East Central

From Orlando’s many theme parks to the Space Coast’s rockets, the East Central seven-county region’s remarkably diverse economy is a microcosm of Florida’s major economic sectors. Aerospace, agriculture, construction, insurance and financial services, information technology, health care and life sciences, real estate, retail trade and tourism; the East Central region checks all those boxes and is a powerful growth magnet that attracts an average of 1,000 new residents each week.

 

Florida is famously known throughout the world for three things: beaches, rockets and Disney World.

And no part of the Sunshine State’s diverse $1.6 trillion economy contains more of those attractions and assets than the East Central region.

From Orlando in Orange County to the Space Coast in the east — and the sprawling agricultural lands to the north and south — the East Central region is a thriving, economic ecosystem that is much more than rockets, beaches and theme parks.

In fact, its remarkably diverse economy easily serves as a microcosm of the entire state’s.

Moreover, going down the list of Florida’s major economic sectors — aerospace, agriculture, construction, insurance and financial services, information technology, health care and life sciences, real estate, retail trade and tourism — the East Region benefits from a combined synergy.

It is also a region whose fascinating 20th Century history and explosive growth coalesced in less than a decade with the construction of NASA’s massive Kennedy Space Center on Merritt Island in 1962 and the 1971 arrival of Walt Disney World in the Orlando area.

Today, the East Region’s seven counties — Brevard, Lake, Orange, Osceola, Seminole, Sumter and Volusia — form a powerhouse economy that continues to grow exponentially, attracting more than 50,000 new residents annually.

The East Region’s story is compelling, vibrant and well worth a much closer look.

Manufacturing

Theme parks, tourism and rockets notwithstanding, one of the fastest growing and most promising segments of East Central’s economy today is manufacturing, especially in the fields of aerospace, semiconductors and defense related industries.

For example, Brevard County’s L3Harris Technologies is one of the nation’s largest manufacturers of defense and information technology related products. The company has over 7,000 employees at its Palm Bay headquarters.

“L3Harris has three of their four business line segments — Space and Airborne Systems, Integrated Mission Systems, and Aerojet Rocketdyne — right here in Palm Bay,” says Robert McKinzie with Palm Bay Community & Economic Development. “With that type of investment in our community, our cluster of aerospace/defense continues to grow and now we are seeing more action from semiconductors as well.”

Advanced Air Mobility

Along with the rapid growth of defense and semiconductor manufacturers, the East Central region also is gaining the aviation world’s attention due to the growth of advanced air mobility manufacturing companies locating in the Orlando area.

That interest was heightened last summer during the 2024 Farnborough International Airshow — one of the world’s largest — in the United Kingdom.

“We saw a lot of interest in advanced air mobility in Farnborough,” says Justin Braun, director, marketing and communications with the Orlando Economic Partnership.

“There were dozens of advanced air mobility companies at Farnborough that were looking to our region because they see us on the cutting edge with Lilium here along with the strides being made at Orlando International Airport with the FAA to outline testing and shared airspace of these vehicles,” Braun adds. “There’s also a lot of focus here on manufacturing the components to make those advanced air mobility vehicles work.”

Headquartered in Germany with a major operation in Orlando, Lilium manufacturers a vertical take-off, electric powered jet designed for intercity and regional travel. In 2024, the company announced its designation of Orlando International Airport as its primary network vertiport hub for Lilium Jet operators in central Florida.

Talent

Another standout feature of the East Central Region is its proximity to an ocean of young talent. Within a two-hour drive radius there are over 550,000 students attending universities and colleges.

A key source of this talent in the East Central region is concentrated in University of Central Florida (UCF), a major research university with an enrollment topping 69,300 undergraduates and post graduate students.

“Our depth of talent in Orlando and the East Central region has proven to be one of our strongest selling points,” says Braun. “Talent is scarce, and talent is a battle everywhere. But with University of Central Florida, we have an enormous depth of talent, experience and research coming out of one of the largest higher education universities in the country.”

An excellent example of the synergies that exist between academia and commerce in the East Central region is the Florida Interactive Entertainment Academy, or FIEA, a UCF graduate school in Orlando offering a Master of Science in Interactive Entertainment, says Abigail Wagner, associate director of Economic Development for the Orlando Economic Partnership

“In telling our story here in the East Central region, the FIEA program with UCF has created a direct pipeline of talent to video game maker Electronic Arts (EA) which employs about 1,000 in Orlando’s Creative Village,” says Wagner. “EA continuously sings the praises of this region and UCF for its ability to turn out top talent which is exactly what they need.”

What’s more, Wagner says the East Central region is seeing a lot of “cross pollination” between the gaming industries and the tech companies in the Orlando metro area.

The UCF pipeline of local talent has helped spur the growth of Threat Locker, a startup cyber security company in Orlando.

“We’re working now with Threat Locker to help them hire some 700 new employees over the next two years,” Wagner says. “They are growing like crazy and we’re helping them get in contact with the university system here and develop something like FEIA graduate program at UCF where they can develop a similar pipeline of talent coming directly out of the region’s universities and colleges.”

Wagner also spotlights the Modeling Simulation and Training defense-related sectors that see some $6 billion in contracts flow through the East Region annually.

Competition

While the East Region is enjoying sustained growth and success, it is not necessarily at the expense of Florida’s other seven economic regions, says Braun.

Conversely, East Central’s major competition is not within Florida, but some 1,000 miles away in Texas.

A recent poll of Florida’s economic development councils revealed Texas is Florida’s biggest competitor, largely due to the Lone Star State’s long list of generous economic development incentives, favorable corporate tax structure and its robust workforce training programs, says Beth Cicchetti, FEDC’s executive director.

To level the playing field with Texas and other Southeastern competitor states, East Central and its seven sister regions are working diligently on site development initiatives, expediting “speed to market” permitting and ramping up workforce training programs that address present and future needs of existing and prospective industries.

As for the biggest needs in the East Central region, site infrastructure development and available land are at the top of the list, followed by additional tax and rebate incentives that can help Florida compete with other states in the Southeast.

Placemaking

Placemaking is a multi-faceted approach to the planning, design and management of public spaces by capitalizing on a region’s assets.

And in terms of placemaking, many East Region economic developers see transportation improvements and creation of additional industry career-tech education courses as important tools in attracting new and diverse industries.

Among those priorities in the East Central region, the expansion of Brightline — the privately owned intercity rail route currently linking Miami and Orlando — is seen as a key transportation improvement goal. New Brightline passenger stations are planned for DeLand the county seat in Volusia County, and Cocoa in Brevard County.

Of FEDC’s eight regions, the East Central’s remarkably diverse list of industries qualifies it as a legitimate superstar, and in many respects the beating heart of Florida’s multi-faceted global economy.

East Central’s seven counties are important members of an eight-region team of economic development councils all with the same goal: growing Florida’s economy with sustainable industries and quality jobs.

“We're not just a region competing against the other seven Florida regions,” says Orlando Economic Partnership’s Braun. “We are a true ecosystem state where we collaborate with each other and jointly create this welcoming environment for companies. We’re a state where if you have a good idea, we’re ready to work cooperatively and run with it.”