Our Town
It's urban and rural, wealthy and middle-class, bustling and laid-back, traditional and edgy, conservative and liberal, sophisticated and naïve.
But for all its contradictions, the Central Florida communities known collectively as Orlando are unmistakably family-friendly and unabashedly welcoming to newcomers.
Despite its outsized international profile, Orlando proper is, in fact, a medium-sized municipality of fewer than 200,000 people.
The Orlando metropolitan statistical area, however, encompasses 1.7 million people throughout Orange, Seminole, Osceola and Lake counties. Like the region's best-known city, the dozens of communities encompassing the metro area boast charms all their own.
In Central Florida you'll find picture-postcard villages where tree-shaded streets are lined with antique shops and Victorian homes, farm towns where citrus packing plants still crate and ship delicious oranges, and modern mixed-use developments built around resort-style amenities.
And everywhere you'll see beautiful lakes. These thousands of shimmering bodies of water-some huge, some tiny and many interconnected by man-made canals or natural tributaries-provide some of the choicest real estate in all of Florida. Indeed, many cities and towns have made their placid shores community focal points. In Orlando, for instance, Lake Eola Park, a 20-acre urban escape, is arguably the heart of the city.
Given the region's charms, it's no surprise that rapid growth is continuing. In fact, areas once considered to be on the periphery are increasingly being drawn into Orlando's orbit. To the northeast, Volusia County, home to world-famous Daytona Beach, is a hot spot for growth. And to the southwest, once-sleepy Polk County is rapidly sprouting subdivisions where orange groves formerly thrived.
And that pace is expected to continue for decades. While the United States is expected to grow 47 percent through 2050, Central Florida is expected to grow 136 percent - adding another 4 million residents and making the region larger than all but four other metropolitan areas.
But with so much going on in so many places, where should a newcomer look for a home?
We can help. Following is a county-by-county primer where you'll find everything from new master-planned developments to funky historic districts.
Undoubtedly there's a neighborhood, and a home, perfect for you and your family.
Orange County at a glance
LAND AREA: 907 square miles
PERSONS PER SQUARE MILE: 1,054
POPULATION (2004): 989,926
POPULATION INCREASE (1990-2004): 46%
2005 PROJECTED OPULATION: 1,003,800
MEAN TRAVEL TIME TO WORK: 26.6 minutes
MEDIAN HOUSEHOLD INCOME: $41,816
FACTOID: Orange County was originally called Mosquito County. The name was changed in 1845, when Florida became a state. Today, more than 43 million people annually visit Orange County, which boasts more than 100,000 hotel rooms and roughly 4,000 places to eat.
APOPKA
Apopka's roots, literally and figuratively, are in agriculture. However, this booming city of 35,000, located in the northwest corner of Orange County, now encompasses some of the region's most exclusive addresses.
Since 1990, Apopka has more than doubled its area by annexing some 11,000 acres, much of it previously rural land. This land grab has often put the city at odds with Orange County, especially when it comes to protecting the fragile Wekiva River basin.
Apopka 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. Consequently, downtown boasts a stainless steel sculpture of a Boston fern, instead of the expected war hero or early pioneer. Cut flowers, blooming plants, roses and bulbs are also grown in abundance.
But agriculture is rapidly vanishing as dozens of muck farms, created when Lake Apopka was diked during World War II, are purchased by the state and shut down in an effort to restore the polluted body of water to a pristine state.
Just west of Apopka is the agricultural town of Zellwood, home of the annual Zellwood Corn Festival. The event, held each May for more than 30 years, draws thousands to hear country music and nosh on what is widely regarded as the sweetest sweet corn grown anywhere.
COLLEGE PARK
Retirees so dominated Orlando's College Park in the early 1970s that there was talk of closing Princeton Elementary, a well-regarded school that had stood since the neighborhood was platted in the 1920s.
Today, although the demographics may be changing, much about this beloved Orlando neighborhood 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.
College Park residents still enjoy a Grower's Market, held in Albert Park every Thursday evening from October through May. And throughout the years, many of Orlando's best-known personalities have called the neighborhood home. Today's roster ranges from the likes of Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer to rock-'n'-roll legend Roger McGuinn of The Byrds.
So protective are College Park residents of their neighborhood that they banded together to protest the removal of a circa-1950s sign adorning the local Publix supermarket. The grocery chain quickly dropped its plans and restored the sign to its original Eisenhower-age splendor.
Much of the talk in College Park these days is over mixed-use condominium, office and retail developments such as the Wellesley, a five-story, $48 million project now rising on the corner of Edgewater and Princeton Avenue, in the heart of the community's Mayberry-esque main drag.
The Wellesley's developer, Jim Kersey of Real Estate Collaborative, has proposed a similar but somewhat smaller project, dubbed The Ivy, next to College Park Baptist Church between Yale and Harvard streets. Kersey, who's a College park resident, is also buying parcels along Edgewater Drive for future development, leading some longtime residents to worry about increased traffic and an unwelcome change in the neighborhood's small-town ambience.
But most residential real estate activity in College Park still involves resales. Heather Dean of Sutton and Sutton Realty says College Park homes can still be found for around $250,000, although many smaller bungalows are being razed to make way for new showplaces.
EATONVILLE
Eatonville, notable as America's oldest African-American municipality, was incorporated in 1883. But it has been difficult for the historic city to remain viable under the burden of a declining tax base and routine accusations of financial mismanagement among elected officials.
