Monthly Archive for March, 2010

Mayor Buddy tears down the Arena to put in…a watercolor painting?

Our beloved Amway Arena will soon be replaced by the… Amway Events Center, down near the intersection of I-4 and 408. This means the current Arena and that huge parking lot will become mostly useless. The Bob Carr will remain in operation – possibly indefinitely – until the new Performing Arts Center is built. As for the rest of the land, well, let’s just say that Mayor Buddy has big dreams!

There are lots of watercolor drawings and slideshows with maps available on the City of Orlando’s website. They have a page with a few downloadable documents created that outline the gentrification of Parramore, creating lots of “party curb” streets (so drunk people don’t trip?), and making greater use of parks and public spaces. They also want to make sure the venues and other city buildings are “good neighbors”, whatever that means.

If you want to hear this BS in person, they’re having an event on Monday at City Hall. It seems to be open invite, so if you care about the future of downtown, make some time in your schedule for this.

Creative Village event March 22nd

Creative Village event March 22nd

If I’m allowed to videotape, the meeting will show up on our Watch Live page.

A Quick list of fun things to do in Orlando

As I get older, I tend to have more and more visitors come down looking for a break from the rest of the world. Orlando can be a pretty good place to do that. It’s one of the top vacation spots, after all!

As we have people visit, we’ve started to compile a list of activities (some are mega-touristy) and restaurants that we can recommend to everyone. Here they are, in no particular order:

Note: links to Go Orlando Card are part of an affiliate program.