OUR TOWNS

Throughout Central Florida, like the multitudes of new residents who arrive each week, the accolades are steady and significant.

The newcomers? At last count, more than 1,000 people move each week to Central Florida. In fact, the region has been adding at least that many people every week for the past 60 years, according to the Orlando Economic Partnership. Just imagine.

The accolades? As only a cursory sampling, they include being ranked the No. 4 Best Market in U.S. for Development Opportunities (CBRE, 2021) and No. 1 in the country for Job Growth (U.S. Department of Labor, 2015-2018). Plus, it’s Florida — with all the lifestyle attributes for which the Sunshine State is known. 

Simply put, people love to live in Orange, Osceola and Seminole counties — along with Brevard, Lake, Polk and Volusia counties — for many reasons. The state’s center offers something for everyone.

The counties and their neighborhoods span a broad spectrum of settings. There are urban cores and charming retreats. There are rolling hills and tree-lined canopies in both old and emerging communities. 

There is rich history, ample character and continual change. And, of course, there are the internationally known theme parks and attractions, as well as the beaches and generally boundless scenic beauty. 

There are thriving industries, too — including agriculture, advanced manufacturing, innovative technologies and corporate headquarters, as well as logistics and aerospace, life sciences and healthcare, aerospace and defense. That’s just for starters. 

So, take your pick. Chances are very good that what you’re looking for is here — and it’s here to stay. Following is a county-by-county primer of regional highlights.

Apopka

Apopka’s roots, literally and figuratively, are in agriculture. However, this booming city of more than 50,000 residents, located in the northwest corner of Orange County, now encompasses some of the region’s most exclusive housing addresses.

The region was settled in the 1840s and named after the Timucuan Indian word meaning “big potato,” or potato-eating place. Ironically, the farms that still surround the city grow just about everything but potatoes. 

Noted as “The Indoor Foliage Capital of the World,” Apopka’s foliage industry is a multimillion-dollar business. Cut flowers, blooming plants, roses and bulbs are also grown in abundance.

Yet, agriculture is rapidly vanishing as dozens of muck farms, created when Lake Apopka was diked during World War II, were purchased by the state and shut down in an effort to restore the polluted body of water to a pristine state.

College Park

Although its residents may be getting younger, much about this beloved Orlando neighborhood, which was platted in the 1920s, remains the same. 

The 80-year-old commercial district along Edgewater Drive has always been home to an array of delightful mom-and-pop shops and eclectic eateries. The streets have always been quiet and the homes well-kept and charming.

Much of the talk of College Park these days continues to be about maintaining the Mayberryesque character of the area versus the further development of large-scale condominium and retail projects. In recent years, that’s been a seesaw battle because of its prime location adjacent to downtown Orlando.

Gotha

If you’re not a horticulturist, perhaps you’ve never heard of Gotha, a tiny rural enclave located inconspicuously north of upscale Windermere.

But if plants are your passion, you may know Gotha as the one-time caladium capital of the world and home of Henry Nehrling, a horticulturist who specialized in growing tropical and subtropical plants. 

Nehrling, who moved to Gotha in 1884, established one of the most renowned botanical gardens in the world, as well as an experimental agriculture station for the study of exotic strains of bamboo, amaryllis, bromeliad, orchid, Ficus and, of course, the caladium, which Nehrling was the first in Florida to grow and sell.

Gotha’s tree-shaded, one-block commercial district features the circa-1920 New Life at Zion Lutheran Church. And across the street is Yellow Dog Eats, a funky restaurant that occupies a circa-1879 structure that had previously been a private home and a general store. The unincorporated town borders Windermere and Winter Garden.

Maitland

Since the 1960s, Maitland (population 17,000), has been a quintessential bedroom community. Some of the area’s first suburbs were built there to attract young families looking for large lawns and good schools.

In the late 1970s, a sprawling office park called Maitland Center was built near the Interstate 4 interchange, also giving the city a distinctive business identity.

