INTRODUCTION

JOE LEWIS WILL RANK ALONGSIDE DISNEY IN LOCAL HISTORY BOOKS

You may never have heard of Joe Lewis. And that’s probably okay with him. Lewis, a British billionaire, is the principal in the Tavistock Group, a private investment company with interests in more than 175 firms worldwide. Lewis keeps a low profile locally, but when the history of Orlando is rewritten decades from now, he will undoubtedly rank alongside Walt Disney as the most important businessperson ever to turn a shovel of Central Florida sand.

Lewis left school at 15 to help his father run Tavistock Banqueting, a London catering company. He later owned a West End nightclub called Hanover Grand, where, ironically, he gave Robert Earl his first job. Earl would later found Hard Rock Café and Planet Hollywood.

After selling his family business some 30 years ago, Lewis founded the Tavistock Group. One of its subsidiaries, Lake Nona Property Holdings, owns Lake Nona Golf & Country Club and the land on which Medical City is taking shape.

Tavistock was instrumental in laying the groundwork for Medical City through its donations of land and cash, its work with local planning and economic development organizations, and its significant investments in life-sciences companies.

If that weren’t enough, the company has bolstered its corporate citizenship with an array of philanthropic efforts. The annual Tavistock Cup golf tournament, for example, has raised millions for such recipients as the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center Orlando, The First Tee, Tavistock Scholars and the Orlando Minority Youth Golf Association.

This special report, produced jointly by Florida Homebuyer Orlando and Orlando Home & Leisure, is meant to update the development’s progress for local residents — and to introduce it to thousands of relocators.
Thanks in large part to Joe Lewis and his partners, it’s an exciting time to be living in Central Florida. After reading this special report, I think you’ll agree.

Randy Noles
Group Publisher
Florida Home Media LLC

A complex of medical research, education and treatment facilities is taking shape on 650 acres  in southeast Orange County (above). The complex will train a new generation of medical professionals and become an incubator for breakthroughs in the treatment of diseases such as Alzheimer’s, cancer and diabetes.

SPECIAL REPORT

JUST WHAT THE DOCTOR ORDERED

Lake Nona’s booming Medical City lets Central Florida redefine itself.

By Randy Noles and Katherine Johnson

In 1964, unknown buyers began quietly assembling thousands of acres of swamps, groves and pastures south and west of Orlando. The sophisticated stealth of the operation, combined with the apparent willingness of the local daily newspaper to keep secrets, allowed the Walt Disney Company to lay the groundwork for an entertainment complex that would thrust Orlando onto the world stage and define its image for decades to come.

Nemours Children’s Hospital (above), a 630,000-square foot, 95-bed facility, is the Delaware-based pediatric healthcare provider’s first major hospital in the South. It will open in 2012

For better or worse — and on balance, most would agree, it has been for the better — modern-day Orlando is in large part a Disney creation. But Disney was an invader, albeit a benevolent one, setting its sights on a desirable geographic location, surreptitiously securing a beachhead and even setting up its own governmental structure to protect its interests from nosy locals.

But if Disney was done to us, the so-called Medical City development at Lake Nona was done by us, and for us. The effort to redefine Orlando as an international destination for leading-edge medical research, education and treatment has been a carefully managed, brilliantly coordinated local effort involving politicians, developers, educators, philanthropists and boosters.

“If this all works according to plan, as I suspect it will, two things will happen,” says Rick Weddle, president and CEO of the Metro Orlando Economic Development Commission. “It will be a best-practices model for how local, regional and state governments — the triple helix of economic opportunity — can work together to get things done.”

The 1.2-million-square-foot Orlando Veteran’s Administration Hospital (above) will care for more than 100,000 veterans per year, virtually all of the from Central Florida. The facility will also host a research unit focusing on diabetes and obesity.

Just east of Orlando International Airport sits Lake Nona Golf & Country Club, a 7,000-acre, master-planned community that’s now home to nearly 10,000 residents. About 650 acres is an emerging $2 billion medical campus, including a medical school, research laboratories and hospitals.

The project has powered forward at warp speed and pretty much according to plan, despite a national economic collapse that stopped growth in its tracks elsewhere. And it all began with a high-profile failure.

