Downtown Orlando, now with busway

[Cirrus]

I was in Florida for personal business this weekend. I managed to take a few pictures of downtowns Orlando and Saint Petersburg. I found them to be pretty similar. Both are rapidly redeveloping from being glorified office parks into bona fide urban centers. Both have plenty of activity and nightlife, but also an overabundance of empty lots. Both have good downtown circulator transit, but poor transit to the surrounding city. Orlando is below. Photos from Saint Petersburg are here.

Unfortunately my time ran out before I got to the most pedestrianized / active part of downtown, but what I did manage to cover wasn't bad.

From the airplane:


Orlando has an eclectic mix of architecture.


















I like the tallest building in town, on the right. I think the more ornate but not necessarily neoclassicist version of post modernism will turn out to be pretty timeless, when all is said and done.






I like this one a lot, as well. I think it's a court house.





As I said, Orlando's downtown bus infrastructure is pretty good. It doesn't seem like the service is very good outside of downtown, but downtown itself is covered.

Here's the main bus station:




The bus station is located adjacent to train tracks. Hopefully someday it will be easy to convert it to a multi-modal depot with passenger rail.


My biggest shock was that Orlando has a busway. Turns out it's very short, really just a downtown circulator, but still.



I like their separation technique. Simple, inexpensive, but effective.




Can't say I'm a fan of the silly name, but whatchagonnado. OTOH, the free ride is nice. I used it.


Pretty nice stops.


Signal priority and everything.

[kool maudit]

it's really not the centre of anything, is it?

[Prahaboheme]

The downtown bus system Lymmo is a free circulator -- Lynx is the metro-wide bus system with the big intermodal station downtown. It's pretty extensive and does a good job considering how spread out the metro can be.

Just for clarification -- downtown Orlando was never a glorified office park. It has always been a livable, albeit small, urban district. As you can see in your first aerial shot, downtown is surrounded by tree covered neighborhoods, pictured is the Lake Eola and Thornton Park neighborhoods, all of which have great historic homes and buildings.

[Cirrus]

Kool: It is clearly the center of the region's non-Disney-related nightlife. I would also guess that it's the largest employment center in the region other than Disney, although that's just a guess. It does not look like it's particularly central to life in the region, however, but is merely one activity center among many. The residential and retail density in the immediately surrounding neighborhoods and arterials looks close to or the same as the density 10 miles out. So my observation based on one day of exploration is that yes, it is the center of something, but not much.

Prahaboheme: Having some leafy pre-war detached house neighborhoods on the other side of a lake or highway does not make a downtown livable. People living adjacent to downtown is not the same as people living actually downtown. Walking through it is clearly evident that 20 years ago downtown proper had little in it besides office buildings and parking lots for office buildings, just like many cities around the country. This is nothing to be ashamed of. On the contrary, it makes the renaissance that is taking hold now all the more impressive.

[Prahaboheme]

Cirrus,

Few people live in the financial district of Boston; they do live around it. That said, it is still livable. I would know, I live there. For Orlando, "downtown" is associated with the central business district, Lake Eola, Thornton Park, Parramore, etc. So while condo living is a recent phenomena in the central business district, it has long been a thriving and inhabited area.

Twenty years ago it was not a glorified office park littered with parking lots; I wont try to defend this as at best, it is misinformed.

[plinko]

My wife is from Orlando, so I've recently spent a little time there on a few trips. That by no means makes me an expert, just somebody who's been all over the metro area beyond the I-4/Disney/I-Drive corridor (which is where most people go).

I would characterize the Lake Eola/Thornton Park neighborhood as being in downtown Orlando. Using the Boston example, it's no further away than the North End (and happily, it's not separted by a freeway from DT). It's a gem area in a sea of blah.

I also expected DT Orlando to be some dead hollowed out office park. I was pleasantly suprised to see that it is not (I expected something like DT Tucson, honestly).

According to my wife, most people who live in Orlando go to either DT or Winter Park for nightlife. I-Drive seems to be one of those places you take people from out of town. Having been to all three, I'd say that Winter Park is the best of the three (and most pedestrian feeling).

[Cirrus]

For Orlando, "downtown" is associated with the central business district, Lake Eola, Thornton Park, Parramore, etc. So while condo living is a recent phenomena in the central business district, it has long been a thriving and inhabited area. Twenty years ago it was not a glorified office park littered with parking lots; I wont try to defend this as at best, it is misinformed

So you'll quibble over the semantic issue but won't engage in a meaningful discussion about the primary one?

I am talking about the central business district, not the residential neighborhoods that surround it. If people in Orlando think of the term "downtown" as including adjacent neighborhoods, pretend I used a different term. I mean to discuss the area zoned red on this map. Not purple or yellow, only red. Period. End of story. Use whatever term satisfies you to define that geography.

Now, within that geography, it looks to my professionally trained eye that not much was going on 20 years ago. If that impression is mistaken, please feel free to describe how it was wrong and correct it. I am not above being better informed in this manner.

But for goodness sake, arguing that I'm wrong about the central business district because there's a nice neighborhood next to it is not convincing.

And by the way, downtown Washington was an overgrown office park in the early 80s too.

[Sulley]

I see my office.

