2012 State of Downtown

October 3, 2012
Amway Center
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Good morning,

Welcome to the Amway Center, home of this year’s NBA All Star Game and a place where 2.7 million people have enjoyed sports, entertainment and community events over the past two years.
This morning, our City’s signature arena plays host to our annual celebration of Downtown Orlando!

When I look out at a crowd this big, this early in the morning, it’s clear to me why you’re here.
You thought we were giving out free iPhone 5’s!

I’m kidding, of course.

You are here because you have a special connection with Downtown.

You’re here because you are invested in the future of Downtown.

And, you’re here because of a shared belief in the importance of Downtown when it comes to our economy and our sense of community.

Nine years ago this month, I gave my first State of Downtown Address.

Every year since, this event has provided a platform for our community to advance the vision we have for Downtown.

Much has happened since that first address back in 2003, both positive and negative.
In those early days, success seemed to come easy.

We doubled our skyline and tax base.

We watched hundreds of new businesses open.

But, as the recession has gone on, we’ve learned to measure progress differently.

We’ve had to focus on steady, but important gains and long term investments in our future.
Today, four years after the start of the worst economic collapse since the Great Depression, our Downtown remains an economic engine for all of Central Florida.

It’s an engine that is primed to help our City continue to move from recovery… into prosperity.

Everywhere you look Downtown, there are signs of progress:

More than 100 new businesses opened in the last year
Office occupancy is up 3 percent and Retail occupancy has remained steady at nearly 97 percent
Our residential apartments are 97 percent full
There are seven major projects underway that represent an 800 million dollars investment in Downtown. These projects will add another 650 residential units and 119 hotel rooms.
Ten more projects are in the works that represent an additional 1.1 billion dollar investment. These planned projects will add an additional 870 residential units and more than 400 hotel rooms
And, the City’s planning department reports that a number of projects that had been shelved because of the economy have been revived or re-imagined
Steps away from us, work is underway on SunRail.

Fifteen months from now, we will be able to board a train that connects our communities in the City of Orlando, Volusia, Seminole, Orange and Osceola counties.
SunRail will take cars off of our roadways and generate 250-thousand jobs and an 8 billion dollar economic impact over the next 30 years.

We can’t talk about economic impact in Downtown without mentioning the Creative Village.
Earlier this year, we imploded the Amway Arena in order to begin transforming the site into a live, work, learn and play campus that’s home to companies in cutting edge industries like digital media and modeling and simulation.

In the coming months, the first signs of construction will appear at the Creative Village site as we lay the foundation for our City’s high tech industry cluster.

There’s more construction on the horizon with the expansion of Orlando Health and Florida Hospital… along with the Central Station project near the courthouse and Lynx headquarters; and new Magic Entertainment complex.

A refurbished Citrus Bowl is on the way, thanks to the dedication of our sports community and our partnership with Orange County and Mayor Teresa Jacobs.

Later today, I will help break ground on Sky House, which will be the first major residential high rise built in Orlando since the recession hit; another important sign that the tide is finally turning for our local economy and housing market.

We have accomplished much in less than a decade, breathing life back into a Downtown that was called a “ghost town” as recently as 2004.

As we celebrate what we’ve done to create a thriving nightlife scene and attract new residents and businesses, we also recognize that we have more work to do.

The top of our list of priorities includes taking steps to attract more families and continuing to provide more shopping and dining amenities for people of all ages.

Green Works Orlando
Downtown Orlando has always been a hub for entrepreneurship and innovation.

Over the past few years, our urban core has taken a leadership role in one very specific area of innovation: Sustainability.

Of course, sustainability is the theme of today’s event.

In 2007, with the support of many Downtown stakeholders, Orlando became one of the first cities in the southeast to adopt a comprehensive program designed to create a more environmentally-friendly City — called Green Works Orlando.

For years, Orlando had been the top City in America when it came to recycling our wastewater – a distinction we still hold today.

We used this as a starting point for our plan to reduce the use of our natural resources, save taxpayers money and protect our environment.

In the span of four years we have:

We have reduced our energy consumption by 20 percent as a City government.
We’ve built 8 new LEED certified City buildings, including fire stations and the building we are in right now, the award winning Amway Center.
We’ve provided energy retrofits to more than 1,200 homes that help homeowners save an average of 166 dollars a year on their power bills.
We’ve added more than 19 miles of sidewalks and bike paths, making our City and our Downtown more walkable.
We put plans in place to offer our residents new and expanded methods of alternative transportation through the creation of SunRail and the expansion of our Downtown bus circulator, LYMMO.
We’ve converted public landscaping to plants and grass that require far less irrigation, saving more than 500-thousand dollars per year.
We have begun to lay an electric vehicle infrastructure by installing 150 charging stations around the City.
We conducted a “Green Demolition” on the Amway Arena, which produced 80 million tons of recycled concrete that will be used for the Creative Village infrastructure.
We’ve acted as a catalyst for encouraging the owners of private sector buildings and community facilities to achieve LEED certification like the Orlando Science Center and the GAI Building. There are now 8 LEED certified buildings in Downtown Orlando, including the OUC headquarters.
And, we’ve converted nearly all of our traffic lights to LED’s, which saves us about 350-thousand dollars a year in energy costs.
These initiatives, and many others, now save taxpayers more than 1 million dollars per year.
And, we are on target to reach a savings of 3 million dollars per year within the next two years.
This is real money, which can now go to pay for police and fire protection or parks and ball fields instead of paying for power bills.

Green Works Phase 2

I’m fond of saying success isn’t a destination… it’s a direction.

The idea behind the first phase of Green Works was to move our City in the right direction when it came to sustainability.

Our goal was to lead by example and show results that make, not only an environmental case for sustainability, but an economic one as well.