In 2003, then-governor Jeb Bush announced plans to use government incentives to attract large biomedical companies — and their high-paying jobs — to a state where tourism had always powered the economic engine. The Scripps Research Institute, based near San Diego, accepted $579 million in grants to open a location in the state.

In an effort to lure Scripps to Orlando, the Tavistock Group, a private investment firm that owns Lake Nona and much of the surrounding property, set aside about 650 acres and proposed creating a medically oriented complex encompassing retail stores and housing.

Two Medical City anchors: The University of Florida Research and Academic Center (top) and the Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute (bottom), where finding new medications to attack vexing illnesses will be a top priority.

After all, doctors were already favorably disposed toward Central Florida. Since the early 1990s, the region had hosted roughly half of the medical conventions held in the United States, according to EDC statistics. Scripps even tentatively accepted a proposal of more than $500 million in grants to relocate to the Lake Nona area.

But in the end, the institute reneged — in part because Orlando lacked a medical school — and relocated to Jupiter, an affluent, midsized city in Palm Beach County. Nearby Florida Atlantic University launched the Charles E. Schmidt College of Medicine, which now offers a dual M.D./Ph.D degree in conjunction with the institute’s Kellogg School of Science and Technology.

The loss stung, but Orlando boosters learned from the experience and began looking for another opportunity. Three years later, that chance came when the Burnham Institute for Medical Research — now renamed the Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute after a $50 million donation from billionaire T. Denny Sanford — agreed to build a campus somewhere in Florida in exchange for a $310 million incentive package.

The UCF College of Medicine (above) admitted fewer than 1 percent of its applicants in the 2009-2010 academic year, making it the most selective medical school in the country.

Concurrently, the University of Central Florida won approval from the Florida Board of Governors and the Florida Legislature to build its own medical school. Tavistock, which donated 50 acres on which the school could be built as well as $12.5 million in cash, challenged the community to raise an additional $12.5 million. That $25 million was doubled via a matching grant from the state.

In all, enough money was raised to launch the school and pay tuition and living expenses — worth about $40,000 per year per student — for all 41 members of the school’s inaugural class.

That kind of grass-roots commitment appeared to clinch the deal for Sanford-Burnham, which is based in La Jolla, Calif. The institute’s $85 million, 178,000-square-foot facility, which opened in 2009, is now home to the Diabetes and Obesity Research Center and the Conrad Prebys Center for Chemical Genomics screening center.

Sanford-Burnham’s Lake Nona campus, which employs 160 people including 110 research scientists, is now hiring additional scientists and support staffers to focus on treatments for cancer, Alzheimer’s and other diseases. In its first year, it attracted $40 million in research grants.

“We’re attracting top-level scientists who come from well-established institutes or universities, many of which are located in metropolitan areas such as Boston or Dallas,” says Deborah Robison, the institute’s communications director.

UCF’s medical school is also thriving. It enrolled 80 students in 2011, 100 students in 2012 and expects 120 in 2013. Enrollment is slated to top out at 485. As of the 2009-2010 academic year, when fewer than 1 percent of applicants were accepted, it was rated the most selective medical school in the U.S.  

VillageWalk at Lake Nona (above) is a 500-acre neighborhood including luxury single-family homes, patio homes and townhomes. The waterfront Village Center encompasses a fitness center, two swimming pools, tennis and basketball courts and an event hall as well as a library, a bank and a post office.

The adjacent Burnett School of Biomedical Sciences houses UCF’s Department of Molecular Biology and Microbiology, the Biomolecular Science Center, the Medical Laboratory Sciences Program and the Pre-Health Professions Advisement Office.

The medical school’s first phase consists of a 130,000-square-foot instructional building and a 60,000-square-foot library. The Burnett School’s facility is 113,000 square feet and serves 2,500 degree-seeking students. The two programs employ more than 500, with as many as 800 anticipated at full enrollment.

The hoped-for Medical City clustering effect further accelerated when the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center Orlando’s Research Institute moved from downtown Orlando to the top floor of the Burnett School of Biomedical Sciences.