[plinko]

Originally Posted by Cirrus

So you'll quibble over the semantic issue but won't engage in a meaningful discussion about the primary one?

I am talking about the central business district, not the residential neighborhoods that surround it. If people in Orlando think of the term "downtown" as including adjacent neighborhoods, pretend I used a different term. I mean to discuss the area zoned red on this map. Not purple or yellow, only red. Period. End of story. Use whatever term satisfies you to define that geography.

Now, within that geography, it looks to my professionally trained eye that not much was going on 20 years ago. If that impression is mistaken, please feel free to describe how it was wrong and correct it. I am not above being better informed in this manner.

But for goodness sake, arguing that I'm wrong about the central business district because there's a nice neighborhood next to it is not convincing.

And by the way, downtown Washington was an overgrown office park in the early 80s too.

Having not been to Orlando 20 years ago, I personally couldn't say, but I definitely see how you could think that. Based on what I saw, I could easily ascertain that DT Orlando 20 years ago probably looked alot like DT Phoenix (a bunch of office towers and lots more parking lots). However, it does seem that there's a decent stock of older buildings that at least give DT Orlando a couple of nice urban streetwalls (particularly Magnolia, Orange & Church Streets).

[Prahaboheme]

Originally Posted by Cirrus

So you'll quibble over the semantic issue but won't engage in a meaningful discussion about the primary one?

I am talking about the central business district, not the residential neighborhoods that surround it. If people in Orlando think of the term "downtown" as including adjacent neighborhoods, pretend I used a different term. I mean to discuss the area zoned red on this map. Not purple or yellow, only red. Period. End of story. Use whatever term satisfies you to define that geography.

Now, within that geography, it looks to my professionally trained eye that not much was going on 20 years ago. If that impression is mistaken, please feel free to describe how it was wrong and correct it. I am not above being better informed in this manner.

But for goodness sake, arguing that I'm wrong about the central business district because there's a nice neighborhood next to it is not convincing.

And by the way, downtown Washington was an overgrown office park in the early 80s too.

I am not arguing that their is a "nicer" neighborhood adjacent to the central business district. Reread it, verbatim. I know the area you strolled through one day and snapped a few shots (which are nice) and feel very informed to comment on the matter.

Now, without going into a history of downtown Orlando I'll just say that the area has been redeveloped greatly over the past few years but has continuously served as the downtown for the Orlando metro since the late 1800s. The Church Street area (not pictured here) are buildings built between 1880-1930. The historic district was saved from urban renewal, unlike Tampa, JAX, etc., mainly due to the fact that it was not a booming city prior to Walt Disney's entrance (which is not to say it did not have industry; the space industry, citrus, cattle and others were present in Orlando long before that). Most of what has been built in downtown over the last 10 years is a redevelopment (the Plaza Orlando, Dynetech Center, 55 West at Church Street, pretty much everything along Central Ave). These were not parking lots; not suburban style office parks.

Anyway, an informative website on Orlando's history is here: http://www.cfhf.net/orlando/overview.htm

By the way, the red zone on the map contains plenty of streets of housing (especially the area just South of Lake Eola and the Parramore district to the West) that was not built in the last 20 years.

[brickell]

Originally Posted by kool maudit

it's really not the centre of anything, is it?

The Orlando metro area is horribly spread out, but Orlando does a better job of centralizing culture downtown than most Florida cities.

[brickell]

Just to throw in my 2 cents. Certainly 20 years ago it was little more than an office park with pretty big entertainment district. Isn't that true of most sunbelt cities? I wouldn't say it was offices and parking lots as much as it was empty store fronts and wig shops. The residential areas were just starting to take off, but crime was still a big worry anytime anyone went downtown at night. Hard to believe it was 20 years ago, but I was there.

But it's always been the civic and cultural center of Orlando and at one point was the residential center of a relatively small city. Even as late as the '40s downtown looked like this. Population of the city approx 50,000


src: http://www.flahumforms.org/FloridaDream/index.htm

I'm not sure exactly what you're expecting or looking for. Orlando has a terrible sprawl problem that I don't think can ever be fixed, but they've done a very good job of reviving downtown and the inner neighborhoods and making it attractive to residents again.

Also they are planning on running commuter lines down those downtown tracks... eventually. I honestly don't know what the status of this is.
http://www.sunrail.com/

[plinko]

^Pretty sure all of the bigger buildings in that shot are still there (except maybe that Victorian looking red one).

[ColDayMan]

Thanks!

[TXLove]

Great shots! I liked the aerial that shows off the greenery of the city!

[Dale]

Re: the aerial, had Cirrus looked out the other side, he would have seen the Vehicle Assembly Building at the Kennedy Space Center. It's so tall and massive that it seems like part of Orlando when viewed from that sort of elevation.

[Jayayess1190]

Nice photos of my favorite city in Florida! My grandma used to live there so we'd visit here every summer. She lived in Apopka, a town right outside the city.

[jrw21]

excellent shots. I like that aerial. Don't listen to the haters - Orlando is not that bad. I enjoyed my time living there.

[Austinlee]

Thanks for the info. This is one of the only major US cities I am not very familiar with.

[kcexpress69]

That first picture from the airplane is the first time I've seen downtown Orlando in its entirety. Nice work!!