Wellen Park by the numbers

City Beautiful concept built at the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893. BOSTON PUBLIC LIBRARY / COURTESY PHOTO

With its broad, sun-splashed boulevards and state-of the-art stadium, Wellen Park is easily seen a window on the future of planned communities. Yet it has a soul rooted in a civic idea more than a century old.

It’s called the City Beautiful concept of urban planning. And despite the ongoing de-annexation issue that has dominated the headlines and cast a shadow on the future, the real news is the way developers in the community are recreating an American Dream that’s a throwback mixed with innovative urban design.

Wellen Park’s greatest pre-existing asset is U.S. 41, which bisects the community. For a quick lesson in the value of the major artery, consider this: Englewood withered and Punta Gorda benefited when planners decided it was cheaper to route the road straight through what would become Port Charlotte. The original plan was to route 41 through Englewood. Consequently, all of U.S. 41 from the Sarasota County line to the Peace River ran through the property of one man, A.C. Frizzell.

RIGHT: North Port future land use map • BELOW LEFT: An early rendering of the finished Downtown Wellen. The dream will soon become reality. • BELOW RIGHT: Solis Hall

That’s important because, in 1958, Frizzell sold his land empire to the company that would develop Port Charlotte and what used to be called North Port Charlotte. When the two communities went their separate ways (North Port incorporated, Port Charlotte never developed a government), it created the city in which Wellen Park resides.

There’s even more history along the western border of Wellen Park. More than 100 years ago, the area called Woodmere was a thriving lumber mill. It was a self-contained village that folded when the bottom fell out of timber during the 1920s. That land became a place of stunted pines and brush that backed up into what became known as the Thomas Ranch. About 8,000 acres, including Thomas Ranch and part of old Woodmere, were annexed by North Port in 2002. The land was sold to developers who, in 2014, began developing West Villages, which became Wellen Park.

Activities evocative of a sometimes imagined and often cherished past — such as taking in a baseball game or hanging out at the neighborhood pizza joint — are recreated in Wellen Park.

Consider CoolToday Park, which hosts the spring training of the National League Atlanta Braves, and an upscale pizza parlor just off the road that leads to the stadium. The stadium has 6,300 seats, but with berm seating for 1,800 people, 8,000 fans can be squeezed in. During the regular professional baseball season, it’s used as a giant outdoor theater, conjuring up images of old drive-in movies. The park is also the home base of the Florida Complex League Braves.

Remember the village green, a staple of community life back when people moved primarily at the speed of muscle? Wellen Park developers have recreated the concept with a banquet and meeting hall that accommodates 150 people and overlooks a lake and other natural amenities.

Downtown Wellen offers weekly outdoor concerts, Zumba classes and a host of other public events. Both the stadium and, to a lesser extent, the meeting complex and downtown, harken back to the City Beautiful concept, in which planners envisioned a series of broad, often colonnaded public areas and grand buildings where concerts and other events of cultural enlightenment would be staged. Proponents argued that urban beauty promotes harmony, builds civic pride and increases the quality of life. Venice, Wellen Park’s neighbor to the west, was built using such principles.

The community features 10 educational institutions, three public and four private, offering lessons from primary grades through college. However, due to budget restrictions, the Sarasota County School Board announced recently that a new elementary school for the area would not be coming anytime soon.

There was a time when class and status were marked by going from a Buick to a Cadillac. In Wellen Park, one can buy in one of 13 communities. From the relatively modest Wellen Park Golf & Country Club homes, starting in the $200,000 range, to Gran Place, where $900,000 homes are the barometer of success, moving on up takes on new meaning in the hierarchy of neighborhoods.

The Atlanta Braves take on the Minnesota Twins in CoolToday Park. COURTESY PHOTO

And housing is booming in the development. Most recent statistics show 461 residential permits issued from July 1 to Dec. 31, for an accumulated total of 6,685 residential permits issued in the community .

Who’s moving in? There are 10,763 residents in West Villages, with a median age of 64, according to Point2, a realty firm. Males, 48.67%, are outnumbered by females, 51.33%. In comparison, North Port in 2022 had a population of 77,000 people with a median age of 49.5. Of that population, 37,668 were males, 48.94%, and 39,307 were females, 51.06%, according to city data.

Those are the numbers. But numbers don’t capture the concept of the City Beautiful. For that, you’ll have to visit — or live in — Wellen Park yourself.

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