In recent decades, other large mixed-use projects were developed throughout the city, giving Maitland’s somewhat nebulous downtown district a more cohesive look. Also in Maitland is Enzian Theater, the region’s only art-house cinema. 

The arts scene is further strengthened by the Art Center at Maitland, founded in 1937 by sculptor André Smith. The center was originally intended to be a compound where artists could live and work. The center, now listed on the National Register of Historic Places, features an open-air chapel that has become a popular place for weddings.

Maitland has plenty of other history. It was established in 1838 as Fort Maitland, named in honor of Capt. William S. Maitland, a hero of the Second Seminole War.  Adjacent to Maitland is Eatonville (population 2,147), founded in 1887. It’s thought to be the oldest city in the country incorporated by African Americans.

Folklorist Zora Neale Hurston lived in Eatonville for a time and wrote about the community in books such as Their Eyes Were Watching God.

Oakland

More than 100 years ago, Oakland was the industrial and social hub of Orange County. Today, the picturesque town, which lies two miles west of Winter Garden on the southern shores of Lake Apopka, is home to approximately 3,500 people.

Elected officials still refer to Oakland as a town, although it was incorporated as a city in 1959. The city designation does seem a bit incongruous for this rural enclave, where voters have rejected proposals to pave the narrow clay streets for fear that more people might want to drive on them.

Still, change is coming — with new housing communities popping up in and around the area. 

Among the city’s assets is the 22-mile West Orange Trail, a mecca for hikers and bikers beginning in Oakland and stretching northeast to Apopka along the original Orange Belt and Florida Midland rail beds. 

Oakland is also home to the 93-acre Oakland Nature Preserve, where wildlife abounds and paths and boardwalks line the shores of Lake Apopka.

Ocoee

Ocoee remained an isolated citrus town clustered around Starke Lake until the 1980s. Now, with roughly 48,000 residents, it’s neck-and-neck with Winter Garden for the third most populous city in Orange County, behind Orlando and Apopka.

The transformation began three decades ago, when devastating freezes destroyed thousands of acres of citrus trees and opened west Orange and south Lake counties for development. 

Today, Ocoee boasts a one-million-square-foot regional mall and at least three dozen subdivisions with homes in all price ranges. 

Ocoee’s beginnings were inauspicious. In the mid-1850s a physician named J.D. Starke led a group of enslaved people into the area and established a camp along the western shores of the lake that now bears his name. 

Captain Bluford Sims, who hailed from Ocoee, Tennessee, arrived in 1861 and bought 50 acres from Starke. He then platted what would become downtown Ocoee.

Through the years, Ocoee developed into a thriving citrus-producing center. Today, however, housing is the city’s hottest commodity. Florida’s Turnpike, State Road 408 (formerly known as the East-West Expressway) and State Road 429 (the Western Beltway) all pass through the city, meaning once-remote downtown Orlando is a much shorter commute. 

At the same time, Ocoee retains vestiges of days gone by. For example, there’s the circa-1890 Ocoee Christian Church, with its gothic architecture and Belgian-made stained-glass windows, and a quaint downtown district boasting several vintage buildings.

Downtown Orlando 

Downtown continues to bustle. During the building frenzy of the early 2000s, scarcely a week passed without a new major condominium development being announced for the once-sleepy district. Then, with the economic downturn of 2007, growth slowed before roaring back. 

In recent years, with construction of an arena (Amway Center), a performing arts center (Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts) and a soccer stadium (Exploria Stadium), plus the renovation of a football stadium (Camping World), downtown is booming with residential and commercial activity, while the expansion of Interstate 4 (the I-4 Ultimate Project) promises even more growth.

Orlando’s history dates to 1838 and the height of the Seminole Wars. The U.S. Army built Fort Gatlin south of the present-day Orlando city limits to protect settlers from attacks by Indians.

