A New Urbanist neighbourhood inside the City of Orlando, built on the site of the former Naval Training Center Orlando — which means its ground has an environmental record most Orlando neighbourhoods do not, and a buyer should know how to read it.
New Broad Street forms the Village Center beside Lake Baldwin, with a grid of small blocks designed so that no home sits far from a park, roughly 200 acres of common open space, and the Lake Baldwin Trail connecting to the Cady Way Trail toward Winter Park.
Location Context
North-east Orlando between Winter Park and Audubon Park, on ground that was sealed behind a military perimeter fence for six decades until the plan reconnected it to the surrounding street grid at around twenty-seven points.
Housing Overview
Everything here post-dates 2002. Demolition began in April 2000, the first residents moved in during December 2002, and the Village Center opened in October 2003. The plan mixes single-family detached houses, townhouses and row houses, stacked flats, apartments above ground-floor retail, and accessory units — deliberately, as a New Urbanist principle rather than as an accident of phasing.
Single-family detached homes
Townhomes and row houses
Stacked flats and apartments
Apartments above ground-floor retail
Accessory dwelling units
Where Baldwin Park sits
Built on the former Naval Training Center Orlando, between Winter Park and Audubon Park. There is no municipal boundary to draw — it is a City of Orlando planned development, and its street grid reconnects to the surrounding city at around twenty-seven points.
Interstate & expresswayLakesStreets, lakes and roads: US Census Bureau TIGER. Marker positions are approximate.
Naval Training Center Orlando was one of the Navy’s largest training bases. The 1993 BRAC round marked it for closure; Recruit Training Command and the naval hospital closed in 1995, Service School Command in 1996, and the Nuclear Power Training Command graduated its last class in December 1998. All base operations ceased on 30 April 1999. The Navy conveyed the property in October 1999, the City having selected Orlando NTC Partners as master developer in May 1998.
A 1994 environmental baseline survey identified fifty-five potential areas of contamination across the base, along with roughly two hundred petroleum storage tanks that were subsequently removed. Groundwater contamination included the solvents trichloroethene and tetrachloroethene; soil and groundwater work also addressed lead, arsenic and pesticides. Around one hundred acres of the main base underwent arsenic remediation. One area, the North Grinder Landfill at the north-west corner, had operated as a landfill from 1939 to 1968 and became the subject of a 1998 EPA Record of Decision.
That Record of Decision imposed real, lasting restrictions on that specific footprint: a prohibition on using the surficial aquifer for water, a bar on intrusive activity deeper than twelve inches without protective protocols, and a restriction limiting land use within the landfill and groundwater-restriction boundary to non-residential purposes. Two parcels were transferred while contamination remained, under a Finding of Suitability for Early Transfer signed in December 2002 — the mechanism used when obligations continue to run with the land. The EPA has said long-term monitoring at the former base is ongoing.
None of that means a given house is affected. The controls attach to defined areas, not uniformly to every residential lot, and in 2020 the EPA gave the Navy, Florida DEP, the City and the developer a national award for the site’s reuse. What it does mean is that the honest answer to “is this property clear?” is a title search and a Florida DEP records check for that parcel, not a reassurance from anybody’s website — including ours. We could not map the restricted boundary against present-day addresses from published sources, so we will not pretend to.
Two bills, one address
Baldwin Park carries two layers of obligation beyond ordinary city taxes, and buyers regularly budget for one and meet the other at closing.
The first is the Residential Owners Association, which administers the community’s design guidelines through an Architectural Review Committee. Every exterior property change needs ARC approval before work starts, and scheduling can take weeks, particularly in season. That is the trade the design consistency is bought with.
The second is the Urban Orlando Community Development District, created under Chapter 190 of the Florida Statutes by Orange County ordinance effective 6 December 1999, covering roughly 999 acres. A CDD is a unit of local government, not a homeowners association: it finances and maintains public infrastructure and levies its own assessments, which arrive on the annual property tax bill as a non-ad-valorem line rather than as dues. Ask for the parcel’s actual tax bill and read that line before you agree a monthly payment.
The land-use rules are the Planned Development’s own. The PD ordinance was adopted on 27 July 1998 and runs to thirteen chapters plus architectural, landscaping and signage appendices. It sets aside roughly 200 acres of common open space closed to future development, targets a five-minute walk from any home to a neighbourhood park, and prohibits public boat ramps on Lake Susannah. Lake Baldwin covers about 196 acres and Lake Susannah about 78.
Buyer Considerations
—Ask specifically about environmental institutional controls on the parcel — the former base carries recorded land-use restrictions in defined areas, and a title search plus a Florida DEP records check is the way to establish whether any touch a given address
—Every exterior change goes through the Residential Owners Association’s Architectural Review Committee before work begins, and applications can wait weeks to be scheduled
—Public infrastructure is funded through the Urban Orlando Community Development District — a Chapter 190 special district whose assessments appear on the tax bill separately from association dues
—The neighbourhood sits under a City of Orlando Planned Development ordinance adopted in 1998, so its zoning rules are the PD’s own, not the standard city code
Seller Considerations
—Buyers and their lenders increasingly ask about the base history directly; having the answer ready, with the parcel’s title work in hand, is better than being asked cold
—Because the housing is uniform in age, condition and finish level do most of the pricing work
—Unpermitted exterior changes are unusually visible here, since the ARC record establishes what was approved
Nearby Amenities
✓Village Center on New Broad Street
✓Lake Baldwin and the Lake Baldwin Trail
✓Cady Way Trail
✓Blue Jacket Park
✓Roughly 200 acres of common open space
Transportation
✓Bennett Road
✓Corrine Drive
✓General Rees Avenue
✓SR 50 / East Colonial Drive nearby
✓Cady Way Trail
✓LYNX bus network
Market information is provided for general education, may change without notice, and should be independently verified before making real estate decisions.
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