Actually everything that I have learned about growth management would indicate just the opposite. I realize that sounds a little strange but let me explain.
The traffic issues in College Park are not really College Park issues, they are Metropolitan Orlando issues. College Park has experienced little growth since the 1950’s and yet our traffic has really only become an issue in the past ten or fifteen years. The traffic is not caused by College Park residents being on the roads more than they used to be but instead are caused by people moving through College Park from somewhere else going to a different somewhere else. Have you ever noticed that Edgewater Drive only backs up when I-4 backs up, or when Edgwater High School lets out. As long as I-4 has back ups Edgewater Drive will have back ups and given the fact that the population of he Metropolitan area will probably double to 7.2 million people by 2050 chances are I-4 will continue to back up. So the only way to improve the traffic issue in College Park is to deal with the larger traffic issue of our metropolitan area.
As both someone who has been involved in community issues and as a real estate agent I get lots of opportunities to attend seminars and read materials on the latest in planning trends. For some time now the best answers available for many of our growth issues, including traffic, is what the planners have dubbed "smart growth". Which is a development style that actually discourages traffic by locating all of the essential needs with in a relatively small area. Disney’s Celebration is an example of this "smart growth" as is Baldwin Park, and Horizon West, and Avalon Park all here locally. In fact the post World War II neighbors such as College Park were the model for this "new" idea. Since Edgewater Drive was in fact developed just after World War II it is time that it be updated and these new developments are simply reinforcing the "smart growth" concepts that are our heritage. These developments are providing living, working and playing spaces for our neighborhood so that each of us will find fewer reasons to leave our neighborhood and thus reduce the traffic through out the metropolitan area. The hope is that as more of this smart growth takes place the fewer people will have to travel through our neighborhood to get from place to place. With a population growing as fast as ours it is also obvious that new roads and other transportation improvements are necessary but that is a different discussion.
Further I fully understand that while the larger picture may give some comfort intellectually when you are sitting in traffic, late for an appointment, it is of little help. So let me also mention a few facts concerning the traffic impact of this development on its immediate neighborhood. The traffic studies conducted by the developer and reviewed by the City of Orlando’s traffic engineers indicate that the combined traffic generated by the Wellesley and this new building create less traffic then the Mobil station that they replaced. Further buildings of this nature because of their intensity create less traffic than less intense development. In other words the postman arrives once a day to service the entire building as does UPS etc. Hopefully many of the residents will also be officed in the building so there will be less traffic commuting to and from work, in the evening when the residents want to go out for dinner they will walk to a near by restaurant instead of driving. So while I understand the concerns over traffic until proven wrong I am going to have to believe the experts who are telling me that we will have less traffic generated from this site then we had before. We will find out for sure when people begin moving into the Wellesley in August.
My bottom line is that while I am as sensitive to change as anyone the reality is that Orlando is going to grow and that College Park is going to be a part of that growth. The people of College Park have known this for years and have fulfilled their responsibilities by putting in place a well thought out growth plan. Our job now is to be certain that as the growth occurs it follows that plan, this new building seems to do just that.