“There’s a lot of room for collaboration and synergy when you have so many institutions so close to one another,” says Dr. Clarence Brown, president of the center. “It’s very exciting. Brown expects that his staff of 25, which includes 10 researchers with doctoral degrees, will work closely with neighboring facilities on cancer research.

The University of Florida, based in Gainesville, is also adding its formidable resources to the Lake Nona mix. In 2010 UF broke ground on a $40 million, 100,000-square-foot Research and Academic Center in Medical City.

“Our university is very receptive to creating programs outside of Gainesville,” says UF spokesperson Joseph Kays. “We believe the players involved at Lake Nona are capable of making this a major research center, and I’m sure the folks are hopeful there will be many more spinoffs from the work they do.”

The first floor of UF’s multilevel facility will house its Institute on Aging — a program that studies, among other things, drug interactions in the elderly — as well as the UF College of Pharmacy, which will relocate its 200 students from Apopka to Lake Nona next June.

Dr. Lawrence J. Lesko, professor of Pharmaceutics and director of the Center for Pharmacometrics and Systems Pharmacology, says the center’s researchers will focus on diseases such as Alzheimer’s, looking for revolutionary treatments to help the nearly 500,000 people in Florida each year who are diagnosed with some form of dementia.

Among the retail options adjacent to Medical City is Lake Nona Village (above), with 70,000 square feet of retail, restaurants and offices along with more than 120 residential condominiums and apartments.

“We’ll be designing chemical trials on the computer and integrating data from literature and other failed trials to help find a new drug,” Lesko says. That’s significant, he adds, because the FDA has not approved any new Alzheimer’s drug since 2002.

And that’s not all. Through the UF Institute of Therapeutic Innovation, also housed in UF’s Lake Nona facility, researchers will focus on identifying new treatments for cancer, diabetes and other diseases. Noted clinical pharmacologist Dr. George Drusano and his entire staff are relocating from New York to Lake Nona specifically to study infectious diseases.

“If I was 20 years younger, you wouldn’t see me in Gainesville,” says Dr. William Millard, the College of Pharmacy’s executive associate dean. “I’d be down there. We can have the students interact with research and faculty, and develop a lot of collaborative interactions with the idea that directly across the street from us is a biotech park.”

Another major Medical City anchor will be the Orlando Veteran’s Administration Hospital, slated to open next year. The $665 million, 1.2-million-square-foot facility will encompass 314 beds, including 22 intensive-care beds and 40 mental-health beds. A 60-bed domiciliary will provide assisted living and other services to economically disadvantaged veterans.

The hospital’s 2,000-plus employees will care for more than 100,000 veterans per year, virtually all of them Central Florida residents, say officials. In addition there’ll be a medical simulation center and a research unit focusing on diabetes and obesity, which are problems disproportionally impacting veterans.

The Burnett School of Biomedical Sciences (above) houses UCF’s Department of Molecular Biology and Micro-biology, the Biomolecular Science Center, the Medical Laboratory Sciences Program and the Pre-Health Professions Advisement Office.

“Medical City was a very big driver for this hospital,” says Courtney Franchio, a VA spokesperson. “One of our missions is education and research, so to co-locate with these other facilities is ideal.”

Finally, Nemours, a major pediatric healthcare provider with a hospital in Wilmington, Del., and clinics throughout Florida (including Orlando), New Jersey and Pennsylvania, has chosen Lake Nona for a 95-bed, 630,000-square-foot hospital.

Nemours Children’s Hospital, now under construction on a 60-acre site, is the not-for-profit organization’s first major hospital in the South.

The Lake Nona facility, which is expected to employ about 800, will include healing gardens, nature trails and pet therapy areas for patients. Construction is already 60 percent complete, and the entire cost of the project — $380 million — will be funded by the private Nemours Foundation.

From the air, the vastness of the Lake Nona area (above) is especially apparent. In the coming years, planners envision the empty acreage becoming a booming high-tech center with neighborhoods and businesses supporting the core medical facilities.

“No tax money and no philanthropic dollars will pay for the brick and mortar,” says Josh Wilson, senior manager, public and community relations for Nemours Florida. Once the hospital opens, Wilson adds, Nemours plans to create an endowed chair to raise funds for future research in children’s health.