By 1840, a small community had grown up around the fort. It was called Jernigan, for a pioneering family who had established the first permanent settlement in the area. Patriarch Aaron Jernigan established the settlement’s first post office in 1850.

Six years later, the community officially changed its name to Orlando. The Town of Orlando was incorporated in 1875 with 85 inhabitants, 22 of whom were qualified voters. It’s unclear where the name came from, although some historians believe that a local judge named it for a character in Shakespeare’s As You Like It.

Orlando proper, somewhat surprisingly, is not a particularly large city with 300,700 residents. The Orlando Metro Area, defined as encompassing Orange, Osceola, Lake, Seminole and Volusia counties, contains more than 2.7 million people, making it the third-largest metropolitan area in Florida and the seventh-largest in the Southeast.

Southeast Orlando

At roughly 100 square miles, the region generally referred to as southeast Orlando encompasses the University of Central Florida, Orlando International Airport and an array of master-planned communities, as well as stretches of pastureland, piney forests and wetlands abutting the Econlockhatchee River.

The remaining rural areas are rapidly vanishing as the pace of growth accelerates, particularly in the form of those large master-planned communities that contain a mixture of single-family and multifamily homes clustered around retail and commercial development. 

Most notable is sprawling Lake Nona, consisting of residential, commercial, education and healthcare development, making it a prototypical modern metropolis. 

Lake Nona is among the top-selling master-planned communities in the U.S. with more than 17,000 residents. Measuring 17 square miles, the 11,000-acre community is one-fourth the size of Washington, D.C., and three-fourths the size of Manhattan. 

One of the fastest-growing master-planned communities in the U.S., Lake Nona — which is being developed by Tavistock Development Company in south Orlando — is recognized for its thoughtfully designed neighborhoods, top-rated education facilities, leading-edge business and research clusters, and diverse retail and entertainment centers.

Bisected by State Road 417, Lake Nona sits southeast of the Orlando International Airport and just north of Osceola County. While thousands of residents call Lake Nona home, there also are many nonresidential projects in the community — and many more on the way.

When Lake Nona began to emerge about 15 years ago, the idea of investing in a community 25 miles from downtown Orlando may have seemed like a gamble. But the once-remote area has since filled with more new residents and businesses of every variety. 

At the intersection of Lake Nona Boulevard and Tavistock Lakes Boulevard, the Lake Nona Town Center encompasses hotels, offices, restaurants and apartment buildings. Plans call for the open-air, urban district to eventually contain 4 million square feet of entertainment, shopping and dining space.

Boxi Park Lake Nona is in the Town Center just south of State Road 417 on Lake Nona Boulevard. It offers a mix of restaurants and bars, beach volleyball courts and a live entertainment venue to create an outdoor entertainment destination built using 14 repurposed shipping containers arranged in one- and two-story configurations. 

Among the first of its kind on the East Coast, the 30,000-square-foot park is family- and dog-friendly. Customers can find food and beverage options showcasing different cuisines, along with two full-service bars serving a selection of cocktails. A beer garden features its own craft beer line.

Visitors have several hotel choices with Marriott: Courtyard for short-term guests and Residence Inn for long-term stays. The Town Center buildings are adjacent and share a lobby. Each hotel offers more than 100 rooms and fitness centers. 

Nearing completion is the Lake Nona Wave Hotel, which will be the Town Center’s crown jewel. With its curvilinear glass edges jutting 17 stories skyward, the hotel has 239 guest rooms and the brings the community new entertainment options with a restaurant, lounge and a pool that may be visited by locals. 

Phase II of the Town Center will feature the 110,000-square-foot Lake Nona Wellness Center. The facility will feature a medically based fitness program, sports performance training, physician offices and community education spaces for Lake Nona residents, families and employees as well as elite athletes.

The center will also feature first-class equipment and on-demand fitness programs from Lake Nona partner Technogym. Amenities will include childcare facilities with outdoor play, a daylighted public concourse and an indoor/outdoor demonstration kitchen.

