April 21, 2021 BY RUSTY PRAY, Wellen Park Journal Correspondent
One day in the not-too-distant future, Wellen Park will offer a downtown to residents and visitors, a welcoming, walkable destination that will have something special for everyone.
The face of Downtown Wellen will be a two story mixed-use building that includes retail and restaurants on the first floor and office space on the second. Construction is expected to start this summer and be completed in 2022.
The character of the 32,500-square-foot building will help define Wellen Park’s downtown for years.
“The mixed-use building will become a signature backdrop for Downtown Wellen’s outdoor spaces, defining it as an active and thriving lifestyle destination,” says Alan Wold, a member of the design team at the New Orleans architectural firm of Trapolin-Peer.
Mr. Wold says planners had in mind using the facility as a “destination building — something recognizable that people can orient themselves to when they’re in Downtown Wellen.
Renderings suggest a structure that fits into the laid-back Southwest Florida style: low cut, Spanish influence, pastels. The design includes covered walkways, three restaurants, patio dining and other amenities.
“A core aspect of the design is its connection to the outdoor spaces the building occupies,” Mr. Wold says, adding the restaurants will have outdoor seating and café seating as well. And most of the parking will be in the rear of the building in order to enhance the pedestrian experience.
The building’s second floor, accessible via stairways and an elevator, thoughtfully divides multiple office spaces, each with expansive outdoor terraces overlooking the grand lawn and the lake, and a glass corridor that connects the buildings.
A possible outcome is the building will attract customers that will come for the retail, or to enjoy the shade and courtyard spaces, but stay or return for the businesses above.
The Downtown Wellen building will give Trapolin-Peer another foothold in Southwest Florida.
“It’s beautiful,” says Peter Trapolin, who founded the firm in 1981. “We’ve done work in Florida before, but this is our first building in the Southwest Florida area. We’re excited to be here.”
The design took several months to complete. “It wasn’t as though we arrived at this design at our first pass,” Mr. Wold says. “We went through many different schemes … the word we kept using was ‘transitional style.’
“We weren’t looking for something either strictly traditional or ultra-modern.”
The process did not follow the path of conference-room brainstorming and PowerPoint presentations. That was because of the lockdown that came along with COVID-19.
“We started this design process as lockdown started,” Mr. Wold recalls. “We were all working remotely. There were emails, photos, sketches, conference calls. It was a very different way to work.
“As architects, typically we prefer to be together to design. But we all think this worked out really well.”
Ali H. Johnston, MBA in Real Estate
REALTOR®, Lic. Broker #BK3284964
19503 S West Villages Pkwy