In doing so, we aimed to encourage our residents and businesses to include sustainability in their decision-making process.

With your help, we have succeeded.

Now, it’s time to build on our success.

Today, we are excited to launch the next phase of Green Works Orlando!

We’ve partnered with former Orange County Mayor Rich Crotty to put together the City’s first-ever Green Works Task Force.

Thank you, Mayor Crotty, for your many years of service to our community — and for helping lead this important effort.

Would you, and the members of our task force, please stand and be recognized?

Mayor Crotty and our team of community partners will be tasked with first crafting… and then helping to implement a set of new and ambitious “green goals” for our community.
Goals such as:

• Performing money-saving energy retrofits on fifty percent of the homes in Orlando over the course of the next decade
• Planting one new tree for every single person in our City, with the goal of increasing our tree canopy from 23-percent to 40-percent
• Developing a green building code that encourages developers to meet green standards.
• Establishing energy performance disclosures for homes and other buildings, much the same way the sticker on a new car explains how much gas it uses
• Launching both Bike and Car Sharing programs, beginning in our Downtown business district
• Continuing our investment in mass transit by working to connect SunRail to the airport and other destinations, expanding bus transit and studying future routes for an east-west rail transit line
• Establishing long-term carbon emission reduction goals
• Partnering with OUC to make Orlando a solar leader and reinforce our designation as a Solar America City, helping to reduce emissions and create green jobs
• Working with OUC to convert our street lights from traditional bulbs to LED’s, which save significant energy and money
• Installing the infrastructure needed to support zero emission electric vehicles
• We’re also working with OUC to make sure our Downtown venues like this LEED Gold-certified Amway Center are as energy and water efficient as possible

Taking these actions will build dramatically on the 11-thousand “green jobs” that already exist in our community and put people to work.

Finally we aim to take bold steps to reduce the amount of garbage we take to landfills and increase the amount of goods we recycle.

On that last point, we have another exciting announcement to make today.

Beginning the first week of November, the City of Orlando will launch its new Single-Cart Recycling program.

At that time, all current residential recycling customers will begin receiving their new 95 gallon recycling cart.

Say goodbye to those tiny red and blue bins.

And, say goodbye to separating your recyclables.

Instead, you can now put all of those recyclables into one, giant teal or burgundy cart.

This change will allow us to double both the number of people who recycle in Orlando and the amount of material we recycle.

It will also save us more than 125-thousand dollars per year.

We anticipate Single Cart recycling to be fully implemented City-wide by Christmas.

Next Generation Community Involvement and Collaboration

There is no denying our “green goals” are ambitious.

In order to make them a reality, it’s going to take a true team effort.

While Mayor Crotty and our task force will lead the effort, they will not be alone.

We are incorporating a cutting-edge community engagement platform into the launch of the next phase of Green Works Orlando.

The City has partnered with a company called Mind Mixer to create a new resident engagement site that will allow us to better incorporate the ideas our residents have for the future of sustainability and enhance the way residents can participate in the decision-making process.

Through the site, residents will be able to play a role in the decisions we make about water, transportation, food, livability, solid waste, energy and growing a healthy economy.

This tool has been used to help make land use decision in California and to select routes for new walking and bike paths in North Carolina.

We could not be more excited to use this pilot platform to enhance Green Works Orlando and continue the effort to better engage our residents in the work of their City government.

Introduction for Nancy Sutley

When we talk about collaboration, we can’t forget about the role of the federal government.
I know our federal government is sometimes cast as the “bad guy.”

But, make no mistake about it — our City’s relationship with the federal government has helped us secure a number of game-changing projects.

From Sunrail… to Creative Village… to making sure our police officers and firefighters have the tools and training they need to keep us safe, one of our strongest partners has been the federal government.

The same can be said for sustainability.

We are working with our federal partners to help us create and implement this next stage of Green Works.

Accordingly, we are very excited to have Nancy Sutley as our featured speaker this morning.
Nancy is the Chair of the White House Council on Environmental Quality.

In plain English, she is President Obama’s top adviser when it comes to sustainability and environmental issues.

Prior to serving in the White House, she was Deputy Mayor of Los Angeles.

Her background in local government is one of the reasons, I believe, that this administration has been particularly effective in working with America’s cities.

It’s now my privilege to introduce Nancy Sutley.

Mayor Dyer Closing/Thank You’s

Please join me in saying thank you to Chair Sutley for being with us today and helping us launch this next Phase of Green Works!

That concludes our program this morning.

I want to thank everyone at the Downtown Orlando Partnership for hosting this event every year.

I want to recognize the sponsors that made the State of Downtown Address possible, especially Siemens and OUC.

I want to thank all of our Downtown businesses, big and small, for their perseverance.
Through our award-winning Buy Local Orlando program, businesses throughout the City have worked to encourage our residents to spend their money locally.

We also want to recognize our Downtown arts community for all of its hard work.
From our new performing arts center set to open in 2014… to the new Mad Cow Theater which opens this week… to the “See Art Orlando” public art project… Downtown Orlando is leading the way in what will be a “Decade of the Arts” for our City.

We can’t forget to recognize our City Commissioners for all they do for our City.

We also want to thank Mayor Jacobs and our partners at Orange County — and other local and state elected officials for attending this morning and for always working to move our community forward.

I want to thank everyone in this room for attending today… and for your commitment to Downtown Orlando… and our entire City.

Finally, I want to thank all the residents of Orlando.

When I walk around Downtown, I’m often approached by residents who want to give their mayor a compliment or some constructive criticism.

It’s one of the best parts of this job.

Your pride in and passion for our City is infectious and inspiring.

It’s because of you that I know we can accomplish, not just our green goals, but any goal we set out to achieve.

Thank you very much.

Have a great day in Downtown Orlando!