In addition, there’ll be an indoor climbing wall, indoor and outdoor pools, an outdoor classroom, outdoor training turf, a wellness plaza, a zen garden and a sports performance area with a 40-yard sprint track.

Lake Nona’s health and life sciences cluster, also known as Medical City, is home to top medical and research facilities, including the University of Central Florida Health Sciences Campus and the Lake Nona Cancer Center as well as Nemours Children’s Hospital, the University of Florida Research & Academic Center and the Orlando Veterans Affairs Medical Center. 

Together they provide a unique collection of research, education and medical care options — all state-of-the-art. So let’s have a look at what, exactly, Medical City has to offer.

The UCF Health Sciences campus includes several facilities. Established in 2006, the UCF College of Medicine is one of the first U.S. medical schools in decades to be built from the ground up. 

Included is a 170,000-square-foot medical education facility, which features the latest in lab and classroom technology, as well as the 198,000-square-foot Burnett Biomedical Sciences building. 

The college is unique nationally because of the large undergraduate and graduate programs in biomedicine offered through the Burnett School of Biomedical Sciences. The Burnett School boasts almost 3,000 undergraduates — making biomedical sciences the third most popular major at UCF. 

In addition, the 204,709-square-foot UCF Lake Nona Medical Center — a partnership hospital between HCA Healthcare’s North Florida Division and UCF Academic Health — has opened adjacent to the medical school. 

The 100-bed teaching hospital provides healing for patients throughout Central Florida and beyond. It also educates healthcare providers of the future and supports the work of brilliant medical researchers that will lead to lifesaving care. 

Near the hospital is the 175,000-square-foot UCF Lake Nona Cancer Center, which houses cancer researchers, clinical trials and treatment for patients. And there are other key components of Medical City.

The 1.2 million-square-foot Orlando VA Medical Center serves the region’s 400,000 veterans by providing acute care, complex specialty care, advanced diagnostic services, and a large multispecialty outpatient clinic as well as administrative and support services. 

The VA facility is also home to the SimLEARN National Simulation Center, which is dedicated to improving the quality of healthcare services for veterans through the application of simulation-based learning strategies to clinical workforce development. 

The University of Florida Research and Academic Center at Lake Nona is a 110,000-square-foot facility where basic, clinical and translational research in drug discovery and development takes place. UF’s center also houses a nationally ranked Doctorate in Pharmacy program. 

The 92,000-square-foot GuideWell Innovation Center, located near the UF facility, is a medical innovation hub for startups and healthcare entrepreneurs. The three-story building includes co-working space for startups on the first floor and houses clinical and research companies on the upper floors. 

Designed to promote collaboration and acceleration of groundbreaking ideas, the center provides the resources and collaborative environment innovators need to develop new solutions — and the connections to take concepts to market. 

The 30,000-square-foot, first-floor collaboration space offers leaders from around the globe access to the best thinking in health innovation. Also in the building: exhibit space for new medical technology, a presentation venue, a video production studio, a nutrition lab and meeting space.

The Johnson & Johnson Human Performance Institute is a 35,000-square-foot global training center for the company’s employees. Also available through the institute are services to help everyone from athletes to executives be more productive and perform at their personal best in high-stress situations.

The institute’s campus includes the Corporate Athlete Course, a conference center, comprehensive testing and diagnostic facilities, a state-of-the-art fitness center and a world-class tennis center. 

The 630,000-square-foot Nemours Children’s Hospital is part of a state-of-the-art health campus that also includes Nemours Children’s Clinic, an ambulatory diagnostic center and extensive research and education facilities. 

Healing gardens, nature trails, pet therapy areas and water features help create a peaceful environment that fosters both mental and physical healing.

Big Four professional services firm KPMG selected Lake Nona for its national training center from a competitive field of 50 prospective cities nationwide. 

The high-tech campus opened in early 2020 and focuses on enhancing the skills and services of KPMG professionals through immersive training in cutting-edge classroom and field environments. About 50,000 employees worldwide will train each year in various accounting disciplines.

