Cocoa Village, Cocoa’s Historic Core and Major Space Coast Tourist Destination

I evaluated the portion of Cocoa referred to as “Cocoa Village”, which is essentially dwtn Cocoa. I didn’t exactly use the officially boundaries of Cocoa Village but instead used the two boulevards on the northern and western borders (King and Cocoa Blvd), the City boundaries to the south and Indian River to the East.

Cocoa was established in the late 1800s. Cocoa’s business district was mostly destroyed by fire in 1890. But redevelopment fortunately came quickly thanks to the extension of the Jacksonville, St. Augustine, and Indian River Ralline to Cocoa. The City was chartered  in 1895 and in the 1910s, population growth accelerated reaching 1,500 in 1920. The population rose dramatically following the development of the space industry, quadrupling from 3,000 in 1940 to 12,000 in 1960. Cocoa Village has a small permanent population of just under 1,000 residents and its energy is driving by tourism including major Cruise liners coming from Port Canaveral for day trips. The City also sponsors around 50 special events each year to keep the City active.

From an urban perspective Cocoa has a great array of retail and cultural amenities with great vibrancy and walkability. But like many historic Florida centers few people live here and most visitors drive to Cocoa instead of walking or biking here. Because of this public transit is limited, there are few rentals available, for-sale housing is expensive, and the median age is around 65. Cocoa Village is also missing a supermarket and drug store. For Cocoa to turn the corner they need to incentivize more housing development, which should be prioritized along the western edge where there is currently lots of vacant and surface parking lots. I’d also like to see the Cocoa Blvd Stroad tamed and become more walkable.

Click here to view my Cocoa Village Album on Flickr

URBAN STRENGTHS:

• Excellent Riverfront parks (Cocoa Riverfront Park & Lee Wenner Park) along with a central plaza.
• Economic diversity.
• Excellent sidewalk and ADA amenities btwn Florida Ave and the Indian River. But west of Florida Avenue the residential streets generally lack sidewalks.
• Great cultural amenities including tons of restaurants, bars, cafes, a couple breweries, several art galleries & night clubs, a larger historic theater complex, a couple local museums and several historic sites along with a couple live music venues.
• Good retail amenities including tons of boutiques, gift shops, and clothing stores, several antique stores, a couple banks, a book store, toy store, a bike shop, a hardware store, several dessert joins, a couple gyms, a post office, several churches, a couple medical offices, and the public library is located several blocks to the North.
• Cocoa Village is very safe but the surrounding inner city Cocoa neighborhoods are pretty rough. You get a sense of this for the Dwtn Cocoa areas west of Florida Ave.
• Excellent historic architecture with a good mix of historic commercial bldgs and older homes.
• Mix of more urban in-fill (especially along the River) and auto centric crud along the Blvds.
• Excellent urban form and streetscaping in the portions of Cocoa Village east of Florida but terrible urban form along the Blvds and large surface parking lots on its western edge.
• Solid Tree Canopy.
• Good pedestrian activity.

URBAN WEAKNESSES:

* Very low density for an urban area.
* So so public transit access.
* Lots of small population centers in the Space Coast Region (i.e. Titusville County Seat, beaches, and Cape Canaveral) but all a spreadout and not well connected by transit.
* No Dedicated bike infrastructure.
* While the broader Cocoa FL is very racial diverse  Dwtn Coca is very White an elderly (median age 65).
* Within Dwtn Cocoa there is only a Episcopal academy. A handful of small schools in the area and a larger middle school but not really walkable.
* Listed rentals are very limited.
* Some for sale product but limited 1-beds and generally expensive. 1-bed sell in the 200Ks. 2-beds are either small sf homes that sell around 200K or expensive waterfront condos selling btwn 600K-1m. 3 & 4 beds range btwn 300K to the lower 1 Millions depending if its a sf home or fancy waterfront condos.
* Missing a drug store and supermarket.