Eatonville's most famous former resident is the Harlem Renaissance author and folklorist Zora Neale Hurston, who spent her early years in Eatonville and wrote about her childhood in books such as Their Eyes Were Watching God and Dust Tracks on a Road.
The Hurston connection has been the catalyst for the city's signature event, the Zora Neale Hurston Festival of the Arts and Humanities, which generally attracts more than 50,000 people on the last weekend in January. The Zora Neale Hurston Museum of Fine Arts is the organizer.
In addition, a highly rated TV movie based on Their Eyes Were Watching God aired last March, bringing national attention to Eatonville. And the city's fortuitous location between Maitland and Winter Park and its attractive land prices finally have begun to attract commercial and industrial investment.
Improving the city's aesthetics will be a streetscape program along its main thoroughfare, Kennedy Boulevard. And boosters are proud of a new Orange County branch library, which celebrates the community's heritage with a large Hurston display.
GOTHA
If you're not a horticulturist, perhaps you've never heard of Gotha, a tiny rural enclave tucked inconspicuously north of upscale Windermere.
But if plants are your passion, you may know Gotha as the onetime 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.
The famed botanist once described Gotha as "a dreamland, with almost untouched evergreen woodlands and hundreds of lakes glittering like mirrors." And that "dreamland" remains charming, although upscale homes are spouting like, well, caladiums.
But the tree-shaded, one-block commercial district features the wood vernacular, 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 post office still has a community chalkboard out front, where notices are posted about civic meetings and potluck suppers.
As for Nehrling's ramshackle homestead, dubbed Nehrling Gardens, it was almost torn down last year after the nonprofit Nehrling Society fell short in its bid to buy the home and the six acres surrounding it for a botanical park.
But a Winter Park woman who grew up in a foliage-raising family stepped forward late last year and snapped it up, then entered into a lease-purchase agreement with the society.
MAITLAND
Since the 1960s, Maitland 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 I-4 interchange, giving the city a distinctive business identity as well. The 190-acre development contains a hotel, 45 office buildings and 400 businesses. More than 12,000 people work there.
Another big project that promises to give Maitland's somewhat nebulous downtown district a more cohesive look is Uptown Maitland West, a seven-story retail and condominium development. The project was stalled when six local residents sued the city for allegedly approving it in violation of its own planning guidelines. But the suit was thrown out late last year, so Uptown Maitland West appears to be on again.
Although Maitland can only be described as a thoroughly modern suburb, it has actually been in existence longer than most Central Florida communities.
It was established in 1838 as Fort Maitland, named in honor of Capt. William S. Maitland, a hero of the Second Seminole War. In 1880, the railroad from Sanford arrived, sparking a tourism boom that lasted until freezes in the 1890s scuttled the visitor trade.
In 1937 sculptor André Smith founded the Mayan-themed Art Center at Maitland, which 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 spot for weddings.
To help preserve vestiges of its past, city officials have established a historic corridor in the Lake Lily-Lake Catherine area. Along the corridor are roughly a half-dozen homes built in the 1880s through the turn of the century. There are also a handful of historic commercial buildings along Maitland Avenue.
Today Maitland is home to the Enzian Theater, the region's only art-house cinema and setting for the annual Florida Film Festival. And two large art festivals are held in Maitland: one in October, sponsored by the Maitland Rotary Club, and one in April, sponsored by the Maitland/South Seminole Chamber of Commerce.
The Florida Audubon Society was founded in Maitland, and its headquarters, including a bird hospital, remain on Lake Sybellia.
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 just 1,800 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. Oakland's population has nearly tripled over the past three years, and planners say 5,000 people will call themselves Oaklanders by 2010.
Much of the growth has come from new, gated subdivisions on the south side of S.R. 50, where some residents feel little connection to "old" Oakland and its small-town traditions.
However, bringing longtime residents and newcomers together is the Oakland Avenue Charter School, which was built using an $8 million, 30-year bond issue. The idea, say city officials, is to unite the community's disparate elements behind a community institution that benefits everyone.
Among the city's other assets is the 19-mile West Orange Trail, a mecca for hikers and bikers that begins in Oakland and stretches northeast to Apopka along the original Orange Belt and Florida Midland rail beds. More than 50,000 people per month traverse the trail's length.
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 29,215 residents, it has edged ahead of Winter Park to become the third-largest city in Orange County, behind Orlando and Apopka.
The transformation began two 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 1-million-square-foot regional mall and at least two dozen new 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 slaves into the area and established a camp along the western shores of the lake that now bears his name. Capt. Bluford Sims, who hailed from Ocoee, Tenn., 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. The Florida Turnpike, the East-West Expressway and a new Western Beltway all pass through the city, meaning once-remote downtown Orlando is now just a 15-minute commute.
Despite its growth, Ocoee has managed to preserve its past. For example, the annual Founders Day celebration starts with a parade and ends with fireworks. And those who want to soak up some additional local color may tour the Withers-Maguire House, once a winter refuge for a Confederate general and now a museum.
Also of interest is the circa-1890 Ocoee Christian Church, with its gothic architecture and Belgian-made stained-glass windows, as well as several vintage commercial buildings in the original downtown area.
New residential development is focused on the northwest side, along the S.R. 429 corridor. A new community center and senior center are slated for the area, while a new high school, aptly named Ocoee High School, opened this year.