CENTRAL: Joining Forces

Diane Sears | 4/1/2008

Central Florida leaders are building on an established reputation for collaboration in 2008. Two of the region’s most powerful business groups — the Metro Orlando Economic Development Commission and the Central Florida Partnership, which launched in late 2007 as an umbrella organization that includes the Orlando Regional Chamber of Commerce — are collaborating with the Orlando/Orange County Convention and Visitors Bureau on economic development. The groups held their first conference in January, crafting plans to join forces on trade missions, research and possibly even the CVB’s branding campaign, “Say Yes to Orlando.”

MEDICAL CITY (Orlando) Cheryl Baker » As new director of the Cancer Research Institute for the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center Orlando, Cheryl Baker will lead the 2-year-old center’s relocation to Lake Nona’s growing medical city. [Photo: Jeffrey Camp]

The area’s economic developers aren’t in any hurry to shed the region’s image as a top leisure and convention destination. Meanwhile, however, they continue to target 21st century, knowledge-based industries — biotech, defense, digital media, modeling, simulation and training, optics and financial services — which together contribute $13.4 billion to the economy and employ some 65,000 workers.

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Like local governments throughout the state, Central Florida municipalities face budgetary pressures as a result of Amendment 1. And along with the real estate slowdown, the region faces other issues: An increase in violent crime, high insurance rates and perennial gridlock on the roads. The mayors of Orlando and Orange County are also heading up a commission on homelessness, a growing problem.

The region’s momentum should serve it well, however. There are more economic development projects working now than last year, says John Fremstad, who oversees bioOrlando and Technology Industry Development for the Economic Development Commission.

A new “medical city” under construction on the east side of Orlando will include a University of Central Florida medical school, a Veterans Administration hospital, a Nemours children’s hospital, a Burnham Institute for Medical Research facility, the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center Orlando’s Cancer Research Institute and a just-announced 100,000-sq.-ft. innovative “wet lab” and biotech incubator that Lake Nona developer Tavistock Group is building on spec to attract biotechnology startups.

“When you drive around here, it’s still growing,” Fremstad says. “Although there’s a slowdown in the economy, we’re not dying.”

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