According to the Orlando Business Journal, the UCF area is getting another shopping center. WOO! It'll be at 12225 E Colonial Drive, five minutes south of the 1,415 acre UCF main campus. Judging from the plans, it'll be another car-centric, parking lot-laden space completely ignoring any of the urban design trends of the last twenty years. WOO!
Here's why they chose this spot:
- Over 60,000 students attend classes on UFC’s main campus and its 9 regional campuses.
- 5 minutes south of the Central Florida Research Park, a 1,027 acre campus-like office park. 126 companies, housed in 59 buildings, employ approximately 10,000 employees.
- Adjacent to a 12.46 acre proposed student housing development.
- Average Daily Traffic Volume at Woodbury Road and East Colonial Drive is 45,000.
Here's why they should toss out their design:
"Even low-rise, mixed-use buildings of two or three stories—the kind you see on an old-style, small-town main street—bring in ten times the revenue per acre as that of an average big-box development. What’s stunning is that, thanks to the relationship between energy and distance, large-footprint sprawl development patterns can actually cost cities more to service than they give back in taxes. The result? Growth that produces deficits that simply cannot be overcome with new growth revenue." -An excerpt from the book Happy City shared on Salon.com