This latest development follows last year’s announcement by Tavistock of plans for Lake Nona West, a 405,000-square-foot lifestyle shopping center situated along Lake Nona Boulevard just east of the Boggy Creek Road intersection. The shopping center will feature both large and junior anchor stores on the periphery, while at its heart, a “mini-town” packed with an assortment of shops, restaurants and services aims to foster a vibrant community atmosphere.  

As of Spring 2024, site preparations are advancing, with Tavistock in advanced discussions with a variety of tenants, aiming to feature a mix of renowned national brands alongside best-in-class local shops, restaurants and service operators.

Additional highlights for Lake Nona West include: 

·         Innovative Amenities: Lake Nona West will be outfitted with EV charging stations, allowing shoppers to recharge their vehicles while they shop 

·         Artistic and Cultural Finishes: True to Lake Nona’s reputation for integrating art and community, the shopping center will feature a custom artwork program throughout its premises, enhancing the visitor experience 

·         Accessibility & Design: Two large roundabouts on Lake Nona Boulevard will mark the main entrances to Lake Nona West, ensuring smooth traffic flow and easy access 

Lake Nona offers several community gathering areas (some exclusive to residents; some public), but the thought is the same: walkable, community gathering spaces with less emphasis on cars. The community boasts the USTA National Campus, Lake Nona Performance Club, Nona Adventure Park and Rox Climbing Gym, among other amenities. Northlake Park is popular, offering an integrated YMCA and school. Laureate Park’s Village Center gets a lot of love for its Instagrammable vibes. Situated in the center of Lake Nona’s Laureate Park neighborhood, the Laureate Park Village Center is home to a variety of retail and entertainment, including Canvas Restaurant & Market, Amazing Explorers Academy early learning center, a resort-style aquatic center, LP Fit fitness center, Dockside event venue, Magruder Eye Institute, Dais Technologies, Summit Broadband and Laureate Insurance Partners. The Village Center also is home to public art installation, The Glass House, by Brooklyn-based artist Tom Fruin. When asked about popular amenities, Adams points to the aquatic center and fitness center, noting “all residents have access to these benefits, and it is often packed!”

“That is what we dream about here — an Airport City embedded into the city of the future. Where else can you find 37 square miles of land with just two owners collaborating to create an unparalleled quality of life within the city limits of Orlando, a globally renowned destination and the most visited city in the nation? It doesn’t exist.”

Which is why Lake Nona and MCO are working together to enhance that Airport City concept, he adds.

Located off County Road 530 and North Narcoossee Road in the region’s fastest growing community, Lake Nona, the 65-acre single-family home community is just minutes away from Lake Nona Town Center, Nemours Children’s Hospital, Nona Adventure Park and Boxi Park, a one-of-a-kind open-air venue that features bars and restaurants, live entertainment, kids play area and beach volleyball.

“Summerdale Park is the definition of a live, work, play community,” said Gerry Boeneman, president of Dream Finders Homes’ Central Florida division. “A-rated elementary, middle and high schools in the Orange County school system are nearby along with SR 417 providing easy access to everything around Greater Orlando.”

Featuring some of Dream Finders’ most popular open floor plans with four or five bedrooms and from two-and-a-half to four baths, Summerdale Park will have several, new larger plans like the Ellington, as well as the popular Anna Maria with Bonus and the Tidewater. While all designs have two-car garages, some also will offer tandem parking or a workspace area.

With prices starting in the low $­­­­400,000s, Boeneman said the spacious one- and two-story homes, which range in size from 2,235 to 3,628 square feet, can be built on 50- or 60-foot-wide lots.

“Several of our plans in this community include an airy upstairs loft area.  All have been designed for the way we live today with upscale finishes and fixtures.  Stone exteriors and numerous other upgrades are available as well as plenty of options to personalize the home,” Boeneman said.

