"Seasons change and so do I - you need not wonder why..." - The Guess Who
Actually, we do need to wonder why - why is it that this is not your grandfather's (or possibly even your father's or second-cousin-once-removed's) Orlando? For, in order to understand where we are heading, we have to understand where we have been. We've been blessed with unbelievable growth that brought decades of prosperity to our region, transforming our once-sleepy agricultural town into a household name worldwide. Along the way, we built theme parks, accumulated people, constructed a bunch of roads, and dotted the area with schools. We invited people in to our state by flaunting our low taxes and comparatively low cost of living, making room for those northern refugees by madly constructing homes at the edges of our cities. Each year, we madly financed growth by encouraging more growth - times were good, people were happy (well, except those unfortunate souls who had to travel on overcrowded roads - shout out to my friends on Alafaya Trail - or attend overburdened schools), and Orlando was flying high as a beacon of the New South.
And then...the music stopped. Seasons changed. Our number one industry took a nosedive - oh, tourism has dipped, but I'm talking about construction. Our "ponzi scheme" ecomony (as described by my favorite resident Orlando economist, UCF's Dr. Sean Snaith) collapsed upon itself. In hindsight, we probably shouldn't have been surprised. After all, a city can only live on the promise of growth so long before it must tangibly contribute to the global economy.
Fortunately, we are starting to build some of those tangible industries that can serve as a sustainable base for future economic growth - industries like modeling, simulation & training (MS&T), digital media, biotechnology, and cleantech. Combined with our formidable tourism industry (and leveraging that industry's creative talent), Orlando has the ability to rise from the catastrophic crash of its old growth-on-growth economy and thrive in a new globally-connected economy. This rebirth will feel different, though, and will force us to think and act in a much different manner than before, particularly with respect to the types of people we need to attract to the area (hint: retirees generally do not flock to digital media clusters) and the types of amenities we need to provide (another hint: schools, and the funding thereof, are pretty important).
And so, the times, they are a-changin. But nobody ever said building an innovation-based economy would be easy.
While I agree we had too much construction I think we need to have a healthy balance. Not being an economist I am not sure whether business' like MS&T provide general funds to our tax base the way doc stamps from real estate do. I believe the system needs to be more balanced as we need "To Share the Land".
ReplyDeleteJoe - your comment on the tax base is interesting. The State of Florida has relied on documentary stamp tax revenues from the transfer of real estate as a key component of its annual funding. When we stopped growing in population and building, those doc stamp tax revenues fell off dramatically. My argument is that it will take the establishment of a new creative economy to kick-start a new type of growth in the area and to revitalize all of the relied-upon tax income streams (whether it is property tax, sales tax, or doc stamp tax). Thus, an industry like MS&T is the cause of a recovery in real estate and, consequently, in doc stamp taxes.
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