The Orlando Repertory Theatre will be expanding this summer and will open a new satellite location at Celebration K-8 School! Orlando Repertory Theatre is a professional theatre for young audiences that produce shows, as well as camps, classes, and productions for children of all ages.
Never knew the name of the new apartments in Celebration on Celebration Blvd until today. It appears they’ll be called Evander Square Apartments.
Today’s the last day for the Xentury City Publix. It’s your last day to navigate the poorly-designed parking lot to get to the so-so grocery store. Get there while you can!
(p.s. The fancy new store opens tomorrow, November 15, across the street sorta)
Everyone’s getting excited about our new Publix which opens mid-November.
Update 2012-Oct-12: The signs are up!
On August 14, a Community meeting was held at the Celebration Town Hall to update residents on various commercial projects here. Presentations were given by the West Osceola Library, Panera Bread, David Weekley, Publix, Verizon, Celebration Health, and The Celebration Company.
West Osceola Library
Construction is in progress, due to wrap up around the first of the year, with a projected opening of February 1. The Walt Disney Company generously made a $150,000 gift to the Library, which the Library accepted. The Celebration Company announced the donation of a parcel of land adjacent to the new library to CROA for civic and recreational use (see TCC below).
Panera Bread
Panera is on track to break ground soon. They estimate 4 months of construction, putting them at a possible opening date towards the end of the year. They stated that the first week’s profits will be donated to the new Library. There will be access from both 192 and Celebration Place.
David Weekley Homes
David Weekley announced a new mixed use community project: Spring Lake at Celebration. It will be situated along Celebration Boulevard between Siena and Celebration High School, on the same side of the road as Siena. Spring Lake will features homes ranging from the low $200k to the $400s, with unit sizes from 1600-2900 square feet. As opposed to the original David Weekley homes in Celebration, these will be block construction. The builder is working to finalize details, and are aiming to break ground at end of December, with a Sales Center opening in Spring 2013. Village amenities will include a pool, amenity center, trails connecting to the rest of Celebration, proposed fitness area, and a tot lot. The pool will be available to CROA members, and the existing CROA parks and pools will be available to Spring Lake residents (as they will be paying CROA and CDD fees). Total development size is 39 acres.
The question of NEV traffic came up. It was suggested that speed limits would need to be reduced to 35 mph along Celebration Blvd to handle NEV traffic.
SBA (on behalf of Verizon Wireless)
A new tower will be placed behind the substation on Celebration Blvd for mobile phone coverage. Verizon Wireless will see the first improvements. There is capacity on the tower for two additional providers to co-locate, and it was hinted that AT&T would want to locate on that tower.
Publix
The new Publix at Water Tower Place is slightly ahead of schedule, and it’s looking promising for a November opening. The store is 49,000 square feet, or about 4000 sf bigger than the current Xentury City one. There’s a large expansion of Greenwise Products. The store will feature a salad bar, olive bar, expanded sushi department (with on-site sushi chef), and custom meats counter. There will be an on-site pharmacy with drive-through. Wine selection will be about 1.5x the size of the current store.
There are only 4 of these types of stores in the company. The existing Publix will close the day before the new store opens.
Celebration Health
Celebration Health announced plans for two more buildings. One will be a four story, 80,000 square foot medical office building, with primarily women’s health services. It will be built out in stages — not all 80,000 sf will be completed right away. Construction starts in September 2012, with an 11 month build time.
The other is a parking garage. Current parking deficit is about 150 spots a day. The new garage will be 6 stories and 1032 spots, and begins construction on September 5.
The Celebration Company
The Celebration Company (TCC) had several significant developments to report. The first few updates relate to the Celebration Civic Corridor, a series of parcels dedicated to the civic needs of the community. The new library is part of that and opens in February. TCC has deeded another parcel to the Celebration Community Development District (CDD) for an office complex for their staff in support of community. One parcel is for Celebration Golf Course for back house facilities. That leaves two parcels.
