Family-oriented Avalon Park Tavares will feature a friendly neighborhood vibe and an 18-acre city center that will combine residential and commercial uses. There’ll also be a community pool and playground as well as plenty of communal greenspace.
AVALON PARK TAVERES IS BOTH WELCOMING AND SELF-SUFFICIENT
Master-planned communities continue to pop up in the most unexpected places throughout Florida. Among the latest is Avalon Park Tavares, where workers are busy pouring concrete, tacking on roofs and building out this 155-acre project tucked behind bustling U.S. Highway 441 and the AdventHealth Waterman complex.
Avalon Park Tavares sits at the corner of Huffstetler Drive and Mount Homer Road in Tavares, a Lake County town of 19,000 nicknamed “America’s Seaplane City” for its seaplane base on Lake Dora.
Stephanie Lerret, senior vice president of marketing and community relations at Avalon Park Group, notes that the company has owned the land in Tavares for quite some time.
“Our CEO’s vision is that Central Florida is where all the state’s growth is going to happen,” she says. “We just look for opportunities to partner with the right group, the right position.” In the late 1990s, Beat Kahli, who founded and still runs Avalon Park Group, also developed the original (and highly successful) Avalon Park in east Orlando.
When complete, Avalon Park Tavares will be a complete town with homes and a city center. “We build all-inclusive towns where you can live, work and play in one area,” Lerret adds. “That form of development helps keep traffic down on major roads. It helps build community.”
Phase One, under construction now and slated for completion in late 2023, has 228 single-family homesites. Builders include D.R. Horton, which holds some 115 homesites. The company is building from its Express Homes collection, where homes range in size from 1,504 to 2,447 square feet and are priced from $360,990.
The second builder, Stanley Martin, offers a slightly more upscale product with 9-foot ceilings and tile and granite countertops on its 113 homesites. Homes range in size from 1,400 to 2,400 square feet. Avalon Park Tavares homes are priced in the mid- to high $300s, subject to market demand. Soft sales began in early 2022; the sales center and single-family models opened in March.
The Phase Two area encompasses 314 homesites. Although the land isn’t cleared yet, construction is scheduled to begin in July of this year. D.R. Horton has 118 Phase Two homesites, designated for 78 townhomes and 40 single-family homes, while Stanley Martin has 118 single-family homesites.
Says Larret: “It’s really market driven. If the market keeps going as it is, I expect Construction on Phase Two would finish up shortly after Phase One, within two years.”
Streets leading into Avalon Park Tavares are already lined with young oak trees and black lantern-style lampposts. The land has strategically been contoured to offer select homesites a view (or a partial view) of Lake Hermosa. Sidewalks for pedestrians and dog walkers circle its blue waters. Nearby, a community swimming pool and a cabana and playground are planned. There’ll be plenty of greenspace as well.
“We build everything within our communities to make them self-sufficient, so you don’t have to leave if you don’t want to,” Lerret says.
A city center will take up some 18 acres in Phase Two, just off the lake between residential blocks. Restaurants, doctors’ offices, dry cleaners and hair salons are among the businesses targeted for the district.
Apartments above retail establishments and senior living facilities are also in the plans. Lerret anticipates completion of the city center to roughly correlate with the completion of homes in Phase Two.
A bonus for families with school-age children is Pinecrest Academy Tavares, a public charter school with an “A” rating within walking distance of the residential areas. The K-7 school will be adding 8th grade for the 2022-23 school year.
Lerret likes to say that Avalon Park Tavares’s target market is everybody. She says: “Going back to our development principles, we want to build complete towns, with a housing product for everybody. People of all types of backgrounds, cultures and income levels will be living together and interacting together.”