For more information about homes at Summerdale Park, please call 888-214-1164 or visit www.dreamfindershomes.com

Lake Nona’s newest cardio class instructor brings dance fitness to the community

Every Saturday, you’ll find SOUL Fitness founder Missy Isom dancing her heart out at Dockside in Laureate Park Village Center where she teaches the ultra-popular Club Cardio + Core class.

A wife, mother, and personal trainer, Missy is passionate about showing up for yourself. Through her unique brand of dance fitness, Missy brings her passion to life through choreography and strength training with modifications for every age, size, and physical ability.

In this Q&A, Missy shares her inspiration for SOUL Fitness and how one weekend in Lake Nona led her to relocate her family and business to Laureate Park.

What brought SOUL Fitness to Lake Nona?

My husband and I had been living in a small town in North Carolina for 13 years. He’s a pilot, but his base was in New York, so it was mostly me and our two kids at home. We needed a change and started looking at other bases for his airline. I knew I wanted to move to the Orlando area and then I stumbled across Lake Nona and knew we had to visit.  

We came down for a weekend and fell in love with the vibe and the community’s focus on health. The weekend we visited, there was a huge dance fitness event at Boxi Park and I knew it was a sign because I had been teaching dance fitness for almost 10 years in my own studio.

I danced my heart out that weekend and immediately felt like I was part of this community. Within a few months, we were here. It was that sense of community that brought us here.

What inspired you to start your own business?

I started SOUL Fitness after giving birth to my daughter. I had been working in corporate banking for years and knew I didn’t want to go back to that but didn’t know what was next.

After I had my daughter, I was struggling to feel like myself and realized I could use my love for fitness to help make me feel better. So, I got a group of other young moms together and we started working out. I quickly realized this was what I wanted to do and became a personal trainer. Our little group started to grow into a larger community of men and women of all ages. It grew and grew until I moved into a studio within a year.

I put my whole heart and soul into teaching which is one of the reasons I named it SOUL Fitness. This is my love and my passion!

Tell us about your Club Cardio + Core class.

As a personal trainer, I’m a huge advocate about not being a cardio junkie. You can do all the cardio you want to make the scale go down, but you’re not going to tighten and tone your muscles without strength training.

The Club Cardio + Core class mixes 40 minutes of dance and 20 minutes of strength training using body weight. I know not everyone is a dancer, so I like to make the movements easy to follow and show different modifications that way everyone feels included.

What is your vision for the future of SOUL Fitness in Lake Nona?

I would love to add weekday morning and evening classes at Dockside. My vision is to one day have my own studio again or bring my program to a gym. There are so many other opportunities in Lake Nona and I’m open to exploring them all.

Coming from a little town in North Carolina, Lake Nona is big and full of diversity and love it. The weekend I visited, I knew Lake Nona would embrace SOUL Fitness. I’m so happy to be living in this community where I can develop relationships with people and be there for them physically and mentally.

Join Missy for the Club Cardio + Core class every Saturday from 9:30-10:30 a.m. at Dockside. Register here and be sure to bring a mat for body weight strength training.

Local academy led by Lake Nona residents Phil and Jennifer Dalhausser

Beyond the playground at Boxi Park is a set of professional sand volleyball courts where Lake Nona residents and pro beach volleyball players Phil and Jennifer Dalhausser have been serving up weekly youth training and more.

At the Phil Dalhausser Beach Volleyball Academy, the couple coach classes designed for kids and teens of all skill levels and adult social leagues. They also offer one-on-one private training or small group sessions for athletes looking to take their game to the next level or students interested in collegiate scouting.

At home in Laureate Park, they stay active with their two young children and encourage them to explore all sports.

As a UCF business graduate and Olympic Gold medalist, Phil has a vision to build a beach volleyball community in Lake Nona. He and Jennifer both started with indoor volleyball later in life but made the switch to beach volleyball after just one practice. With the academy in Lake Nona, they hope to inspire younger generations to kick up some sand and dive in to beach volleyball.

