January 6, 1998

Things seem to be looking up for culture in Central Florida. The drive, spearheaded by Orlando Mayor Glenda Hood, to raise the money to build a performing arts center downtown will begin in earnest this month. This is good news for the performing arts, whose growth and community support have lagged behind that of other local institutions like professional sports. Who can doubt that the facility would improve the quantity and quality of local culture?

There's only one problem with this development: who decided that downtown Orlando should be the center of the local universe, cultural or otherwise? I don't recall even a proposal that citizens in the tri-county area (Orange, Seminole, Osceola) be allowed to vote on where they want the performing arts center located, or whether they even want one built with public dollars. This despite the fact thatall Central Florida taxpayers (not just those living inside Orlando's city limits) will likely cover some of the project's costs through state and federal grants, and monies from other local governments.

The total potential costs of the PAC could be up to $260 million - depending on the final plans. (Downtown Orlando Monthly, January 1998.)

Mind you, the public funds will all go for something that, according to Hood, "promises to further define Downtown Orlando as the center of a world-class city."[emphasis mine] (Downtown Orlando Monthly, January 1998) In the short-term, there may be some economic benefits - contracts, jobs, materials purchases, etc., - for all of Central Florida. In the long term, however, the benefits from hotel room rentals, restaurant and bar tabs will, it seems safe to say, disproportionately go to downtown businesses.

Central Floridians want the world to realize our area is far more than just Disney and other attractions; well, it's time that Central Florida's largely self-appointed civic leadership recognized that there's also more here than just Orlando. The city's population - 173,122 in 1996, according to its own planning department - is dwarfed by the combined populations of the unincorporated counties and such communities as Lake Mary, Sanford, Altamonte Springs, Casselberry, Longwood, Oviedo, Winter Garden, Apopka, Eatonville and Windemere.

Some people in the aforementioned communities do support local culture and probably would have welcomed the chance to sign-off on where a major arts facility and its benefits are located. (Their patronage will be vital to keep it in the black since Orlando proper doesn't offer a large enough support base.) Maybe they don't think they should have to schlep to downtown Orlando, with its poorly designed traffic patterns and lack of free, convenient parking, to enjoy a touring Broadway show, a ballet or a symphony. Perhaps they would prefer that a PAC that is supposed to serve the whole community be located somewhere convenient to the whole community, such as along the I-4 corridor.

Oh well, it's probably too late to change the plans for the PAC and democratize the process for creating it. Hood has already ensured that it will rise up in downtown Orlando. It's not too late, however, for the rest of us - the voting, taxpaying, usually silent majority in the "hinterlands" - to rise up against future attempts by Orlando's civic oligarchy to dominate aspects of the local performing arts and to hog the attendant benefits.

--Ben Markeson

Ben Markeson I'm a first-generation Floridian, a second-generation American, a college drop-out and have a strong anti-authoritarian, anti-corporate bent. I edited and published two local "alternative" newspapers - The Orlando Collegian and The Orlando Spectator (three if you count The Orlando Reporter, which had one paper issue before becoming an e-zine), and also free-lanced for The Orlando Weekly. But I don't call myself a journalist because that sounds pretentious. Other Articles I've Written