Sustainable and environmental projects - Oak Hill -Orlando-United States

Project  summary

Oak Hills was a 2200 acre Mixed use,  Commercial, Residential / Time share, Golf and Tennis resort to be built on land that Array Group Inc. had acquired. (Array Group Inc. is the development arm of Array Architects Inc.). The property was 15 minutes away from the gates of Disney world in Orlando Florida. Part of it was natural wetlands and mitigation areas for development.  And part of it was beef ranch and farmland.

Phase I was budgeted for $125,000,000 USD including the land acquisition costs.

This project was designed primarily for the baby boomers, the largest segment of the North American market, we proposed 2 international tournament style golf courses and an 18 holes executive course. These 3 courses were scheduled to be designed by an internationally renowned golf course designer. Array created a comprehensive plan to optimize the attractive features of the golf courses and to provide a nucleus for the development.

The focal point was a 150 room hotel surrounded by a small town centre concept with retail, coffee shops, wellness spas and various types of recreational facilities. We also developed a concept for a miniature train to tie the entire development together, allowing visitors to move easily from the center to any one of the different modules.

We were permitted 4500 residential units, most of them to be dealt with as fractional or time sharing or for ownership scenarios.

The net profit of the project over 12 years projected to be 1.2 Billion USD in revenue. The project was sold to another development group after the September 11 events.

The experience as developers as well as planners for this project gave us a huge amount of experience, which we are now involved in.

B) Sustainability

The project was designed based on sustainable concepts to reduce its impact on the natural environment and wild life, (dear, Turkey, Craws and other unique birds, alligators and turtles) that was a primary feature of the development.

A small scale, quiet train provided a quiet transportation link providing access while reducing traffic impact on the wild life and residents.

The project had its own waste water treatment plant that was designed to expand as needed to meet the requirements of the growing community.