Maribel Brinkle, President of the Apopka Historical Society.
By Maribel Brinkle, President of the Apopka Historical Society
In Summary:
Apopka Historical Society President Maribel Brinkle supports the vision outlined in the Building Downtown Apopka series, but argues that the city cannot afford another seven years of planning. In this letter to the editor, she calls for immediate economic-development leadership and consideration of a developed proposal for a three-story downtown museum, business, and event complex. Brinkel urges city leaders to replace additional studies with tangible investments in infrastructure and downtown construction.
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A response to "Building Downtown Apopka: Money, Models and a Missing Anchor," Parts 1–3
Thank you for this series. Someone finally said, in print, what so many of us have said for years around kitchen tables, chamber meetings, and museum boardrooms: downtown Apopka will not build itself, and it will not wait forever for us to get around to it. Part 3's vision of a civic campus, a modern library, an event center, a history museum, and a real civic plaza is exactly the kind of consequential thinking this city has needed. I mean that sincerely.
But I have to be honest with you and with your readers about the number buried inside that vision: seven more years!.
Winter Garden began investing in its downtown around 1998, a full year ahead of Apopka.
Winter Garden is now the award-winning model every consultant points to when they want to show a Florida city what's possible. That's twenty-five years of daylight between where they started and where we still are. Add seven more years of planning on top of that, and the math is not complicated: 25 plus 7 is 32. Thirty-two years of talking about a downtown while the city next door builds one, opens it, wins awards for it, and lives inside the economic benefit of it.
I don't say this to diminish the work behind this series or the people trying to move it forward. I say it because I have watched this town study, survey , and discuss this exact vision for most of my leadership time at the society, and I am tired of watching. So, I suspect, is nearly everyone reading this.
Here is what I believe needs to happen instead.
Apopka does not have a functioning Economic Development or Community Redevelopment Agency department, and it needs one now; not in year three of a seven-year plan. It needs a director who is genuinely connected to this community, who already has working relationships across the city, the county, and the state, and who can move a project through those layers instead of starting from zero. That kind of leadership shouldn't be something we plan to hire eventually. It should be the first decision.
For the past four years, I have been working on a project that aligns directly with the win-win investment you described in your recent piece: a new three-floor museum building for downtown Apopka.
Here are the key details of the project:
- First Floor: The Apopka Museum, a veterans museum, and a water fountain memorial garden.
- Second Floor: Space leased to businesses and the Apopka Area Chamber of Commerce under a long-term partnership to protect the city's investment.
- Additional Revenue Streams: A wedding venue and a garden center under the same roof, combining museum, event, and retail space in one location.
Based on actual revenue numbers from similar venues, this project is projected to generate approximately $1 million annually for the city, while delivering the increased foot traffic and economic development that downtown businesses need.
This is a fully developed proposal approved by engineers, architects, developers, and environmental experts, ready to move forward, and it's already on the table. This isn't a sketch on a napkin.
I would welcome the opportunity to present it for an actual administration vote and commitment.
Public safety, infrastructure, and a collapsing Main Street are not separate problems to be solved in sequence; they are one problem, caused by the same thing: decades without vision, direction, or investment in our people. We can and must address them at the same time. A city does not get to choose between fixing its roads and building its future; it has to do both, because a downtown without safe streets and working infrastructure isn't a downtown at all.
The money already budgeted for the next round of surveys and studies should go directly into infrastructure instead.
We know what this community wants. We have known for years. The people said it clearly at the ballot box as one of the central reasons this new administration was elected was to finally make these projects a tangible reality, as I am very aware that they inherited decades of neglect, but they also have the support of the community and the momentum not to commission another report confirming what everyone already believes.
I am grateful you're writing this series, Reggie, and I mean that. But this community has heard beautiful language about downtown Apopka before, followed by nothing. If this becomes just another set of well-written articles, including this very op-ed, that fades from the front page in a month, we will be exactly where we've always been — except seven years further behind Winter Garden, not closer to it.
Maybe — maybe — this is the moment that's different. Maybe this series is the push this administration needed to act instead of study. The people of this city have been patient longer than they should have, and they are ready. I believe they'd rather see their tax dollars building something they can walk into than funding another consultant's slideshow.
So I'll leave your readers with a few questions, because I think the answers belong to them, not to City Hall:
- If Apopka has already spent thirty-two years planning a downtown, how many more years are we willing to spend before we ask why nothing has been built?
- When you spend money outside Apopka on a Friday night — dinner, a show, a walk downtown — how much of that would you rather spend two miles from your own front door?
- What would you need to see in the next twelve months to believe this administration is building, not just planning?
- If this city can find money for another study, why can't it find the same money and invest from the general fund and grant match for the infrastructure the study will only end up recommending anyway?
Thank you again for bringing this into the light. Now let's see it through.
Key Points:
- Brinkle supports the civic-campus vision presented in Building Downtown Apopka but objects to a seven-year timetable.
- She calls for Apopka to establish a functioning economic-development or community-redevelopment department immediately.
- Her proposed three-story downtown project would include the Apopka Museum, a veterans museum, and a memorial garden.
- Commercial tenants, an event venue, and a garden center would provide additional activity and potential revenue.
- Brinkle urges the city to direct money toward infrastructure and construction instead of conducting more surveys and studies.
Editor's Note: Apopka Historical Society President Maribel Brinkle's name was spelled incorrectly in previous editions of this article. It has been corrected.
