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Shopping Centers Today -> August 2002
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VERANDA PARK TO GIVE ORLANDO SUBURB A DOWNTOWN
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| What used to be just a bedroom community to Orlando is itself becoming a city. |
Some markets just take time to build. MetroWest, which began as an Orlando, Fla., bedroom community, has over the course of 20 years become something of its own city. Now it is about to get its own downtown, with construction to begin next month on Veranda Park, a lifestyle center.
Located at Westpointe Boulevard and Lake Debra Drive, eight miles southwest of downtown Orlando, Veranda Park will bring 315,000 square feet of upscale specialty retail to a still-developing community midway between the city and the theme parks.
Up to now, while the area’s 30 million-plus annual visitors have been well served, the MetroWest area has lacked for retail and restaurants catering to local residents.
“Most people who want to go to dinner and then hang out have to go to Winter Park or downtown Orlando,” explained Joseph Seebach, a partner at locally based Veranda Partners, the project’s developer.
The center’s prospective tenants include a bookstore, a bowling center, apparel chains, home furnishings retailers, a public amphitheater and restaurants. As of mid-June the project was 50 percent leased, though Seebach declined to name specific tenants. Rents will be in the range of $18 to $25 per square foot, according to published reports.
The site is located just minutes from such affluent communities as Bay Hill, Isleworth and Windermere — and from the Mall at Millenia.
Veranda Park will be the town center of MetroWest, whose developer is privately held MetroWest Inc. The trade area that includes the 1,800-acre complex contains 20,000 housing units and 10,000 upscale apartments. The daytime office population within a quarter mile of Veranda Park exceeds 3,000 employees. MetroWest is also home to a country club and a world-class golf course designed by the late Robert Trent Jones Sr., the acclaimed course designer.
Veranda Park would not have been viable before now, said Seebach, who acquired its 43-acre site last year. MetroWest was merely a bedroom community of Orlando for decades.
“This is what we call a fringe city,” Seebach said. “The density was not high enough to support the center.”
But retail is steadily making inroads, with the arrival of a Publix, a Wal-Mart and some service tenants. The trade-area population, estimated by the developer to be 30,258 in 2001, is expected to grow to 35,509 by 2006. Average household income totaled $85,028 in 2001. Many of the residents work for the nearby resorts, including SeaWorld, Universal Studios Florida and Walt Disney World, or in industries related to them. The area’s estimated retail expenditures totaled $961 million last year.
“It’s well educated, affluent and young,” Seebach said. (The median age in the immediate trade area is 33.)
The project’s layout is totally New Urbanist, with storefronts on six buildings and parking concealed in a central core. One level of retail will be topped by three stories of residences. The design is Mediterranean Italian. Storefronts will resemble an old Florida downtown, using varying heights, awnings and second-floor balconies. About 550 apartments will be built above the retail.
“This is built by people for people,” Seebach said. “It’s not centered around the car; it’s centered around pedestrians.”
The ground-breaking will be next month, for a fall 2003 opening.
— D.H.
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