A 1920s neighbourhood of the City of Orlando laid out on brick streets named for colleges — Princeton, Harvard, Yale, Dartmouth — wrapped around four lakes, with Interstate 4 on its eastern edge and downtown a few minutes south-east.
Edgewater Drive has served as the neighbourhood’s main street since the 1920s and still does, with the Dubsdread golf course to the north, Lakes Adair, Concord, Silver and Ivanhoe threaded through the street grid, and the 202-acre Packing District redevelopment on the western side.
Location Context
Inside the City of Orlando, north-west of downtown. I-4 runs along the eastern edge with SR 408 just south, and downtown sits roughly three miles south-east — which is the practical reason the neighbourhood has held its value through several cycles.
Housing Overview
The bones are 1925. Cooper-Atha-Barr broke ground on a 40-acre parcel near Lake Ivanhoe in February 1925 and recorded the first plat on 2 February, with eight more plats following through 1926. The result is a compact grid of 1920s and 1930s bungalows, Mediterranean Revival and Colonial Revival houses, later mid-century infill, and — increasingly — new construction on lots where the original house came down.
1920s and 1930s bungalows
Mediterranean and Colonial Revival houses
Mid-century infill homes
Lakefront homes on Adair, Concord, Silver and Ivanhoe
New construction on redeveloped lots
Where College Park sits
A neighbourhood of the City of Orlando, not a municipality, so there is no legal boundary to draw. It is built around Lakes Adair, Concord, Silver and Ivanhoe, with Interstate 4 along its eastern edge and downtown a short run south-east.
Interstate & expresswayLakesStreets, lakes and roads: US Census Bureau TIGER. Marker positions are approximate.
Buying, selling or renting here: the questions worth asking first
Which government? College Park is a neighbourhood of the City of Orlando, not a municipality of its own. That means city permitting, city code and city services — but Orange County’s boundary with the city is genuinely ragged in this part of the metro, so the Property Appraiser’s parcel record is still the thing that settles it for a specific address rather than the neighbourhood name.
Is the house in a historic district, and does that bind you? This is where most buyers get it wrong. The Lake Adair–Lake Concord Historic District was added to the National Register of Historic Places on 30 December 2011, roughly bounded by Golfview Street, Edgewater Court, Alameda Street and Peachtree Road. National Register listing is a federal designation — it is an honour and it can matter for certain tax credits on income-producing property, but it is not the thing that puts a design review board between you and a new window. The City of Orlando’s own design review attaches to locally designated landmarks and to the city’s six local historic districts, and Lake Adair–Lake Concord is not on that local district list. College Park does contain a local landmark: the Jack Kerouac House is one of the 47 individually designated City of Orlando historic landmarks. The practical instruction is simple — ask the city which designation, if any, attaches to the parcel, and do it before you plan exterior work.
What about schools? Orange County Public Schools assigns attendance by address, and zones are periodically rezoned, so the only reliable answer for a specific house comes from the district itself. OCPS publishes attendance zone maps and a Find My School lookup, and College Park Middle School is located in the neighbourhood. We will point you to the district’s tool rather than characterise any school — that is both the accurate answer and the lawful one.
For renters, the same jurisdiction question decides which local rules and which local offices apply, and Florida’s landlord-tenant statute, Chapter 83, sits underneath all of it statewide. Settle the jurisdiction first; it determines who you can actually call.
For sellers, the two recurring friction points are permit history on a hundred-year-old house and the buyer who is valuing the lot rather than the building. Pulling the permit record before listing, rather than during a contract, is the single cheapest thing you can do.
The golf course, the vineyard and the 202 acres
The land north of the neighbourhood has been through several lives. In 1886 investors planted the Niagara Vineyard across 200 acres. It failed, and the Wright-Rundell Company platted the ground as Villa Farms in 1910. Carl Dann bought the property in 1924 and turned it into the Dubsdread Golf Course and the Golfview residential subdivision beside it. The course marked its hundredth anniversary in 2024 and remains open to the public, run under a city partnership by an outside operator, and it has kept investing — a new 40-bay driving range with teaching bays and technology-equipped stalls opened in late summer 2025.
On the western side, the Packing District is the largest thing to happen to this part of Orlando in a generation: a 202-acre redevelopment by Dr. Phillips Charities centred on Princeton Street and Orange Blossom Trail, on ground that was historically citrus packing. More than 100 acres were gifted to the City of Orlando for a regional park. The Orlando Tennis Centre relocated there with seventeen courts, eleven of them clay. The 4Roots Farm Campus occupies eighteen acres, with its first phase completed in January 2023. Residential arrived alongside it — a 307-unit apartment building opened in February 2022 and a 135-unit townhome project followed — and an $18.1 million streetscape rebuild, including a roundabout and bike paths, finished in April 2023.
For a buyer this cuts both ways and it is worth being honest about it. Hundreds of acres of new park, trail and recreation on the doorstep is a durable amenity of a kind that rarely gets added to an established neighbourhood. It also means construction traffic, changing street patterns and a still-unfinished build-out on the western approach. Which of those matters more depends entirely on which street you are looking at, and it is a reason to walk the specific block rather than trust the neighbourhood’s reputation in either direction.
Buyer Considerations
—National Register listing and City of Orlando local designation are different things with different consequences — confirm which, if either, applies to a specific address
—Houses of this age commonly warrant attention to roof, electrical service, supply lines and window condition; confirm by inspection rather than assumption
—Lots vary widely in width and depth across the 1925-26 plats, and setbacks on a narrow lot can constrain an addition more than the square footage suggests
—Proximity to I-4 is a genuine convenience and, on the streets nearest the interstate, a genuine noise consideration — visit at more than one time of day
Seller Considerations
—On an older house the land can carry much of the value, so part of the buyer pool may be pricing the lot rather than the structure
—Permit history matters here: work done decades ago on a 1920s house may not appear in the record, and buyers increasingly ask
—Presentation of original detail — floors, windows, trim — tends to separate offers in this market more than it does in newer neighbourhoods
Nearby Amenities
✓Historic Dubsdread Golf Course
✓Edgewater Drive shops and dining
✓The Packing District regional park and trails
✓Orlando Tennis Centre
✓4Roots Farm Campus
✓Lakes Adair, Concord, Silver and Ivanhoe
Transportation
✓Interstate 4
✓SR 408 East–West Expressway
✓Edgewater Drive
✓Princeton Street
✓Orange Blossom 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.
Curious About College Park?
Ask us anything — property types, timing, or how this community compares to others you're considering.
The City of Orlando is a municipality of about 320,000 people inside an Orange County of roughly 1.47 million — which means most addresses that read “Orlando, FL” are not in the city at all.
Historic bungalows and frame vernacular homes · Downtown high-rise condominiums · Mid-century ranch homes
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Craftsman bungalows · Mediterranean and Mission Revival houses · Frame and Masonry Vernacular homes
A city of about 30,000 north of downtown Orlando, built around a chain of lakes and a brick-street commercial core — where more than half the housing predates 1970 and the median home is worth nearly twice the county figure.
Mid-century ranch and split-level homes · Pre-war frame and masonry houses · Lakefront estates
