May 2025 | Mike Brassfield

SPOTLIGHT

Nearly nine years after a mass shooting at the Pulse Nightclub in Orlando claimed the lives of 49 people, plans for a memorial at the site are finally beginning to take shape. The city’s elected leaders have approved a conceptual design for a $12-million memorial drawn up by an 18-member citizens advisory board, many of whom lost relatives in the June 2016 tragedy.

Orlando purchased the Pulse site for $2 million in 2023 after the nonprofit onePulse Foundation spent years raising funds but failed to deliver an overly ambitious $100-million memorial and museum. The nonprofit ended up dissolving without building anything.

The new plan for a Pulse memorial is more realistic. It includes features such as a reflection pool where the nightclub’s dance floor once was, and 49 columns with rainbow-colored glass panels to honor those lost in the massacre at the LGBTQ+ club.

The city plans to pay for the memorial’s design and construction while also soliciting philanthropic contributions to help offset the cost. Next, the city will solicit proposals and choose a contractor to design and build the memorial. The target date for opening is in 2027.

DEVELOPMENT

After a seven-hour public meeting, Volusia County’s elected leaders rejected a proposed development moratorium. County Chair Jeff Brower, the only one of seven county council members to support the moratorium, had proposed pausing all new residential development in the county’s unincorporated areas while the county works to fix its flooding problems. Meanwhile, two Volusia County municipalities — Edgewater and New Smyrna Beach — have recently passed or extended bans on building permits. A real estate investment firm, part of the New York-based AMAC development company, plans to build a 380-unit complex of three- and four-story garden-style apartment buildings north of U.S. 192 in Kissimmee.

JOBS

Nuview, an Orlando-based geospatial tech firm that counts Leonardo DiCaprio as an investor, unveiled its new 20,000-sq.-ft. headquarters in Lake Nona Town Center. The company says it plans to follow up its investment with the creation of dozens of high-wage jobs in the region.

HEALTH CARE

Orlando Health will soon build a Weight Loss and Bariatric Surgery Institute on its downtown Orlando campus. The two-story, 28,000-sq.-ft. medical office building will be a center for weight-loss surgery, endoscopic procedures, obesity medicine and surgical body contouring. Construction is to start this summer with an opening scheduled next year. Orlando Health is closing Rockledge Hospital in Brevard County, one of three hospitals it bought from bankrupt Steward Health Care last October. It found that the 298-bed hospital is in such poor condition that repairing it isn’t cost-effective. It plans to build a new hospital in Brevard instead.
AdventHealth plans to build a three-story, nearly 70,000-sq.-ft. medical office building focused on cancer care at its AdventHealth Winter Garden hospital campus. It also broke ground on an eightstory patient tower at AdventHealth Celebration, adding 80 beds to the 357-bed hospital.

HOSPITALITY

In March, Seminole County hotels began charging an extra $1.75 per night to raise millions of dollars for the county to build a complex for indoor sports tournaments and concerts. The new fee is being added on top of the county’s 5% bed tax and 7% sales tax.

HIGHER EDUCATION

Full Sail University notes that 47 of its alumni were credited on 18 nominated films at the 97th annual Academy Awards. Two grads were individually nominated for Oscars — Gary A. Rizzo as re-recording mixer on The Wild Robot, and Nancy Nugent Title as supervising sound editor on Wicked.

RETAIL

The Mall at Millenia in Orlando is reorganizing its second floor while adding new luxury brands. It’s opening shops for Balenciaga fashion, Gorjana jewelry and Tecovas boots while expanding stores for Aldo, David Yurman, Ferragamo, Gucci, Louis Vuitton-Women’s, and Tory Burch.

NONPROFITS

UCP of Central Florida, a nonprofit that provides education and therapy for students with and without disabilities, has broken ground on a $14-million, 37,000-sq.-ft. campus in Kissimmee that will feature a charter school as well as facilities for physical, occupational and speech therapy. It’s partly funded by a $1-million donation from Winter Park philanthropists Don and Cindy Diebel.

ARCHITECTURE

Architecture, design and planning firm FCA appointed architect Stephen Szutenbach as principal and Florida practice lead. He’ll spearhead the firm’s continued growth in Orlando across the health care, higher education and commercial markets.

RELOCATIONS

LocatorX, a tech company that provides supply chain intelligence, moved its headquarters back to Florida from Atlanta at the beginning of the year. The company located to NeoCity, Osceola County’s technology and innovation district. LocatorX was founded in Jacksonville but had relocated to Atlanta in 2019.

Share:

Senator Mel Martinez chats with Florida Trend