Civic Development • Retail Concept Design • Cross-Functional Leadership

Amazon Go at The Paseo: Concept to Client Buy In

A proposed checkout free grocery and dining anchor for a walkable mixed use corridor in Oviedo, Florida.

Wide exterior night render along The Paseo frontage — Wide exterior night view along The Paseo frontage.

Project Parameters

Role: Director of Digital Product and Design, Demetree Global
Client: City of Oviedo, FL
Timeline: 2 years
Team: Design, Digital, Marketing and Branding, Engineering, Product Design
Design Budget: $61,000 within a roughly $500,000 project.

The Brief

Making an Unfamiliar Retail Format Feel Real

The City of Oviedo reached out to Demetree Global about a mixed use development near University Boulevard and Alafaya Trail, anchored by a pedestrian corridor called The Paseo. Demetree's leadership had a relationship with a senior executive at Amazon and was in discussions about bringing an Amazon Go to the site. The idea was ambitious for its time: a checkout free grocery and dining concept, two stories, built into a walkable district with outdoor dining, retail bays, and residential neighbors on either side. Nothing like it existed in the area, and the City needed to see it before they could commit to it.

I led the project end to end, working across five departments to take the concept from an idea into a full presentation package the City could actually stand behind.

The Work

Owning the Full Arc

I owned the full arc. Site planning to fit the concept into the larger Paseo development without disrupting the pedestrian flow the City cared about. Full architectural elevations and floor plans, including outside dining zones and the grocerant layout blending retail and food service. Concept visualizations to communicate the feel and materiality of the space early on. Final rendered visuals showing the building at night, populated, alive.

Coordinating across Design, Digital, Marketing, Engineering, and Product Design meant constantly translating between disciplines. What engineering needed to validate square footage and structural feasibility was a different conversation than what marketing needed to sell the vision to the City. My job was making sure all of it added up to one coherent, buildable story by the time it reached the client.

Architectural Elevations and Floor Plans

The Technical Package

Click any image to enlarge.

Front, left, rear, and right elevation set for the Amazon Go concept — Front, left, rear, and right elevation set.

Level 0 floor plan and roof plan with front and right side elevations — Level 0 floor plan and roof plan, with front and right side elevations.

Detailed general sales floor plan showing retail, back of house, and seating layout — Detailed general sales floor plan, retail, back of house, and seating layout.

Second elevation and building section set for the mixed use frontage.

Architectural elevations and floor plans developed for the concept package.

Concept Visualizations

Communicating Feel and Materiality

Front view concept visualization of The Paseo frontage — Front view along The Paseo frontage.

East side concept visualization of the Amazon Go concept — East side elevation with outdoor dining and street activation.

West side concept visualization of the Amazon Go concept — West side elevation showing the material palette and entry sequence.

Aerial site context concept visualization of the Amazon Go building at The Paseo — Site context aerial showing integration with the surrounding pedestrian corridor.

Concept visualizations created to communicate the design direction, material palette, and site integration early in the process.

Final Presentation Renders

The Package Delivered to the City

Presentation board showing entry, frontage, courtyard, and evening ambiance renders — Presentation board: entry, frontage, courtyard, and evening ambiance.

Entrance close up render of the Amazon Go storefront at night — Entrance close up, storefront materiality and lighting.

Courtyard night view render with seating and pedestrian activity — Courtyard night view with seating and pedestrian activity.

Frontal night render of the two story Amazon Go building and plaza — Frontal night view of the two story anchor and plaza.

Final rendered visuals delivered to the City of Oviedo as part of the completed concept package.

The Outcome

Approved on the First Pass

The presentation worked. The City's reaction was enthusiastic. They understood exactly what the space would look like and how it would feel, which was the entire point of the package. They didn't want a single element changed.

Then budget realities caught up with them. Oviedo had several major projects moving at once, and this one got put on hold after the concept was delivered. Whether it stays on hold permanently or picks back up with future funding isn't something I have visibility into. What I know for certain is that the concept package did exactly what it needed to do: it gave a City government a clear enough picture of a genuinely new retail format that they were ready to move forward, even if the money wasn't there yet.

Reflection

Where This Landed

This project sits differently from a shipped product. There's no usage data, no adoption curve. What it demonstrates instead is the ability to lead a cross-functional team through a long, ambiguous civic development cycle and land on something clear enough that a client fully bought in, on the first pass, with no revisions requested. That's a different kind of design leadership than shipping software, and one that matters for roles where the deliverable is alignment and buy-in as much as it's a working product.