With the Disney announcement of their affordable housing project, I began to wonder where will they build it?
The media reports seem to imply an area along Western Way near the new Flamingo Crossing shopping area. After all, Disney has their college program residences there and it is close to the shops and restaurants.
However the artist pictures contained in the announcement show a different area. In these pictures they show the location as the tip of Hartzog Road at the edge of the RCID (Disney) property just before where Hartzog Road intersects Avalon Road.
This area has two existing apartment complexes adjacent to the artist rendering.
Braxton-Waterleigh apartments are shown across the street and the Vintage apartments appear adjacent to the Disney property in the artist rendering.
Will this be the actual location? Until construction starts and perhaps when someone gets a copy of the building permits, it is all still speculation.
However I think it is feasible for another reason – the town of Celebration.
Just like Celebration it is conceivable that at some time in the future Disney may no longer want to be a landlord or the primary owner, so choosing a segment of land that is at the edge of their RCID property makes it easier to split off leaving someone else owning it.
If the property were near Flamingo Crossing, it is feasible such a location could be surrounded by remaining Disney property. This still leaves Disney on the hook for everything that would need to be provided to the property. However by splitting it off the edge of Disney property, the neighboring region likely ends up supporting all the needed services such as sewage, water, electricity and such.
Besides, the other map shown on the original announcement places the affordable housing north of Flamingo crossing right were Hartzog Road intersects Avalon Road.
This rendering also shows an arc across the upper right of the proposed area that matches the arc at the end of Hartzog Road, as well as a carved out area that could map to the existing Vintage apartment complexes. This seems to imply that both renderings were based on the same initial information.
But it is still just an artist rendering. We will likely have to wait to see where they start digging.