A new campaign has been launched to save the Parramore community from impending gentrification due to Creative Village. Stop Creative Village targets Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer’s pet project, which is being developed by Craig Ustler on the old Amway site and will consist of at least 1,500 new residential units and 1 million more square feet of commercial office space. Development our city simply does not need.
Displacement of low-income residents who have historically lived in the Parramore community is the greatest concern for the campaign. The Parramore neighborhood has been ignored and left to rot by Dyer and city officials, especially compared to the hundreds of millions of dollars being spent on the venues surrounding the area. Creative Village is the major piece to Mayor Dyer’s greater “Downtown West” redevelopment plan to gentrify Parramore and ultimately redevelop land from the new Amway to the Citrus Bowl to Creative Village, as was exposed in city-organized town hall meetings last year.
This development will also lead to the demolition of the Bob Carr Performing Arts Center, also known as the Orlando Municipal Auditorium, Orlando’s oldest public building still standing.
This is the first video from the campaign, which is planning an education and awareness campaign and will schedule Town Hall meetings in the Parramore community to engage more residents with the goal of gaining public and written assurances from the City of Orlando to preserve and protect the Parramore community.
Great article Mike. This information all fits with the closing of Jones High School and Richmond Heights Elementary. The City is working with the School Board to bus the area students to other schools and create a false low student population. This all fits Buddy Dyer’s plan to disperse the Black population. We must stand together as citizens. It is obvious that the City Commissioners, County Commissioners and the Orange County School Board members are all in this together working against the local population.
There must be a concerted effort put forth to inform the citizens of the Parramore district, rallies, word of mouth, and yes going knocking on as many door as possible to alert the people as to what is going to happen to them and where they live if they don’t come out in big numbers and make this an issue about their lives and what is being done to their neighborhood. What is being done to them is wrong on so many levels, and there should hell raised about the lack of caring that it is happening. Remember these are suppose to be PUBLIC SERVANTS not slave masters who at will can displace anyone or neighborhood who gets in the way of what they see as their legacy. If your back is yo the wall then you must fight as I and others did for Evans High School in Pine Hills. If you must fight it in the courts, then so be it! Your home is yout castle so fight to protect it!
[…] the land where the Orlando Police Department Headquarters currently sits. Residents are already organizing against Creative Village and the looming […]
Are people really complaining about enhancing our city while ridding the worst community of Orlando. Housing projects off of I-4 are such an eyesore. Not to mention not a neoghborhood anyone wants to visit. Most people call the projects surrouned by the 408 loop the circle of death.