Ravaudage wants to play ball

Ravaudage developer Dan Bellows is ready to play ball in Winter Park, a new 5,000-seat minor league baseball stadium being the newest project in talks as the focal point of his 50-acre redevelopment project at Lee Road and U.S. Highway 17-92.

Bellows is in talks with Rollins College to build the estimated $11 million stadium amid the other mass in-the-works mixed residential and retail developments set to fill out a full Ravaudage revamp 15 years in the making.

“What is just so amazing is this idea of the office development, the retail, the residential … it’s literally the synergy of all of it built off of and around the baseball stadium,” Bellows said.

While still in the drafting stages, Mike Miller, development director for Rollins College, said that between Rollins, the city of Winter Park, a yet-to-be-named minor league baseball team and Bellows he’s hopeful that they can work out an agreement for the stadium’s construction to start early next year. Current talks have it encompassing six and a half acres in the center of Ravaudage, with new-urban design incorporating nearby retail and residential projects in harmony with the stadium.

“We’ve been talking about it a long time, over a year,” Miller said of the college’s plan to build a new stadium in Winter Park with hopes of the Rollins’ baseball team playing in it half the year, a minor league team utilizing it the other half, and the city using it for community events when it’s available. “The whole intention has been to bring in the baseball team and make it more than a Rollins College thing, but a whole community thing.”

Miller said whether plans at Ravaudage work or not, Rollins plans to fund the stadium project somewhere in the city as soon as the deal is right.

While the stadium idea is still in the works, Bellows said there’s more to come soon as Ravaudage’s first business – Miller’s Winter Park Ale House – plans to open its doors within the next two weeks, and deals for mixed use residential and retail buildings and townhome sites are begin signed with more construction starting in the coming months.

“It’s incredible how the landscape (on Lee Road and 17-92) is going to change and how nice it’s going to be,” he said. “You’re really going to feel like you’re entering a nice place coming into Winter Park.”

Alfond Inn taking shape and names

Since breaking ground in November 2011, construction of the Alfond Inn at Rollins College has continued on schedule at the corner of Interlachen and New England avenues in downtown Winter Park.

For more information on the Alfond Inn at Rollins College, visit thealfondinn.com

“Everything is going as good as we had hoped,” Rollins College Vice President of Finance, Jeff Eisenbarth, said. “… We’ve seen lots of interest and excitement around the opening.”

With major construction still underway, and its targeted mid-August opening still nearly six months away, Eisenbarth said 14 events and 847 room nights have already been booked in the 112-room hotel.

Eisenbarth said Winter Park residents can expect construction to continue up until July 1, when all the accoutrements for the Alfond will begin to move in, in preparation for opening as the fall term begins at Rollins.