Osprey Observer » product

Newland Communities Renames Lake Hutto To Circa FishHawk

Marie Gilmore — Sat, 03 Jan 2009 13:16:16 +0000

By Michelle Caceres
It’s not a part of FishHawk Ranch, but the 700-acre site formerly known as Lake Hutto has been renamed Circa FishHawk to reflect its close proximity to the master-planned behemoth.
FishHawk and Circa developer Newland Communities and its advertising agency worked closely to settle on the new name.
“We felt that it was important to position this community as its own special place while still acknowledging the strong FishHawk Ranch brand that has come to define the ‘FishHawk’ area,” said Newland Communities Regional Marketing Director Pam Parisi.
Located south of FishHawk Blvd., between Boyette Rd. and FishHawk Ranch, the steady pace of construction in Circa is currently underway. Roadways to two new schools, Stowers Elementary and Barrington Middle, are being laid with the schools slated to open in August. Attendance boundary lines for the schools are in the process of being drawn and approved. A public meeting to discuss boundaries has been scheduled for Wednesday, January 14, at 6:30 p.m. in the multi-media room at Randall Middle School.
Parisi expects the community to attract families for the same reasons they’re attracted to FishHawk Ranch. The community will feature onsite schools, a convenient town center and a variety of amenities all connected by a trail system.
In addition to families, Circa is also expected to attract singles, pre-family couples, empty nesters and retirees with its variety of housing options, including many maintenance-free options that appeal to these buyer groups.
While the land plan is still being designed, product offerings will include apartments as well as a variety of single-family and multi-family options.
Circa is the continuation and evolution of the FishHawk area, bringing a vibrant Village Center and fresh, new lifestyle choices-both residential and commercial-to the area, said Parisi.
Newland officials say the community is still in the envisioning process, as they are attempting to nail down the land plan and product offerings. Builders are showing interest in the community but specific discussions with builders have not occurred.
“It’s still way too soon,” said Parisi.
For more information about Circa FishHawk, visit www.newlandcommunities.com.

First Big Box Opening In February

Jennifer Silverstein — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 21:43:26 +0000

The SouthShore area will soon be home to its first department store, Bealls.
According to its Website, the corporation, through its subsidiaries, operates over 560 retail store sites in states across the Sun Belt, from Florida to California, with annual sales over one billion dollars. Since its modest beginnings in 1915, Bealls has grown to be a major employer in the state of Florida as well as a valued asset to all the communities it serves throughout the country.
Director of Public and Government Affairs for Bealls, Bill Webster, said the grand opening for the Riverview Bealls is scheduled for Friday, February 6. “And we are on schedule,” he said.
The first department store in the SouthShore area, the Bealls store will be 80,000 sq. ft. which, Webster said, is one of the larger new prototypes. The store will be equipped with larger aisles and larger shopping carts, as well.
Webster said that the store will have “more depth of product” and will carry a “broader assortment of items pretty much across the board.”
He said that Bealls chose this area because it is a rapidly growing area and that the Apollo Beach and SouthShore areas are under-equipped in retail. “People in this area have to travel through several miles of traffic to get to other locations,” he said. Webster also said he believes this is a good geographical location for the store.
The new store does not yet have an address assigned to it from the post office, however, it is located on the corner of U.S. Hwy. 301 and Big Bend Rd., next to the existing Publix, about one mile from I-75.
For more information, call 1-800-569-9038, Monday-Saturday from 9 a.m. – 9 p.m. and Sunday from 10 a.m. – 8 p.m. or visit www.beallsflorida.com.

Building A Better MouseTrip

Daniel Whitehurst — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 20:05:42 +0000

I’ll bet you thought it was too late to visit the 1964 World’s Fair, didn’t you? The fair was actually held over for an additional year, but even by the most generous measure, you’re about 43 years late for the New York venue.
Several of the most popular attractions are still alive and going strong, though, albeit with a few updates and expansions along the way.
You can begin your trip through the Johnson Administration at the Carousel of Progress, which was designed and built by Disney’s Imagineers on behalf of General Electric. Walt designed the show with heavy emphasis on GE product placement (causing his project lead to dismiss the whole thing as a “refrigerator show”), but loosely based on Thornton Wilder’s play Our Town, in that it follows a single family through time and acknowledges the audience.
Yes, Carousel of Progress is campy, and I’d even agree that it has been clumsily updated…it would be far more interesting to see the 1960’s vignette rather than the modern day scene currently on display…but the narration at the beginning, pointing out Walt’s love of innovation and progress, could not be more true.
Next stop is the Hall of Presidents, which is the successor to an attraction built for the State of Illinois, featuring Abraham Lincoln. Walt was most personally involved in the development of this show, for which he was sharply criticized by those who believed that his treatment would lack respect or would cheapen Lincoln’s legacy…after all, 1964 was the 100th anniversary of the Gettysburg Address. The audio-animatronic Lincoln was well-received by most, however, there’s another interesting sidebar to this story: The original body movement measurements and studies were done with Buddy Ebsen, the actor who would go on to portray Jed Clampett. Lincoln continues to dominate the Hall of Presidents and has, ironically, provided a sense of realism to a larger-than-life historical figure for generations of students (including me), though I confess that I have used the hall as punishment for my misbehaving children.
Finally, head over to the happiest cruise that ever sailed, it’s a small world. Walt was always working to line-up corporate sponsors, which was his usual method of financing his grandiose plans. With his staff already hard at work on the other attractions, Walt arranged to build a “little boat ride” for Pepsi and UNICEF in an irrationally short amount of time. The original idea was for the figures to sing their national anthems, but the result was an indecipherable wall of noise, which is why you’ve had that cute theme song stuck in your head for decades. Interestingly, Walt was also courting Coca-Cola at the same time, trying to interest it in sponsoring an audio-animatronic bird attraction that would eventually become the Enchanted Tiki Room.
Though it didn’t appear at the fair, Walt was working on an audio-animatronic bear band for a ski resort project at around the same time. The resort never materialized, but unless I’m mistaken, the band is still playing at the Country Bear Jamboree. Not many people would walk into the Magic Kingdom and only do the rides and shows that I’ve mentioned here, but old Uncle Walt personally touched all of them and believed that these kinds of attractions would be a big part of his legacy. He was absolutely right.