Back to the Future

After living in a modern Florida golf course community where home facades are dominated by garage doors and residents keep to themselves, Orlando lawyer Brian Bellavia yearned for a traditional neighborhood like the one he grew up in.

He picked a townhome in Baldwin Park, a new development designed to replicate, in spirit at least, the kind of idyllic lifestyle found primarily on vintage television programs such as The Andy Griffith Show and Leave it to Beaver.

Within a month of moving in, Bellavia had become acquainted with more neighbors than he had met during two full years at his previous address.

"This looks like a town that was built over time as opposed to a new subdivision filled with mass-produced, cookie-cutter homes," Bellavia says. "Hopefully, it will be a real community instead of a place where you pull into your driveway and don't talk to anybody. That's just not healthy."

Baldwin Park, located near downtown on property once occupied by the sprawling Orlando Naval Training Center, is a Traditional Neighborhood Development (TND), a concept that emerged from a development philosophy known as New Urbanism.

In these refreshingly retro projects, close-set, neo-traditional homes feature porches, not garages, as architectural focal points. Bustling "downtowns" house an array of eclectic retail stores and restaurants while parks, schools, churches and perhaps health-care facilities are just blocks away.

"TND is really coming into its own in Florida," says John Rymer, vice president of sales and marketing for Morrison Homes, a national builder with a presence in eight such communities around the country, including most recently Avery Park in Seminole County's Tuscawilla. "It's inviting and it's steeped in tradition. It's attracting people who say, 'I don't want to live like everyone else.'"

More than 300 mixed-use developments employing the principles of New Urbanism are estimated to be under way nationwide, according to the Congress for New Urbanism (CNU), a San Francisco-based organization that acts as a resource for developers and consumers.

At least a half-dozen such TNDs are in Central Florida-far more than in any other market of comparable size. In fact, Orlando-based planning firms such as Glatting, Jackson, Kercher, Anglin, Lopez and Rinehart routinely host tours for visiting developers and public officials who come here to look, listen and learn.

"We are among the leaders in terms of numbers of neighborhoods that are adopting this approach to development," says Glatting Jackson's Bill Kercher.

That leading role may be only natural given the fact that New Urbanism began in Florida, when architects and CNU founders Andres Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk designed Seaside, an oceanfront Panhandle community modeled after an old-time village.

The plan for Seaside emerged as Duany and Plater-Zyberk, a husband-and-wife team, visited cities such Key West, Charleston and Savannah. By dusting off turn-of-the-century notions about town planning, the pair created a sensation and launched a movement.

Central Florida's first look at New Urbanism was Celebration, Walt Disney Company's 5,000-acre community in Osceola County. In this project, as in every project it undertakes, Disney was a stickler for authenticity, and thus endured some criticism for its unyielding rules and restrictions.

Most residents, however, didn't seem to mind trading the right to paint their homes purple for assurances that quality standards would be maintained and the integrity of the concept would be protected. In fact, Celebration has generally ranked as the top real estate development in Central Florida as measured by the total dollar value of home purchases.

The picture-postcard town center, which draws tourists as well as residents, features an array of retailers, six restaurants, two banks, a movie theater and office space. A state-of-the-art health center, several houses of worship, an elementary school and a new high school are also on site.

Now nearing buildout, Celebration's last new neighborhood, Arvida's Artisan Park, is just under way. "Other than scattered lots, these are the last of the new homes in Celebration," says spokeswoman Andrea Singer. "We're really proud of the way it all turned out."

Other local New Urbanism projects are seeking to build on Celebration's success by offering more variations on the neo-traditional theme and somewhat lower price-points.

For example, Avalon Park, located in east Orlando" target="_blank">Orange County off Alafaya Trail, has positioned itself as comparable to Celebration in ambience, but more affordable. Prices for townhomes start at $120,000 in the 1,860-acre development near the Econlockhatchee River. Single-family homes, grouped in neighborhood clusters and fronting tree-lined streets, are traditional in design and feature front porches and garages accessible via private rear lanes.

An Avalon Park town center features rental flats above retail shops, a health facility and more than 20,000 square feet of retail space, including four restaurants. Schools are on site, as are parks, nature trails and recreational facilities.

Lake Nona, one of Central Florida's premier luxury developments, is also adopting a New Urbanism approach with NorthLake Park, a 1,000-acre, multi-builder project surrounding a 500-acre lake and featuring a mixed-use town center, an elementary school and a YMCA branch along with substantial open space.

Homes in this upscale east Orlando enclave, popular for its convenience to Orlando International Airport and its internationally renowned golf course, are designed with a historic flair reminiscent of neighborhoods in Charleston, S.C. As in all TNDs, front porches and rear-alley garages are de rigueur.

