Business View Civil and Municipal | Volume 3, Issue 3

132 CIVIL AND MUNICIPAL VOLUME 3, ISSUE 3 “Mount Dora has a major corridor called US441, which cuts through the middle of the city,” Wilson indicates. “A lot of the daily services that people would need – your typical support, retail, and service industries – have been placed right along that corridor. And then on the city’s east side, right at the interchange of where the 453 comes to State Route 46, is an area that has been defined as another major employment zone. This would be a mixed-use development with some multi-family housing, but predominantly catering to employers for high-tech and industry R&D companies.” Known as Wolf Branch Innovation District, the site is considered part of the Mount Dora Employment Center, a hub of economic and employment growth consisting of approximately 900 acres along the Wekiva Parkway Expansion. Expected to create around 13,000 new jobs, the development is on prime real estate to take advantage of the imminent construction of the Wekiva Parkway – a 25-mile expressway that is essentially a business core brimming with old-school mom-and-pop owners. We’ve got no big-box, large-chain type of stores downtown. It’s really just that homey, picturesque, charming kind of town that people joke is like a Hallmark movie – minus the snow.” But a city can’t exist on charm alone and Mount Dora offers just as much in the way of location as it does local character. Situated on the border of Lake and Orange Counties, an area which is currently piquing a ton of development interest, Mount Dora is in the fortunate and rare position of being able to promote the stability of its traditional downtown district along with newer development areas where the city plans to expand in the future. The municipality is also in the process of preparing a marketing/branding plan for its designated employment areas (US 441 and the Wolf Branch Innovation District) to boost tourism and further set the city up to compete for target industries in the Central Florida market.