Avalon Park matures as one of the Nation’s Premier Examples of “Neotraditional” community design

ORLANDO, Fla. --- When the first homeowners moved into Avalon Park in 1999, developer Beat Kähli and his staff wanted to establish the emerging neighborhood as one of Central Florida’s first neotraditional communities when “neotraditional” was the “next big thing” in community development and almost no one knew exactly what it meant. Today, Avalon Park is a mature community of 13,000 residents in neatly-tucked neighborhoods and Downtown Avalon Park, with six local schools, four banks, 15 restaurants, a YMCA community center and 16 miles of bike and hiking trails linking neighborhoods with retail and recreational facilities. Disney’s Celebration claimed title as the area’s first neotraditional community, but two books and dozens of trendy news articles focused on apparent inconsistencies in the Osceola County community and muddied the “neotraditional” water. Coined by Andrés Duany, the architect and urban planner who founded the Congress for the New Urbanism and designed Seaside in the Florida panhandle, “neotraditional” hoped to make a better world by combining traditional community values with efficient urban-style planning and design. The idea was to create a self-contained community with multiple residential options served by commercial, recreational and educational choices that are easily accessible. Ideally, residents could live, work, learn and play without ever leaving the safety and comfort of their community. Walking and bicycling paths were a critical element. Ideally, a resident could do almost everything---shopping, dining, doctor’s visits, school, church, workouts at the gym---without ever cranking the family car. “Today I feel we have achieved all those goals,” Kähli said recently. “What we have now is different in some ways from our original concept because we have responded to the market. Home buyers told us what kinds of homes they wanted, what kinds of neighborhoods,” Kähli said. Duany had played a major role imagining the predecessor of Avalon Park in the 1980s, but when Kähli took over the project in the mid-1990s, he went Duany one better. Almost immediately he carved off more than 7,000 acres from the original site plan and engineered a series of transactions that created a publicly-owned conservation area along the pristine Econlockhatchee River at bargain prices. Today, Avalon Park is considerably smaller than its first developers imagined a generation ago, but under Kähli’s guidance, the community now serves as many residents as the City of Longwood with even more services---schools, shopping and the like---and a fraction of the taxes. There’s more to come---the opening of a new Senior Living Facility in the coming weeks, a new round of apartment construction to serve senior citizens, a new parking garage in Downtown Avalon Park. Through all the changes Kähli’s initial vision has persevered. Today, Avalon Park lives up to its reputation as a community where residents can “live, learn, work, and play” without ever leaving the community.