Lake Nona: The Orlando Community that was designed for the future

From Medical City and autonomous transportation to world-class tennis, public art, and a new approach to how people live, work, and play.

What happens when you don't simply build another Orlando subdivision?

What happens when you try to build an entire community around the way people may live tomorrow? You get something remarkably close to Lake Nona.

Located in southeast Orlando, Lake Nona doesn't feel like a community that happened accidentally. Healthcare, technology, education, sports, public art, restaurants, hotels, trails, residential neighborhoods, and workplaces have been intentionally brought together as parts of a much larger vision.

And that's what makes Lake Nona interesting from a real-estate perspective.

People considering Lake Nona homes for sale aren't simply comparing kitchens, swimming pools, and square footage. They're evaluating an entire lifestyle.

So let's take a look at the Orlando community that seems determined to live a few years ahead of everybody else.

First came an idea: What if community could actually make life better?

Lake Nona is a large master-planned community developed by Tavistock Development Company.

But calling Lake Nona a master-planned community doesn't really explain it. Central Florida has plenty of those. What distinguishes Lake Nona is the breadth of the experiment.

Rather than simply constructing houses and adding shopping afterward, the community has been developed around interconnected residential neighborhoods, healthcare, education, business, recreation, technology, and wellness.

That philosophy can be seen everywhere from the trails connecting neighborhoods to the concentration of major healthcare institutions in what became known as Lake Nona Medical City. It can even be seen in the artwork.

Lake Nona says its public-art program includes dozens of installations involving sculpture, murals, digital art, and live performance. This isn't decoration added after the community was built. It's part of the community's identity.

And that distinction becomes important when you're trying to understand why Lake Nona has attracted so much attention within the Orlando real estate market.

Medical City changed the map of southeast Orlando

Perhaps nothing shaped Lake Nona's identity more than healthcare.

Lake Nona became home to a concentration of medical, research, and educational institutions that helped establish southeast Orlando as a significant healthcare and life-sciences destination. That created something real estate buyers should always pay attention to: Employment infrastructure.

A successful community needs more than houses. It needs reasons for people to be there. Medical professionals, researchers, educators, students, technology workers, entrepreneurs, and support businesses create an economic ecosystem around a community.

Lake Nona's evolution demonstrates what can happen when employment, education, and residential development grow together rather than independently. For someone relocating to Orlando for work, especially in healthcare, medicine, technology, or related industries, Lake Nona can therefore enter the real-estate conversation for reasons extending well beyond the homes themselves.

But healthcare is only one part of the story. Because just down the road, you'll find something else rather extraordinary.

Nearly 100 tennis courts - in one place

If you follow tennis, Lake Nona has another claim to fame. The USTA National Campus is here. This enormous tennis facility has become one of the defining landmarks of Lake Nona and a major hub for American tennis. The campus spans more than 60 acres and includes nearly 100 courts, supporting recreational players, collegiate tennis, training, and major competitions.

Think about that for a moment. Most residential communities advertise a couple of tennis courts as an amenity. Lake Nona has one of the most significant tennis facilities in the country sitting inside the broader community. It reinforces something you begin noticing repeatedly here: Lake Nona tends not to do things particularly small.

Then there's the 100-acre town center

Every community needs somewhere to gather. Lake Nona is building that around Lake Nona Town Center. The Town Center encompasses approximately 100 acres and is designed as an open-air destination combining shopping, restaurants, entertainment, offices, hospitality, residential living, events, and public art. 

This is important because Lake Nona isn't trying to create a traditional suburban arrangement where every activity requires driving from one isolated development to another. The goal is much more urban.

Eat - Work - Meet friends - Go to an event - Stay at a hotel - Walk around - Live nearby.

Check out some of the local events like "Art After Dark" on Fridays & Saturdays https://www.facebook.com/share/r/1EYRtVtJD9/

And increasingly, do several of those things without leaving the same district. That's a very different approach from the traditional suburban shopping center surrounded by a giant parking lot.

Orlando's first container park

Then somebody apparently looked at a pile of shipping containers and thought:

We should build a restaurant and entertainment destination out of these.

Welcome to Boxi Park.

Boxi Park at Lake Nona was constructed from repurposed shipping containers and combines food-and-beverage concepts with outdoor entertainment and community events. It's playful. It's casual. And most importantly, it gives residents somewhere to go. That's something I think gets underestimated when people evaluate real estate.

A beautiful house is wonderful. But eventually you leave the house. Where do you go Friday evening? Where do you meet friends? Where can you grab something casual without turning it into a formal dinner? Where can the community gather?

Places like Boxi Park help answer those questions and contribute to Lake Nona's larger live-work-play identity. The Town Center's development materials identify Boxi Park as Orlando's first container park. 

And then Lake Nona built a hotel that looks like it arrived from 2040

If I wanted to show someone the Lake Nona philosophy in one building, I might take them to the Lake Nona Wave Hotel. The 17-story hotel's curved glass exterior immediately tells you this isn't supposed to look conventional.

Inside, technology, hospitality, wellness, and art are deliberately mixed. When the Wave opened, Lake Nona described an interior containing approximately 500 artworks and design pieces, alongside advanced technology integrated throughout the guest experience. But then walk outside. Because that's where things get even more interesting.

THERE'S A WORLD-CLASS SCULPTURE GARDEN BEHIND THE HOTEL

Immediately adjacent to the Wave Hotel is the Lake Nona Sculpture Garden. And this isn't a couple of decorative statues next to a hotel swimming pool. It's a 50,000-square-foot outdoor sculpture garden, landscaped with nearly 300 palms and featuring works from the Lewis Collection. 

