Beth Kassab: It’s unclear how community may benefit in Sanford Burnham fallout,

I’m standing in a little market that sells an assortment of trinkets like scented wax sachets that come in “pumpkin farmhouse” or “red currant cranberry.”

A lunch crowd is munching on fried green tomato BLTs or, maybe, mahi tacos. The tables overlook a lake where a few cows have stopped to graze.

Beyond the bovine view, a sparse, but growing, skyline is starting to take shape. Any guesses where I’m at? Maybe this will help: The artsy market recently featured on its Instagram account a stationary set emblazoned with 32827 in bold at the top of crisp white cards. Did that give it away? That’s the ZIP code that includes Lake Nona in southeast Orlando.

I stopped into Canvas Restaurant and Market in Lake Nona’s new Laureate Park neighborhood on the day after news broke that the University of Florida is backing out of a deal to take over the Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute.

“The what?” asks Cheryl Ennen, who lives nearby and stopped at the market to grab a chicken sandwich.

“You know, the biotech outfit that the city and county lured here with millions of dollars,” I tell her. “I’ve never heard of it,” she says. She’s not the only one. Another man gives me a confused look and says something about the nearby hospitals.

When the Burnham Institute (it had a much simpler name back then) was first announced to great fanfare 10 years ago, it was touted by Lake Nona’s developers as the centerpiece of a life sciences cluster that would surpass our wildest imaginations.

Now the institute, which has failed to create the 303 jobs it promised, might fade away all together.

The La Jolla, Calif.-based group says it couldn’t make enough money despite more than $300 million worth of incentives from state and local governments and a group of deep-pocketed private donors.

Burnham wanted to hand its operations over to UF, but the university says it hasn’t received enough support and confirmed this week that it’s no longer moving forward with that plan.

Nobody — not Burnham, Tavistock or the city of Orlando or Orange County — is saying much about a Plan B or a once unthinkable option: that the outfit could shut down its Orlando labs and close its doors.

In some ways, Lake Nona developer Tavistock appears to have already moved on.

The group founded by billionaire Joe Lewis pitched Burnham as a critical piece to the Medical City concept back in 2006.

But today he’s selling a lifestyle based on a theme of general wellness more than scientific discovery.

Ennen, whom I met at Canvas, moved to the area in July from a

highrise in downtown Orlando.

She likes sense of community she sees in frequent neighborhood events and enjoys mile after mile of bike trails.

“You’re not crossing busy, crazy roads so if you like being active it’s definitely a plus,” she said.

And living near Orlando International Airport is convenient for her job in pharmaceutical sales.

The big-money spent on Burnham convinced lots of local players a decade ago that Lake Nona was going to be the center of something new and exciting.

So Nemours Childrens Hospital and the VA Medical Center committed to building there, too. The University of Central Florida put its medical school there, some 20 miles away from Orlando’s long-established general hospitals.

All of that paved the way for the county to build new public schools there, which allowed for more housing. Lake Nona is now home to 11,000 people.

Today, Tavistock touts Lake Nona as among the Top 10 fastest-selling master planned communities in the nation.

It’s collected a list of accolades and selling points such as high-speed Internet connections and smart technology that is being tested in some of its homes.

“There’s a lot happening here,” Ennen notes.

She’s right. Lake Nona is a burgeoning place.

But who is ultimately benefiting from all of those public tax dollars spent on Burnham now that the group is on its way out?

It’s not clear what the greater Orlando community’s long-term benefit might be, if any.

But Tavistock seems to be doing just fine.