[Bilyclub]

Originally Posted by Jim 9922

The location of the building really makes it less than ideal for apartments. It is basically land locked by other buildings including a restaurant to the west and the bowling alley complex to the south. Looks like they either park on the streets or convert the retail clothing store on the ground floor to private covered parking (if that is possible, considering structural building and fire codes). Converting the empty office spaces along the commercial row and the MVP Building would make more sense in that entrances are already accessible to existing parking lots. Of course, these conversions assume basic apartment fire code construction features were originally built into the buildings.

When Spanish Springs was originally built, the second-floor offices were used principally for Developer and CDD activities and even included a "private" restaurant for Developer and selected local business executives. All that, including the restaurant moved to the second-floor offices at Lake Sumter Landing. Now most of the Developer and CDD administration activity was recently relocated to Brownwood. I assume the next massive migration of Developer office employees will be to the Middleton area once that is completed.

I assume they learned from their mistakes at Spanish Springs and built the office areas in the newer town squares to be more conducive to apartment conversions. Most of those offices have direct access to parking lots, and in fact are usually accessible only from the back or breezeways.

I believe I read somewhere that the Developer holds 120 additional "resident permits". That would probably fill up the second floors of Spanish Springs and Lake Sumter Landing areas.

In 2020 the AAC voted to allow the Developer’s remaining 286 amenity units that had been designated in 2015 for residents of independent living facilities (ILFs) or assisted living facilities (ALFs) to be used for apartments.