One 4.75 acre parcel will go to CROA general civic and recreation use. This is the parcel adjacent to the new library.
The last parcel, a 23 acre plot next to Celebration Avenue, will also go to CROA, with exact use to be determined later by CROA. The Celebration Company will also donating $400,000 to clear and land fill the site. After these deeds, all of the Celebration Civic Corridor parcels are spoken for.
TCC is in final negotiations with a developer to build a new multi-family residental complex along Celebration Blvd. They are proposing 346 multifamily units on a site previously sold to a hotel developer that then went into bankruptcy. This project will bring apartments back into Celebration, and it’s expected that construction would start as soon as feasible once negotiations are completed. Residents of the apartments would be able to use CROA parks and pools, but, similar to Georgetown, Siena, or Artisan, the apartment facilities would only be open to residents of the apartments.
Concerns about traffic along Celebration Boulevard due to the new developments were expressed by several residents. TCC indicated traffic lights were previously planned and funded for Campus St. and Waterside Dr. They would need to work with Osceola County to make it happen once it’s decided the time is right.
Please send corrections or updates to blogmail@celebrationblog.com, or comment here.
Thanks to CROA for a fun holiday party on Saturday. Scheduling only allowed us to attend the carols and tree-lighting, but that was enjoyable.
John Baker of JB Creative sent a press release about a new movie about Celebration. John is a filmmaker and Celebration resident.
From the press release:
Celebration is a thriving, diverse and multi-cultural community, set against the backdrop of picturesque homes and public buildings, architecture, nature and scenery.
But to outsiders who visit the town, or read about us in international news reports, there is a common misconception that we live in a pre-fabricated neighborhood, overshadowed by the ominous Walt Disney World and conditioned to live by the rules and regulations of a strict governing home owner’s association.
The Town That Disney Built is a new documentary film that celebrates and honors the Celebration community, with the simple aim: “To document and celebrate the day-to-day lives and times of the residents of Celebration – and to give the community at large a glimpse inside our town, to see what Celebration is truly like – and cut through the mystique, the drama and the misconceptions that exist about our community.”
For more information, and to order, visit www.thetownthatdisneybuilt.com.
This evening we attended an early preview of the annual “Now Snowing” event that runs through most of December in Celebration. There was “ice” skating, NEV train rides, Santa & Mrs Claus, and the snowfall itself (which is actually just soap of some kind).
To set the scene, they put down a layer of snow around dusk:
Before long it looks like this:
The actual snowfall wasn’t easy to capture on camera but you can kind of get the idea:
This year the regular snow falls start on Saturday, November 26 through December 31. There are snow falls every night at 6, 7, 8, and 9 pm. More information can be found on the Celebration Town Center site.
Our homeowners association, CROA, recently completed a community-wide inspection of covenant violations, followed by mailed letters to each owner who had a violation. Some of the owners took to the Front Porch to air their displeasure. I noticed a few interesting behaviors.
Some people acknowledged that they had clear violations but wanted to air grievances anyway. “Yes, I know the yard looks like crap but my something was something and the other thing was happening and…”
Others tried to deflect, as if the HOA only had a limited number of citations to hand out and why was I picked when there are worse houses on the block? “Sure, our porch handrail is a rotted-out eyesore, but WHAT ABOUT THE VACANT HOUSE NEXT DOOR? WHY WEREN’T THEY CITED?”
The people who had a legitimate beef were the ones who have had long-term modifications who weren’t cited before. For example, a non-conforming path to the mailbox. I don’t think these people should necessarily be exempt, but they should be given plenty of time to make the corrections without penalty.
For the record, we were cited for our mailbox, which seems like the default citation if nothing else can be found. In our case, the mailbox is probably borderline, so I’ll fix it without grumbling too much. Of course, I live next door to an abandoned home that looks like hell… 
At what point do we declare this bike forfeit?
Bonus credit if you know where this is without me having to tell you.
