{"id":12288,"date":"2021-06-19T21:48:39","date_gmt":"2021-06-20T01:48:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/?p=12288"},"modified":"2021-06-19T21:48:50","modified_gmt":"2021-06-20T01:48:50","slug":"historic-orange-street-home-to-move-on-father-day-to-make-way-for-an-apartment-complex","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/2021\/06\/19\/historic-orange-street-home-to-move-on-father-day-to-make-way-for-an-apartment-complex\/","title":{"rendered":"Historic Orange Street home to move on Father Day to make way for an apartment complex"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A century-old East Lake Morton house will get a second chance at serving as a beloved Lakeland home this weekend.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

A 1920s Craftsman bungalow-style home at 721 E. Orange St. has been saved from demolition and will be relocated to a vacant lot on East Lime Street. The city will shut down portions of Orange Street, Lake Avenue and Lime Street starting 6 a.m. Sunday to allow for the journey around the block \u2013 barely a quarter-mile \u2013 that is expected to take at least an hour.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gregory Fancelli, a part-time Lakeland resident and historic preservation advocate, struck a deal with developer Jason Lewis, president of CODA Development, to move the building in an effort to preserve the area\u2019s character while clearing way for a modern apartment complex. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cEvery time we take down a building, no matter how badly it’s deteriorated, we lose a percentage of how many lots maintain one of those historic homes in the area,\u201d Fancelli said. \u201cIt\u2019s not like we can replace them, they don\u2019t make them anymore.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

A historic deal   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fancelli said he first learned about 721 E. Orange St. \u2013 called the William and Barbara Wright House, according to city records \u2013 when reviewing the February agenda for the city\u2019s Historic Preservation Board and Design Review Committee.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lewis had purchased the properties at 721 and 725 E. Orange St. in October, both of which were in poor shape and considered uninhabitable. Contractors provided estimates that it would cost more than $1 million to rehabilitate the two homes, whose total estimated market value was less than $200,000. Lewis requested and received the city\u2019s approval for demolition.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fancelli immediately reached out to Lewis, asking whether he would be open to allowing the two homes to be relocated. It wasn\u2019t his first time. Residents may remember Fancelli paid to move a Tudor-style residence from the shores of Lake Hollingsworth to South Florida Avenue in 2014, now the home of Cob & Pen.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Upon closer inspection, the two-story home at 725 E. Orange St., built in 1925, had been heavily modified over the years to serve as multi-family apartments. Extensive modifications replaced flooring with cheaper linoleum and created electrical wiring issues.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt was too chopped up to salvage,\u201d Fancelli said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lakeland residents were allowed inside to salvage any period building materials that remained, like windows and moldings, as required by the city\u2019s Historic Preservation board.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 721 E. Orange St. house retained a lot of its original hardwood pine floors and features, Fancelli said. While it had also been converted to multifamily apartments, many of the additions were built onto the main frame of the house, making them easy to remove.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The plans call for Albert Moore, a Lakeland contractor who helped oversee renovation of the Lester House on South Florida Avenue<\/a>, to remove the side additions to return the Orange Street home to its original rectangular shape. The roof has been temporarily removed for transport.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fancelli said the house will be reassembled at 711 E. Lime St. on a concrete pad and crawl space. He has plans to rebuild the house\u2019s iconic three-arch front porch with support columns and possibly add an extension on the back of the home for a master bedroom suite.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once reconstructed, his plans are to rent out the house \u2013 though it could be sold if a purchaser is interested and willing to pay a price that covers the building\u2019s relocation costs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fancelli did not disclose the costs of relocating the building, but cost was not the primary consideration. He had an architect draw up plans for new construction on the Lime Street lot. But upon discovering the 1920s homes, he knew it was a good location to keep the century-old home within the same historic district.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s normally not something you would do on a large scale because the cost of moving a building is significant,\u201c he said. \u201cWe believe in the area, we believe in the draw Lakeland has and even in the first half of the year you\u2019ve seen very low amounts of inventory of houses for sale or houses for rent.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Making room <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Clearing 721 and 725 E. Orange St. leaves Lewis with nearly one-acre of property across from the Lake Mirror Center complex, overlooking Barnett Family Park.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lewis has submitted proposed plans to build an apartment complex with four, three-story buildings. There would be a total of 32 units evenly split between one- and two-bedroom apartments. The development\u2019s total cost is more than $5 million.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Renderings of the project submitted to the Historic Preservation Board and Lakeland Community Redevelopment Agency show the apartment complex\u2019s appearance would pay tribute to its site in the East Lake Morton Historic District.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI like Craftsman homes, they are my favorite type of house,\u201d Lewis said.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

The ground-level of each building would have wide support columns, offering future inhabitants a porch. The second-story apartments feature a gabled, three-arch porch that Lewis said aims to echo the style of the 1920s home that stood there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a nod in its inspiration to pay tribute to the building Fancelli is moving while keeping some integrity of the area\u2019s historic nature in the project,\u201d Lewis said.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

His company, CODA Development, received approval June 3 for Tax Increment Financing from the Lakeland CRA. Under the agreement, Lewis will receive 100% reimbursement of taxes on the property in the first two years and 50% reimbursement of taxes paid in the third year after completion. This will total approximately $110,000 in savings over a three-year period.  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A century-old East Lake Morton house will get a second chance at serving as a beloved Lakeland home this weekend.   A 1920s Craftsman bungalow-style home at 721 E. Orange St. has been saved from demolition and… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12290,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"0","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","inline_featured_image":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"wpai_generated_summary":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"dois","default_image_id":71799,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[12,14],"tags":[590],"class_list":["post-12288","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local","category-news","tag-historic-orange-street-home-to-move-on-father-day-to-make-way-for-an-apartment-complex"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12288","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12288"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12288\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12290"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12288"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12288"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12288"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}