Opened last summer, the Lake Nona Performance Club is 130,000 square feet — big enough to hold several grocery stores. 

The concept is a 360-degree approach to health for everyone from infants to seniors, with specialized equipment for rehabbing injured athletes. Aquatics include a leisure pool, lap pool and whirlpool. The studio space for yoga, barre and Pilates is larger than most houses. 

The gymnasium features basketball and volleyball courts. And Lake Nona has partnered with Chopra Global, a leading whole-health company founded by wellness guru and bestselling author Deepak Chopra, to create the Chopra Mind-Body Zone and Spa. 

On Adventure Lake adjacent to the City of Orlando’s Heroes City Park, the Nona Adventure Park is a watersports park that features a two-track Rixen Cable System for water-skiers and wakeboarders. 

It also offers an aqua park with a series of floating pathways, climbing obstacles, slides and trampolines. There’s even a summer camp, which pretty much always sells out. 

In addition, the park has a pro shop as well as a 60-foot climbing tower with a ropes course and climbing walls. The Wi-Fi-enabled main entrance houses an upscale café with food and beverages, and a dry seating area for spectators.

The largest tennis facility in the country, the USTA National Campus features 100 courts and innovative developmental programs that make it a training destination for professional, collegiate and amateur players. 

Home to thousands of training players and teams and to hundreds of tournaments each year, the 64-acre campus is open to the public and serves all levels of play for all ages. The campus has hosted 675,000 visitors and attendees since opening in 2017.

Current and former professionals who have visited, trained, coached and played at the facility include James Blake, CiCi Bellis, the Bryan Brothers, Jim Courier, Chris Evert, Ivan Lendl, Bethanie Mattek-Sands, Madison Keys, Billie Jean King, Jack Sock, Frances Tiafoe and David Young.

The facility was selected as the host site of the NCAA Division I Men’s and Women’s Tennis Championships in 2019 and 2021, as well as the NCAA Division III Men’s and Women’s Tennis Championships in 2022.

XL Soccer World plans to open a new 50,000-square-foot indoor athletic complex off Narcoossee Road, near Valencia College’s Lake Nona campus. The facility will feature two, six-versus-six 4G boarded turf fields and two multisurface fields. 

There’ll be camps, adult leagues, a mini sports academy for youngsters (soccer, basketball, baseball and flag football). In addition, there’ll be Youth Soccer programs and even an XL National Team consisting of selected players who’ll have an opportunity to compete in Europe. 

Construction is underway on a Brooks Rehabilitation Hospital with 60 beds and a potential for double that number. The new hospital will focus on “medically complex” rehabilitation solutions in concert with Lake Nona’s Medical City.

Windermere

Nestled among the spring-fed Butler Chain of Lakes, the cozy town of Windermere has emerged as one of the hottest housing markets in Florida and the Southeast. 

With Lake Butler on the west, Lake Down on the east and Lake Bessie on the southeast, Windermere is a verdant peninsula where many of the homes are on the shoreline. Not coincidentally, Windermere and the area surrounding it encompasses some of Central Florida’s most upscale new communities, home to businesspeople, entrepreneurs and athletes.

The lakes, in fact, attracted one of Windermere’s first investors, Joseph Hill Scott. Scott’s son, Stanley, homesteaded the property and supposedly named it after Lake Windermere in England. 

Little changed until 1910, when a pair of Ohio investors named D.H. Johnson and J. Calvin Palmer bought all the land they could piece together and formed the Windermere Improvement Company for the purpose of developing it.

Some old homes and buildings have been preserved and add to the charm of this small town — yes, it’s a town, not a city — nestled among the ancient oaks on an isthmus between lakes Down and Butler. 

Although the main drag is paved, most of the residential streets in Windermere proper aren’t — which is just the way the residents like it. But, of course, that’s “Old Windermere.” 