In fact, just about the only type of medical treatment, research and educational facility not found in Medical City is a dental school — but that isn’t for a lack of trying.

The three state universities that want to either build new dental schools or expand an existing one — UCF, UF and Florida A&M — were urged in early October by the Florida Board of Governors, which oversees the State University System, to explore some sort of joint agreement.

UCF had wanted to build a new 394-student College of Dental Medicine as an adjunct to its medical school. But at the same time, Florida A&M University was seeking to start a dental school to train minority dentists, while UF was pushing to expand its nationally ranked dentistry program in Gainesville. At press time, the outcome was unknown.

With or without a dental school, the investment required to assemble the components of Medical City has already generated a significant return — and will continue to do so for decades to come.

Students at the UCF College of Medicine’s Anatomy Lab (above) have access to state-of-the-art imaging equipment. Tuition for all 41 students in the inaugural class was paid via grants.

An economic impact study by Arduin, Laffer & Moore Econometrics in 2008 found the UCF College of Medicine, combined with a life-sciences cluster, could create 30,000 jobs with $2.8 billion in annual wages, generate $460 million in annual tax revenue and spur $7.6 billion in annual economic activity for the region.

“Since 2005, there’s been $2 billion in active construction on site,” says Rob Adams, vice president of marketing for Lake Nona. “From the infrastructure we put in, to the hospitals, the research institute and medical school.”
But even more important than Medical City’s economic impact is this: The next major advances in the diagnosis and treatment of mankind’s most vexing diseases may very well originate in our own backyard. And that’s truly invaluable.

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MEDICAL CITY TIMELINE

To Orlandoans – even those accustomed to instant suburbs and a constantly changing skyline – Medical City seems to have appeared instantly and out of nowhere. In a way, it has.

1996 Tavistock Group purchases Lake Nona Development 1998  Development begins on NorthLake Park community in Lake Nona  2004  Development begins on VillageWalk, Morningside and Waters Edge communities  2005  Tavistock donates 50 acres and $12 million for UCF College of Medicine  2006 UCF College of Medicine approved by state • Burnham Institute announces it will locate at Lake Nona • University of Florida announces it will locate a research facility with Burnham at Lake Nona  2007  Lake Nona sells its 1,000th residence •  V.A. announces it will build a new hospital at Lake Nona • UCF pours foundation for its first building at Lake Nona • Burnham breaks ground on its building • State approves Nemours application to build hospital in Central Florida • MD Anderson Cancer Research Institute announces agreement to rent space from UCF at Lake Nona  2008  Tavistock and Nemours agree to locate Children’s Hospital at Lake Nona • V.A. hospital breaks ground  2009  Nemours breaks ground • Burnham building ready for occupancy • Nemours and VA commence construction on their hospitals at Lake Nona  2010  UCF opens its Medical Education Building and Burnett Biomedical Research Building at Lake Nona  2011  Lake Nona opens its newest neighborhood, Laureate Park.

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INTRIGUING COLLABORATIONS INCLUDE EQUESTRIAN THERAPY

One of the most intriguing collaborations involving the Medical City anchors is an effort to develop an equestrian therapy program that will benefit wounded veterans being treated at the neighboring VA Hospital.

Dr. Manette Monroe, a lifelong horse enthusiast, is leading UCF’s effort to bring the program to Lake Nona. Monroe wants to scientifically quantify the ways in which horseback riding helps vets who are physically disabled or suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder.

According to Wendy Spirduso Sarubbi, coordinator of information and publication services at the UCF College of Medicine, the research will be groundbreaking.

“Veterans who are coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan with amputations and serious brain injuries from roadside bombings need this program,” says Sarubbi. “Using equestrian therapy allows vets to ride the horses to improve balance, hand/eye coordination and core strength.”

UCF is finalizing a proposal to Osceola County leaders requesting donated land on which to build a covered equestrian center for year-round training and classes. The school is seeking research grants to fund the program and hopes to eventually expand it to encompass children with autism.

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AS GROWTH ACCELERATES, A NEW CITY TAKES SHAPE

Laureate Park (above), a traditionally styled neighborhood, will be highlighted by curved roads meandering around lushly landscaped public spaces. Homes will be equipped with state-of-the-art energy saving features.

