The Colonial Drive Corridor: Colonialtown’s Loud, Ranked, Indispensable Main Street
Four of Colonialtown's seven ranked businesses string along East Colonial Drive — a No. 4 spa, a No. 7 barbershop, a No. 8 nail salon, a No. 9 gym — anchored by 1956 Colonial Plaza and The Plaza Live. Appreciating SR 50 properly.
3 minute read
Every neighborhood has a street it loves and a street it uses. In Colonialtown, the used street is East Colonial Drive — State Road 50 — the east-west thoroughfare that splits the neighborhood in two and carries the shops, services and restaurants the residential grid politely refuses to host. It is loud, car-first and unglamorous. It is also, by our rankings, one of the most useful service corridors in the city: four of Colonialtown’s seven ranked businesses string along it or just off it. This is the Drive, appreciated properly.
The ranked corridor
Start at the top of the scores. Mens Luxury Spa, at 1516 E. Colonial Drive, Suite 101, ranks No. 4 in our Best Spas in Orlando rankings with a Net Score of 95.9 — a men’s self-care club offering tailored massages, facials and pedicures alongside a sauna, steam room, jacuzzi, cold plunge and even a private movie theatre. The category winner is profiled in our feature on Orlando Spa Oasis; Mens Luxury Spa is the corridor’s answer, and a top-four finish says it answers loudly. East along the Drive, California Nails at 3186 E. Colonial Drive ranks No. 8 for nail salons with a Net Score of 95.1, a mani-pedi workhorse known for dip and gel work and longer treatments like its collagen pedicure. Crunch Fitness – East Colonial, at 3222 E. Colonial Drive, ranks No. 9 among gyms with a Net Score of 73.8, fusing group classes, miles of cardio and personal training into month-to-month memberships. And at the corridor’s far eastern run, Prestige Barbershop at 4964 E. Colonial Drive ranks No. 7 among barbershops with a Net Score of 96.8, booking adult and kids’ cuts and beard work through its SQUIRE chairs. Four categories, four ranked addresses, one road.
The anchor at Bumby: Colonial Plaza and The Plaza Live
At the corridor’s eastern edge, where Colonial Drive meets Bumby Avenue, stands the corridor’s monument: Colonial Plaza, opened on January 31, 1956 as the largest retail development in Florida at the time, later an enclosed mall and now an open-air power center that still handles the neighborhood’s big errands. Its outparcel theater became The Plaza Live at 425 N. Bumby Avenue — opened in 1963 as Orlando’s first twin-screen movie venue, nicknamed the rocking-chair theater, and now one of the city’s beloved live-music rooms under the Orlando Philharmonic Orchestra, which bought it in 2013. Label it honestly as the eastern edge rather than the neighborhood’s interior; then go anyway, because a show at The Plaza Live is the corridor’s best night out.
How locals run the Drive
The corridor’s logic is sequencing. Barber in the morning at Prestige, gym at Crunch before the evening peak, nails at California Nails while you are already east, spa at Mens Luxury Spa when the week has earned it — then off the Drive entirely, into the quiet streets for dinner at Il Pescatore on Primrose or brunch at Maxine’s on Shine. Every ranked address above is plotted on the Orlando Top Spots Map, and our Colonialtown wellness circuit strings the spa, the yoga studio and the gym into a single recovery day.
The verdict
Nobody writes postcards from State Road 50. But neighborhoods are not held together by postcards; they are held together by corridors that work. Colonialtown’s works at a ranked level in four different categories at once — and when the errands are done, the bungalows are five minutes away, being beautiful. That division of labor is the neighborhood’s whole design, and the Drive holds up its end.
Photo: JerricaSchwartz, CC BY-SA, via Wikimedia Commons.
Best for: new residents building their service map, and anyone who judges a neighborhood by how well its errands run.
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