Officials at The Florida State University announced last December to locate Florida State's Energy and Sustainability Center in the Birchwood Acres Company certified green development of Harmony, located just 30 minutes south of Orlando.The community of Harmony is described as an "environmentally intelligent community" specifically designed to incorporate an ideal balance of nature oriented living with improvements conforming to the latest and most energy efficient building materials and appliances.
Among the external amenities of the community is the fact 70% of the acreage will remain non developed space, inclusive of two lakes owned by the community. These lakes allow no fossil fuel engines on the lake, limiting boat usage to sail, paddle or electric power. In addition, there is a Johnny Miller designed golf course, many parks, playgrounds, clubhouse, town square, community pool, jogging and hiking trail paths and pet parks for residents of the community to enjoy and utilize.
The residents with children have on site schools within walking distance and the schools provide state of the art educational concepts offering students extraordinary educational opportunities.
The improvements are classified as Certified Green Houses as identified by the Florida Green Building Coalition and are identified as Certified Energy Star Homes. The appliances in the homes are General Electric Energy Star, including the electric oven-range, refrigerator, dishwasher, disposal and hot water heater.
I recently had the pleasure to tour the project with Birchwood Acres President Shad Tome and found the development most impressive, and as an alumni of The Florida State University, I was delighted to learn of the partnership that had been formed.
The Orlando Sentinel recently penned an article detailing the university's plans to build a 5-megawatt power plant at the development, complete with the following diagram from FSU detailing how the power is achieved.
Certainly, energy efficiency is very important, both for the use of homeowners and for the powering of an entire community. The partnership will allow Harmony to be a testing ground for "developing and improving technology" in an effort to reduce costs and improve energy efficiency and environmental protection and preservation.
Charting the progress of the partnership and the Harmony Development over the next few years will be interesting.
They invite you to "Discover Life In Harmony". To visit this impressive development, take Narcoossee Road south to US 192, turn east and roll seven miles to find it on the left. I have the calendar marked to hit the Johnny Miller links down there soon.
NOTE: THE WRITER HAS PERFORMED APPRAISALS IN THE HARMONY COMMUNITY AND SOME OF THE INFORMATION PRESENTED IN THE ARTICLE IS OPINION FROM DATA GATHERED WHILE IN THE COMMUNITY AND DURING THE PERFORMANCE OF APPRAISALS WITHIN THE COMMUNITY.
