A micro-housing unit might be coming to Orlando’s Thornton Park area. The Orlando Sentinel reported the announcement on May 6 for the proposed project which belongs to Euro Group-USA, LLC a subsidiary of a European company and is still in the planning stage, but the company should be filing a final plan in three to four weeks.
The concept of micro housing is relatively new to the U.S., but has been growing in popularity in big metropolitan cities like Seattle, Boston and San Fransisco.
The idea of living in such a small space can turn most renters off, but this housing option has targeted a new niche—millennials who prefer to live in downtown areas and are always on-the-go.
The units in the proposed project will not contain a private kitchen or living area, but their will be a shared kitchen and living space for all the tenants who will rent out the units. There will be 52 units available, ranging anywhere from 260 to 447 square feet in size.
A majority of micro units don’t accommodate for a lot of onsite parking because most tenants do not own a car. Euro Group has filed a memo with the city stating that a small parking garage with only 18 spaces is planned to accompany the micro-housing unit,which could be cause for some controversy. Bungalower reported in February that the Euro Group was looking to team up with Hertz and Orlando Bikeshare to offer special pricing to those tenants who will not utilize the parking garage.
According to walkscore.com, Downtown Orlando has a 90 out of 100 walking score, which is the reason why Euro Group has targeted Thornton Park as the area for this project. It is also predicted to take off with UCF students who would move toward the Downtown area in the future because of the newly slated satellite campus proposed to be seated in Creative Village — another Downtown project that will break ground May 14.
This would also be the first housing unit of its kind in the Central Florida area, and has the potential for moving its way to other Florida metropolitan areas like Tampa, Fort Lauderdale and Miami.
Sources:
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/business/brinkmann-on-business/os-micro-housing-thornton-20150506-post.html
http://bungalower.com/2015/02/micro-housing/
