What If ...

Now here is one those good ideas that could catch on far and wide.

College Park 'Great Additions' tour combines historic homes, modern lifestyle


Andrea Stanley | SPECIAL TO THE SENTINEL
November 15, 2007

From cobbled streets to contemporary architecture, the College Park neighborhood of Orlando offers a blend of old and new.

The delicate act of bringing modern features into established homes provides the theme for this year's College Park Historic Homes Tour.

Now in its 17th year, the tour Sunday will include an assortment of homes that fit into the theme, "Great Additions."

"One of the main things that College Park residents are concerned about, said Jodi Rubin, chairwoman of the tour, is the tear-downs and replacement with monster houses, or the inappropriate additions that are really large."

"We are showing how you can live in a College Park house that is added on to and is still appropriate in size to maintain the historical exterior integrity of the home and charm of the street and still have the functionality of a modern home." ...

So, what if more neighborhoods decided to encourage and celebrate the great solutions utilized in updating older homes. After all, that is what brings the character to a place ... the best designs are solutions to problems, and the problem of adding space to a small well-built house is one that only the best builders can take on.

In this neck of the woods, generally 3 builders are responsible for the best renovations. All the rest of the signs, there are at least 10 at this time within a mile, are doing new builds in the over 3000 square foot range. Only one builder in the teardown craze has been known in these parts for a while. The rest are new to the game, many with names that are meant to evoke majesty, or the fortunes there of.

The historic character of a neighborhood has always been important to me. It is a shame to lose all of that to mediocre modern design. The historic fabric of a community kind of tells us where we came from. — College Park resident