Spotlight On: David Barilla, Executive Director, Orlando Downtown Development Board
September 2024 — David Barilla, executive director of the City of Orlando’s Downtown Development Board/Community Redevelopment Agency, talked about the organization’s Project DTO 2.0 Action Plan to make downtown Orlando a thriving environment where both businesses and people want to relocate. He also talked about how the board works to offer incentives to attract more businesses to the area as happened with EA Orlando in downtown Orlando’s Creative Village.
What are the key achievements of the Orlando Downtown Development Board in the past year?
Downtown Orlando has gone through significant growth and evolution over the past few years. One thing that is very tangible is the transformation of our former Amway Arena location into a completely new creative-focused development called Creative Village.
That development is anchored by top-notch educational institutions such as the University of Central Florida and Valencia College. Nevertheless, we were also successful in locating the Southeastern headquarters of EA, particularly its Tiburon Studios. That is where a lot of that company’s sports franchise components such as Madden are ultimately developed.
How does Orlando’s Creative Village development give back to the local community?
That development is located in a historically African American community. EA Sports is excited to be a part of that community and we were able to partner with them on incentives as well as on numerous community-focused initiatives. Those initiatives showcase the tech and the gaming components to the youth in that area. They also cultivate the youth so that they see themselves as part of that industry.
How will Creative Village address the need for housing in downtown Orlando?
Creative Village has several products in it besides the universities. There is high quality student housing there as well as quality developments that have been done with Allen Morris, Ustler Development, and Mill Creek Residential, which are some of the largest residential developers in the country. We will continue to work on more development sites in this area.We have about 40% of the way to build out more opportunities, so we are excited as Creative Village continues to take shape.
What is the role that the Bob Carr Performing Arts Center will play within the Creative Village development?
We are actively working on the adaptive reuse and redevelopment of the Bob Carr Performing Arts Center to make it the inclusive innovation hub of not only Orlando but the entire Southeast. As the Mayor announced, that hub will be the meta-center of the Metaverse. While AI has become the bigger term that has taken over rather than Metaverse, we are talking about the same concept and the same technology.
That center will be geared toward bringing the community together, giving entrepreneurs in that sector the opportunity to work with each other and to get exposed to the talent and resources they need to be successful, and to have a home base for conventions. We are now in the process of soliciting an architect, but that project will ultimately go on to design, and be funded for construction.
How will the Project DTO 2.0 Action Plan make that area more attractive to people and businesses?
We are undergoing a full downtown revitalization and are on the brink of rebuilding basically every core block including everything from the streets to the sidewalks. While it was time for us to go ahead and do this, we had a little bit of a head start regarding the challenges that COVID brought to urban environments, namely changes in sectors and in how people use downtowns.
Downtowns need to round out their offerings. They should continue to be the core business environments that they have historically been, but also be quality places to live and recreate and for people to enjoy arts and culture. We are fortunate to have started that work already and are close to releasing the plan for it. We were able to act on some early initiative steps by buying four catalyst sites, adding to our park spaces, creating some pocket parks, and preserving historic structures while also reintroducing them to the market.
What our concept will do in its outset is put downtown Orlando on the map as the centerpiece for arts and culture and as the premier urban neighborhood and city center in Central Florida. That will be echoed by not only the rebuilding of our designs, roadways, and rights of way, but also in the activities that people will experience there.
How does the Orlando Downtown Development Board address Central Florida’s economic growth with environmental sustainability?
When it comes to DEI, we are making sure that we are being inclusive from a people perspective as well as an environmental component. All the additional square footage that we have from building face to building face is in its essence our property, so we need to use that to provide for the needs of the community while also treating the environment in the way that we want to see it left.
As we revitalize our downtown, we need to make sure that we are taking care of our environment in the appropriate way. Therefore, we take low-impact development into account in everything that we plan. For instance, we want to treat the water that ultimately falls in that area, encourage the community to dispose of items in an easy, but efficient way, and look at alternate sources of energy for the different things that will require it. We need to make sure that we can accommodate that within those designs.
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How is the Orlando Downtown Development Board leveraging the state, local, and CRA incentive programs to attract high-value jobs to downtown Orlando?
We pride ourselves on a culture of collaboration. That includes being able to layer different incentive programs to realize the ultimate vision of having a broad-based economy that has opportunity for all and that can offer growth steps. When the state had their qualified tax program called QTI, the CRA created a program that highly modeled it and provided additional incentives for those companies. We could basically layer one program on top of the other to reduce the cost burden for people and businesses to locate downtown and be part of our downtown environment.
We also added bonuses on that program to encourage people to be part of the additional change that is happening in downtown Orlando while they relocate. We added incentives to motivate the employees of those buildings to be multimodal and look at the commuter rail systems that we have with SunRail. Project DTO 2.0 aims to change the face of downtown Orlando for it to become more of a neighborhood. That entails encouraging employees to live within the area, putting less demand on our transportation system, and being a part of the community.
What is the strategy of the Orlando Downtown Development Board to offer the right incentives?
We want to make sure that we are nimble.Not every company has the same needs, but we want to ensure that we have open-minded conversations with each company so that the best holistic decision is made. In the case of EA moving into the Creative Village, we were fortunate to have more tools in our toolbox because that area was ultimately land controlled by the City of Orlando.We were also able to use tax increment financing (TIF) to help EA make the decision of locating to downtown Orlando.
What is the strategy of Orlando to make the area more attractive to both employees and employers?
We are seeing a trend of companies requiring employees to be back in the office. I see us taking a lead role in providing that allure for our downtown employers. We are working on a place-making component from an economic development standpoint to offer amenities for employers. That has the goal of employers feeling that they need to be here because this is where employees want to be rather than just focusing on where to get the best deal on office space.
We are more than doubling down our investments in park spaces to provide unique and exciting experiences for people to be able to come to work but also be able to have lunch and do activities. We want to make it an exciting environment where people want to be. We are working with United Arts of Central Florida to activate our downtown daily with over 850 experiences throughout the year with live, active entertainment. That can be anything from a guitar player to an actual focused event so that people extend their stay.
For more information, please visit:
https://www.downtownorlando.com/Home
Images provided by Visit Orlando