The ritzy gated communities, such as Isleworth, known for its profusion of professional athletes, are in unincorporated Orange County despite their Windermere mailing address. 

Winter Garden 

It was 1857 when W.C. Roper was riding through the backwoods of west Orange County on horseback, seeking a place to build a home for his family waiting back in Georgia.

Roper bought 600 acres along the shore, between present-day Winter Garden and Oakland, and returned a year later with his wife and 10 children. 

The ambitious settler operated a sawmill, a gristmill, a sugar mill and a cotton gin. Later, he built a tannery for making shoes and served as Orange County’s superintendent of schools from 1873 to 1877.

Fast-forward to the 1920s, when Roper’s son Frank planted the area’s first orange trees, marking the humble beginnings of an industry that would sustain and define Winter Garden, which had been incorporated in 1903, for the next six decades.

Fast-forward again to the 1980s, when devastating freezes destroyed thousands of acres of citrus. Developers began buying up decimated groves for new homes, creating new subdivisions seemingly overnight. Then came a brilliant project called Rails to Trails, through which abandoned rail beds across the country were converted into hiking and biking trails.

The popular West Orange Trail passes directly through Winter Garden, thus converting the all-but-forgotten city into an oasis for thousands of ready-to-spend strollers. And most are charmed by what they see. As a result, Winter Garden is blossoming anew — this time as a scenic place to live in literally dozens of new communities. 

Today the rustic-chic city of 48,000 is a destination for visitors, residents and businesses. Incorporated in 1908, Winter Garden sits on the southern shore of Lake Apopka and is 20 minutes west of Orlando. 

One of the most picturesque of any in the region, Winter Garden’s downtown district was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1996. It covers about 100 acres in the general area of Woodland, Tremaine, Henderson and Lakeview streets. 

West Plant Street, which runs east and west through the district, is home to several dining and shopping choices. In addition, the popular Winter Garden Farmers Market sets up downtown each Saturday. It has been recognized as one of the country’s best farmers’ markets by the American Farmland Trust. 

Plant Street Market, housing more than 20 merchants including the popular Crooked Can microbrewery, opened in 2014 on the site of a demolished apartment complex. The market houses farm-to-table restaurants, a bakery, a butcher, a chocolatier, a wine bar and various sellers of artisanal food items. 

The $2 million project extended downtown’s footprint beyond City Hall and further solidified Winter Garden’s reputation as a foodie’s dream and as a reminder of the city’s long history with agriculture. In addition, the New York Beer Project, a New York-based brewery, last year broke ground for its new 24,000-square-foot facility. 

The project, located on the corner of Seidel Road and Seton Creek Boulevard, will feature a gastropub, an indoor beer garden, a tap room, a sidewalk bistro and three Big Apple-themed event spaces.  

An icon of downtown Winter Garden is the restored Garden Theatre, a circa-1930s movie house. Now a performing-arts center, it hosts live theater, dance and musical programs as well as the annual Starlight Film Festival. 

In addition, the city partnered with the Winter Garden Arts Association to convert the old Boyd Street Fire Station into a hub for visual art that now houses a gallery and a teaching facility. It’s the first step toward creation of an Art and Design District, which will offer artists both living space and studio space. 

The city’s Heritage Foundation operates two museums: The Winter Garden Heritage Museum, located in the old Atlantic Coast Line Depot, and the Central Florida Railroad Museum, located in the old Tavares & Gulf Railroad Depot. Both museums offer free admission. 

Residents and visitors looking for a special night out can visit the critically acclaimed Chef’s Table at the Edgewater Hotel on Plant Street. 

Diners and shoppers have even more choices in the Winter Garden Village, located off Daniels Road and just northwest of State Road 429. Winter Garden and Ocoee, its neighbor to the east, are developing an economic corridor that connects their downtowns. 

Their goal is to turn a six-mile roadway, called East Plant Street in Winter Garden and West Franklin Street in Ocoee and populated by warehouses and auto repair shops, into inviting city gateways at the State Road 429 interchange. 