As Medical City’s facilities are taking shape, surrounding housing and retail projects are also beginning to blossom.

The northern part of Lake Nona already encompasses large estate homes in the Lake Nona Golf & Country Club as well as more affordable offerings in NorthLake Park, Waters Edge and Village Walk. Now residential development tied specifically to Medical City is gearing up.

“Our residential demand has been steady for two-and-a-half years, which has been contrary to the Orlando market,” says Rob Adams, Lake Nona’s vice president of marketing. “And demand is increasing as we diversify the product.”

Lake Nona’s newest neighborhood is Laureate Park, a traditionally styled project in which the streets are named for Nobel Prize winners.

The neighborhood will include 503 homes priced from the low $200s to the mid-$500s. David Weekley Homes, K. Hovnanian Homes and Ashton Woods Homes are the exclusive builders.

While Laureate Park shares Norman Rockwellian styling elements with such successful local projects as Celebration and Baldwin Park, it will have a somewhat more organic feel.

Instead of plotting the neighborhood using a traditional square grid, Laureate Park developers followed a bent grid, which means curved roads will meander around green, landscaped pathways.

The homes, some of which will be inspired by South-ern California architecture, will feature modern touches of color and sustainable materials. Miles of walking/jogging paths and man-made lakes are planned.

“It’s going to feel different and edgy,” says Adams. “You won’t be able to find it anywhere else.”

Ashton Woods will offer single-family homes as well as three urban loft floorplans ranging in size from 1,689 to 1,877 square feet.

David Weekley will offer four single-family floorplans ranging in size from 1,500 to 2,900 square feet, while K. Hovnanian will offer duplexes with alleyway garages.

The neighborhood is participating in a General Electric program called Homes Inspired by Eco-Imagination, through which homes are pre-wired for electric vehicles and illumination is provided by LED streetlights.

In addition, each Laureate Park home will be equipped with a geo-springs water heater/heat pump that cuts water and energy usage by 30 percent.

A Nucleus Energy Management System helps monitor a home’s energy consumption. “It looks like a cell phone charger that you plug into the wall,” says Adams. “It talks to the meter outside. You can hook it up to a special thermostat and go on the Web and see what your house is doing.”

Surrounding Laureate Park will be a Village Center packed with retail shops, restaurants, a fitness center and an array of other amenities. Another big retail project taking shape is the walkable Lake Nona Town Center, which will boast twin hotels.

“Lake Nona is an attractive community and is only going to get better,” says Randy Hartley, chief administrative officer for Nemours Children’s Hospital, who recently relocated to Lake Nona. “As we see the retail center open and more homes built, I’m sure this area will wow many of the candidates we’re recruiting.”

In addition, road projects will make traveling to, from and within Medical City more convenient. Linking existing roads such as Lake Nona Boulevard with Boggy Creek Road and tying the development to SunRail, Central Florida’s commuter train system, is also a top priority for regional transportation officials.

“Rail is a part of the plan for that area,” says Kelley Teague, director of public affairs for Metroplan Orlando. “We are mindful of the need to have a transit component serving Lake Nona.”

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VALENCIA’S LAKE NONA CAMPUS IS AN IDEAL FIT

Valencia College isn’t a medical facility, but it’s still a perfect fit for Medical City. Students at Valencia’s Lake Nona Campus will be able to choose from among a variety of courses such as microbiology and chemistry, which are mandatory for careers in health and medicine.

“When we knew we needed a presence in southeast Orange County, Lake Nona loomed large,” says Valencia President Sanford Shugart, citing Lake Nona’s appeal as a community where “education is a primary part of the design.”

In addition to offering advanced science and math courses leading to an Associate in Arts (A.A.) degree, the campus will focus on meeting the technical training and employment needs of the surrounding research facilities and hospitals.

When it opens next year, Valencia’s three-story, 83,000- square-foot building will encompass 18 classrooms, six science labs, a library, a bookstore, a café and administrative offices.

Eventually, four buildings totaling about 250,000 square feet will accommodate about 5,000 students.

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LAKE NONA MAP