In this Q&A, the duo shares their passion for the sport, how they landed in Lake Nona, and what’s next for the academy.

Q. What led you to Lake Nona and how did the community inspire you to launch the academy here?

Phill: We were living in Los Angeles looking for places to buy near the beach but couldn’t bring ourselves to buy a million-dollar fixer upper. One day, Jenn said let’s look in Orlando.

Jennifer: Some of Phil’s UCF buddies are still here and one is married to a realtor, so we met up and drove around town and fell in love with Laureate Park and the Lake Nona community.

Phil: We love that everything in Lake Nona is based around wellness and health and sports. With two beach volleyball courts right down the street at Boxi Park, we thought – why not bring our passion for beach volleyball here?

Q. When did you discover beach volleyball? What did you want to be when you grew up?

Jennifer: I think beach volleyball is a sport that once you play, you’re hooked. I love the vibe, the energy, the lifestyle around it. I played soccer in middle school and started with indoor volleyball as a freshman in high school.

The kids in our academy now are playing at 10 years old! I was a little late to the game but after the first practice I fell in love and stuck with it through high school and college. I wanted to be an athletic trainer when I grew up and after college, I wasn’t done playing and transitioned to beach volleyball. Beach volleyball made my indoor game one hundred times better! I was quicker, stronger, moved easier, and jumped higher.

Phil: I had a late start too. I wanted to be a baseball player or a pharmacist when I grew up. I played baseball through junior year of high school. My high school had indoor volleyball and the coach was bugging me to play for three years until I finally decided to try out my senior year. Like Jenn, I was hooked after that first practice. My coach was a beach volleyball player, so he brought our team out to practice on the beach a couple times and I loved it.

After playing beach through college at UCF, I told my parents I wanted to become a professional beach volleyball player. They laughed but were supportive when I told them I had a plan to give myself until I turned 25 to make it. My dad kept a tally of every cent they loaned me along the way to winning my first professional tournament at exactly 25. He immediately reminded me that I had a balance due. Jokes aside, they are so supportive and were there for me when I won gold at the 2008 Olympics.

Q. Tell us about the greatest life lessons you’ve learned in beach volleyball.

Phill: With sports, you can learn so many life lessons like leadership and following directions. The biggest lesson I like to teach is being in the moment, being present. I always joke with our kids when we’re playing around that we’re not thinking about our next TikTok, we’re thinking about our next pass.

Jennifer: Another thing we like to teach is trust in the process. In everything you do, there will be steps you have to take to be successful. A lot of our kids come from indoor volleyball and expect to be perfect right away and tend to give up a little quicker. We tell them it’s okay to make mistakes and trust that those mistakes help you learn.

Q. What is your favorite skill to teach and the one you worked the hardest to master?  

Phil: My favorite skill would have to be passing because it’s the most important part of the game. We spend a lot of time on it and it’s really cool to see how much our kids improve after just a few weeks in our camps.

Passing was always one of the weaker parts of my game. I’m always one of the taller guys on the floor, so I’ve gotten a lot of rep setting. But, having really long legs makes it harder to move around in the sand which makes it a lot harder to pass.

Jennifer: Without the first pass, you got nothing. Passing and defense came naturally for me, but setting was a lot harder. Just walking in the sand can be difficult, so learning how to move in it takes practice and patience, especially coming from indoor volleyball.

Q. What is your vision for the future of volleyball and the academy in Lake Nona?

Phil: I want to build a beach volleyball community for junior players around here and slowly turn it into the East Coast headquarters for beach volleyball. Everyone goes out to Los Angeles to play if they want to go pro. The problem is the cost of living is so expensive and beach players don’t make much money starting out. With the academy in Lake Nona, we can offer players the option to work and play.

Jennifer: We’d love to have more courts and host tournaments in Lake Nona. You can only practice for so long before you want to test your skills in a competitive way.

Visit pdbva.com to learn more about the academy and check out their Instagram for at-home training tips to practice your skills on solid ground.