Downtown Orlando’s historic Church Street Station – once a tourist attraction that fell dormant – is now home to more than 70 tech-related companies and serves as a hub for startups.
The Orlando Sentinel reports this week that the “fast-paced transformation of the former entertainment complex into a haven for budding technology companies distinguished it recently as the Urban Land Institute’s most innovative project in the Orlando area for 2014.”
Church Street Station is just a short distance from the proposed UCF Downtown campus, that likely would relocate digital media and communications academic programs, among others, to mirror downtown’s growing industry strengths.
Read the Orlando Sentinel’s full article on the momentum of downtown Orlando’s tech scene.
The Sentinel’s story comes just days after the Orlando Business Journal quoted Silicon Valley entrepreneur Jerry Engel as saying Orlando’s tech scene has all the ingredients “to raise Central Florida to be a great cluster of innovation.”
Engel visited Church Street Station last week to kick off the National Science Foundation’s I-Corps program at UCF, survey downtown Orlando’s startup community and offer his advice for success.