West Orange County

While Orlando’s sunrise side burgeons with fast-growing Lake Nona and seam-busting UCF, the region’s sunset side has emerged as just as much of a hot spot. 

Horizon West is home to five unique villages and a town center situated on the center of 28,000 acres — that’s just under 32 square miles, which is nearly the size of neighboring Walt Disney World. 

The village-centric design means that homes will be nearby a commercial village center, walkable schools and public parks, where wide pathways connect everything. Green spaces and nature preserves are found along pathways and throughout each village. Split-rail fences and orange-crate relief art distinguish community thoroughfares. 

That wasn’t the case decades ago, when Horizon West was home mostly to thousands of acres of orange groves. Repeated freezes in the late 1980s set into motion a plan by landowners to develop the vast acreage, where citrus farming was no longer viable.  

The landowners, mostly growers, presented an intelligent and comprehensive plan to Orange County that was unprecedented in its sheer scope. Horizon West began to take form when the plan was adopted in 1995. 

Six villages were proposed, which are now known as Lakeside, Bridgewater, Town Center, the Seidel area (Village F), Hickory Nut (Village H) and Ovation (Village I). 

Later came Hamlin, which included a town center with more than 2 million square feet of mixed-use commercial space and up to 4,870 residential units at buildout. The town center is already ringed with residential communities. 

Development of a 3,624-acre central area, which spans all four quadrants of the State Road 429 exchange, will take up to a decade to fully complete and will act as a destination for the entire region with components that encompass dining, entertainment, offices, hotels, medical, wellness, shopping, housing and education. 

Horizon West’s villages have been approved for 40,282 residential units, making the projected population at buildout 100,705. Because of faster than anticipated growth, it’s already more than halfway complete, according to county officials, and is currently home to about 25,000 people. Clearly, there are plenty of reasons why West Orange County is attracting buyers in droves. One of those reasons might be the lingering social impact of COVID-19.  

Workers who are no longer tied to the daily demands of commuting have opted for larger homes and more manageable mortgages than they might get in more established areas closer to office parks and central business districts.  

Schools are also starting to keep pace with growth. An ambitious building program backed largely by a half-penny sales tax has helped ease the overcrowding. And Horizon West on its own has driven a major expansion of public schools. 

Winter Park 

Once a haven for artists, writers and some of the most influential families in the country, Winter Park was promoted in the late 1800s as a refuge for “the cultured and wealthy.” Those early boosters would almost certainly be pleased to see how it all turned out.

Today, the city is home to 70-plus parks and nearly as many oak trees (20,000) as residents (approximately 31,000). 

Its eight square miles encompass lovely old homes, an upscale shopping district, a prestigious liberal arts college, a plethora of galleries and museums and street signs that admonish motorists to “drive with extraordinary care.”

The heart of Winter Park is Park Avenue, stretching 10 blocks and boasting more than 100 shops, from upscale national retailers to one-of-a-kind boutiques. In addition, the downtown shopping district has spread west on New England Avenue as posh apartments and retail stores have sprung up.

On the north end of Park Avenue is the Charles Hosmer Morse Museum of American Art, showcasing the world’s largest collection of Tiffany glass. Several blocks farther west is Winter Park Village, a retail and entertainment complex on U.S. Highway 17-92. 

Year-round the city is alive with festivals and special events, highlighted by the renowned Winter Park Sidewalk Art Festival. 

On the shores of Lake Virginia is beautiful Rollins College, one of the highest rated liberal arts colleges in the country.

Recent big projects in Winter Park have included a new Library & Events Center designed by celebrity architect David Adjaye. Soon to come, on downtown property dubbed “Innovation Triangle” by Rollins College, is a new facility for the Rollins Museum of Art and the Crummer Graduate School of Business.

The other edge of the triangle is the college-owned Alfond Inn, a highly rated boutique hotel.