In southwest Orlando" target="_blank">Orange County, the 66,000-acre Horizons West project is gaining momentum. The largest development in Orlando" target="_blank">Orange County's history, Horizons West is planned to encompass six "villages," two of which-Bridgewater and Lakeside-are under way.

Within Bridgewater, Transeastern Homes is developing an Americana-themed TND called Independence. The 1,342-acre project will offer a variety of home styles-from townhomes to estate homes-and its own village center with apartments above retail shops and restaurants.

Buildout at Horizons West, which will ultimately be home to some 60,000 people, could take as long as 50 years. Still, the village concept will ensure that the neighborhoods are comfortably scaled and that most amenities and conveniences are within walking distance of the homes.

Arvida's 1,859-acre Victoria Park is bringing New Urbanism to historic DeLand in Volusia County. With three distinct neighborhoods in one master-planned community-Victoria Gardens, Victoria Hills and Victoria Commons-Victoria Park offers single-family homes, patio homes, garden condominiums and villas.

A town center with shopping and dining is slated for Victoria Commons, while Victoria Hills features an 18-hole, Ron Garl-designed golf course. Victoria Gardens is a gated community for active adults, and features a 20,000-square-foot private clubhouse.

Developers tout the project's location in quaint DeLand, home of Stetson University and numerous cultural organizations, as an additional plus.

Still, the community attracting the most media attention now is Baldwin Park, which differs from others of its ilk in large part because it will not create a new urban area on the outskirts of town. It's located squarely in the City of Orlando, just east of Orlando Fashion Square and just south of Winter Park.

Baldwin Park is being developed by the Chicago-based Pritzker Realty Group, which bought the land from the city after a lengthy debate during which a variety of "public" uses for the decommissioned base were considered, including low-income housing, a prison and a homeless shelter. Ultimately, this remarkable piece of real estate was deemed too valuable not to develop.

Managing Director David Pace, who previously was director of real estate development for the Celebration Company, runs the high-profile project, which will ultimately contain at least 3,300 homes, along with 1 million square feet of office space and 200,000 square feet of retail space in a town center.

Residential architecture is reminiscent of pre-1940s Central Florida. "Everything in the community will have an Orlando architectural precedent," Pace says. "We're not trying to look like Charleston or any other city." That means that Baldwin Park, like Orlando's older neighborhoods, will contain homes ranging in style from Craftsman to Florida Vernacular to Mediterranean.

Pace also notes that some 100,000 people already live within a three-mile radius of Baldwin Park, which will give instant viability to a town center that includes a Publix grocery store and an Eckerd drugstore alongside the kind of specialized boutique retailers found in most TND town centers.

Barring economic catastrophe, all these projects are likely to be successful. Certainly, the New Urbanism concept strikes a responsive chord in people looking for a place to call home-in every sense of the word.

And in the aftermath of Sept. 11, people seem more anxious than ever to find refuge and security, and to connect on an emotional level with the communities in which they live.

For example, a CNU report released in 2002 found that while most buyers still prefer conventional suburban developments, a growing number are willing to consider alternatives and already prefer some aspects of New Urbanism. Four in 10 of those surveyed said they would prefer a sixth-acre lot over the more typical quarter-acre. And fully one-third said they would prefer "narrow streets, sidewalks and shared recreation facilities" over "larger lots and wider streets."

"For the past 50 or 60 years the market has been fairly one- dimensional," says Chris Sinclair, president of Renaissance Planning Group in Orlando. "You either get a single-family home in a neighborhood or an apartment and that's it. But since New Urbanism has come along, there's an alternative in the marketplace-and I think there is a lot of pent-up demand."

Susan Caswell of the East Central Florida Regional Planning Council agrees. "People are recognizing that there are more alternatives than just suburban development and they're liking what they see," says Caswell.

Take Sarah Longino, for example. Longino, a longtime Orlando" target="_blank">Orange County biology teacher, is a TND convert. "I'm a country woodsy kind of girl," she says. "Places that I gravitated to have been out in the woods and very isolated, with no people around. I assumed that's what I wanted."

But a funny thing happened to Longino on her way to check out a job opening at Avalon Park's new Timber Creek High School. She fell in love with the development, in part because she realized that elementary and middle schools would be within walking distance for most children. "That just screams parent and community support," she notes.

Now a two-year resident and chairman of the high school's science department, Longino revels in her new lifestyle, socializing at the women's club and dutifully patronizing startup businesses in the town center. " People actually sit on their front porches in the evening and watch the kids play and visit," she says. "There's always someone out on some front porch you can wave to."

As for the architects credited with inventing New Urbanism, they're quick to point out that their ideas, while innovative, were hardly original. "We didn't have to invent a thing," says Duany, now known as the father of the movement. "It's all been done."