Among the artists represented are internationally recognized names including Henry Moore and Fernando Botero - and then there's something you might recognize instantly: Charging Bull. Yes, the bull.

A version of Arturo Di Modica's famous Charging Bull sculpture stands in the Lake Nona Sculpture Garden. Lake Nona identifies the bronze work as weighing approximately 7,100 pounds. That's Lake Nona in a nutshell. You can go out for dinner and somehow end up walking through tropical landscaping past internationally significant sculpture. The community wants ordinary spaces to feel less ordinary.

What about those driverless shuttles?

This is one of the stories that originally made Lake Nona fascinating nationally. Years before autonomous vehicles became an everyday news topic, Lake Nona began experimenting with autonomous passenger transportation.

The idea was relatively straightforward:

Could small autonomous vehicles help solve the “last mile” problem inside a master-planned community? Rather than merely talking about smart-city technology, Lake Nona became a real-world testing environment for it.

Autonomous shuttles have been used to connect destinations within the community, and the current Lake Nona and Wave Hotel materials still reference autonomous shuttle transportation. Will autonomous transportation ultimately transform every American suburb? Nobody knows, but Lake Nona's willingness to actually test ideas rather than simply advertise itself as “innovative” tells you something about the philosophy behind the community.

The future still has front porches

For all the technology, it hasn't abandoned a very old-fashioned idea:

Neighbors should actually meet one another. Look at Laureate Park. Instead of designing homes solely around garages and cars, you'll find brightly colored homes, front porches, parks, community spaces, trails, and neighborhood amenities intended to encourage residents to get outside. Current residential options include single-family homes and townhomes, with community amenities including parks, playgrounds, dog parks, community gardens, and an aquatic center. 

That's an interesting contradiction. Lake Nona can feel futuristic, yet some of its urban-planning ideas are actually quite traditional:

Front porches - Walkability- Parks Neighbors - A village center - Maybe the future isn't about replacing the past. Maybe it's about figuring out which parts of the past worked.

44+ miles of trails change how a community feels

Another element that doesn't photograph quite as dramatically as a futuristic hotel is the trail system. If you actually live somewhere, this can matter more. Lake Nona's current materials describe 44+ miles of trails throughout the community. That means running, walking, and cycling aren't restricted to one recreational park.

They're incorporated into the broader environment. This is part of what separates good master planning from simply building houses. Infrastructure shapes behavior. Build only roads, and people drive. Build useful trails, sidewalks, parks, and destinations, and suddenly people have alternatives.

Is Lake Nona walkable?

Parts of Lake Nona are deliberately designed to encourage walking and cycling, but Lake Nona as a whole is a large community and should not be confused with a compact traditional downtown. That's an important distinction for someone moving to Orlando. Within areas such as Laureate Park and Lake Nona Town Center, residents can enjoy trails, parks, restaurants, and community destinations relatively close together. Depending on exactly where you live and work, a car will still be part of everyday life.

What is it like to live in Lake Nona?

The simplest answer is: Modern, planned, and constantly evolving. Lake Nona appeals particularly to buyers attracted to newer homes, community amenities, outdoor recreation, healthcare and technology employment, contemporary architecture, and proximity to southeast Orlando.

But there isn't one universal Lake Nona lifestyle. A home in Laureate Park can provide a different experience from an apartment near Town Center or another residential community within the broader Lake Nona area.

How close is Lake Nona to Orlando Airport?

The community is located in southeast Orlando near Orlando International Airport and State Road 417. For frequent travelers, business professionals, people relocating to Central Florida, and second-home buyers, airport access can be an important part of choosing where to live. It's also strategically significant for employers. Lake Nona isn't an isolated development far outside metropolitan Orlando. Its location connects it to the airport, transportation infrastructure, and the broader Orlando economy.

What does all this have to do with Lake Nona real estate?

Everything. Because real estate value isn't created by granite countertops. Countertops can be replaced. Location cannot. When buyers evaluate Lake Nona real estate, they're also evaluating the infrastructure and lifestyle surrounding the property:

Healthcare, employment, schools and education, restaurants, sports, trails, parks, technology, entertainment, airport access & community - and future development. That's particularly important in a place like Lake Nona because the community continues to evolve. Buying here means understanding what exists today and what's planned for tomorrow.

Is Lake Nona a good place to live in Orlando?

There isn't one Orlando neighborhood that's perfect for everyone. Someone who dreams about a historic bungalow beneath mature oak trees may fall in love with another part of Orlando. Someone who wants acreage may look elsewhere.

But someone attracted to newer construction, modern master planning, healthcare and technology, recreation, trails, and an evolving live-work-play environment should absolutely understand what Lake Nona offers before deciding where to buy. Spend an afternoon here, walk around Town Center, visit the Sculpture Garden, grab something at Boxi Park, drive through Laureate Park, look at the USTA campus. And don't only tour houses. Tour the lifestyle.

Thinking about buying or selling a home in Lake Nona?

When I'm helping someone evaluate a home, I believe the conversation should extend beyond bedrooms, bathrooms, and price per square foot. Where you live affects how you live. If you're considering buying a home in Lake Nona, selling a Lake Nona property, relocating to Orlando, purchasing new construction, or comparing communities throughout Central Florida, you can explore Orlando neighborhoods and search current MLS listings at JesperFaerch.com.

The technology will change. The buildings will change. Lake Nona will continue changing. But perhaps that's exactly the point. Lake Nona wasn't designed simply for the Orlando of today. It was designed with one eye firmly fixed on tomorrow.