The Observer begins covering College Park

Pack your bags, The Observer is taking you off to college.

Princeton, Harvard, Yale, Dartmouth — of the ivy leagues you’ve got your pick.

Each one comes with tree-lined streets and some cobblestone and others with great lakeside views and plentiful park access. You can learn from those who’ve come before you, from astronaut John Young to writer Jack Kerouac, and study a city history dating back to the 1920s.

The best part is, to get there all you have to do from now is flip open the pages of The Observer, or take a short trip south down Orange Avenue and to the opposite side of Interstate 4. Starting this month, The Observer will begin adding coverage of College Park to its news and community features.

Starting this month, The Observer adds College Park coverage to its news and community features. The newspaper already covers the communities of Winter Park, Maitland, Baldwin Park and Goldenrod.

College Park is a neighborhood northwest of downtown Orlando that encompasses 5,000 homes and a thriving business district, north to south from Par Street to Colonial Drive, and east to west, from Orange Avenue to Orange Blossom Trail. During development in the 1920s, the development company, Cooper-Atha-Barr Company (CABCO), was looking for a theme for the neighborhood and decided on streets named for top colleges. From Cornell to Vassar, Vanderbilt to Amherst, the area allows you reside on many a college-campus-named street without leaving Orlando.

“I have neighbors who will — when I say my son went to Oberlin (College) — insist that’s only a street not a school. But I have to tell them, no, he has a degree from there, it better be a school,” Bill Jennings, former president of the College Park Neighborhood Association and current board member, said with a laugh.

A 40-year resident of College Park, Jennings navigates the area’s roundabout-laden cobblestone streets with ease, showing off the collegiate-themed area’s honor-roll worthy destinations. From the former home of Col. Joe Kittinger, the man who previously held the record for highest balloon jump before Felix Baumgartner broke it, jumping from the edge of space in October, to that where astronaut John Young grew up, and another home where Jack Kerouac wrote the original manuscript of “On the Road.”

The dichotomy of these historical landmarks and prestigious street names comes together off of the area’s main street of Edgewater Drive, where hip, small local businesses rule. From health store havens and vegetarian and vegan-catering restaurants to salons, spas and workout studios, the area provides a community that caters to a lifestyle of healthy living, said Andrea Kudlacz, director of the College Park Partnership.

Visit collegeparkorlando.org for more information about the College Park Neighborhood Association, which will hold its next meeting at 7 p.m. on Monday, Nov. 5, at the College Park Community Center.

To learn more about the College Park Business Partnership and for a list of its member businesses and upcoming events, visit collegeparkpartnership.com

“You really never need to leave College Park … we have everything you could possibly need right in town,” she said.

With more than 100 member businesses in the Partnership, which serves as the area’s business connector and an events organizer, she says College Park keeps an active local business community to mix in with its small town feel.

“It’s a really tight neighborhood, you hang around Publix too long and you run into everyone you know,” Kudlacz said with a laugh.

And Jennings, also a member of the College Park Neighborhood Association’s Historical Committee, says even that Publix has a history. Being one of the first Publix Super Markets built, its sign was saved and designated a historical landmark when the store was renovated in the 1990s.

“It’s a really great neighborhood, with some really great history,” Jennings said. “It’s just a great place to live.”