"I left some nights feeling like I had been sucker punched for two hours straight."
Eddy Moratin jogged down the stairs from his second-floor office at Lift Orlando’s headquarters to the lobby below, welcoming visitors with a first-name greeting and a hug.
The building, with a community center and a cafe, is an extension of Moratin’s work in a neighborhood he now calls home. Everyone Moratin greeted seemed happy to see the man with a contagious smile.
“How’s your day?” they asked. “How are the kids?”
But a warm welcome wasn’t always the case.
Moratin, 52, and Lift Orlando were once an unfamiliar and unwelcome presence in the 32805 zip code of Orlando, which includes a collection of neighborhoods around Camping World Stadium, among them Holden Heights, Parramore and Washington Shores. The residents are predominately low-income, Black and Hispanic.
He recalled community meetings over a decade ago where locals accused him of trying to gentrify the neighborhood or build more parking lots for the stadium.
But 13 years later, his job as president of Lift Orlando, and its work to revitalize those neighborhoods, has made him a finalist for the Orlando Sentinel’s Central Floridian of the Year award.
Read more at the Orlando Sentinel