Parramore residents hope stadium will help kick-start the community
Hours after officials cut the ribbon on Orlando City Soccer Club’s new stadium last week, business was steady at J. Henry’s Barber Shop across Church Street.
Wearing an Orlando City cap and shirt as he worked, the shop’s namesake boasted of the construction workers he’s turned into regular customers. He’s hoping to find more clients among the game day crowds.
“Before that stadium was built, that was a vacant lot over there and a retention pond,” J. Henry said. “Change is always good. You just have to embrace the change.”
As Orlando City Stadium readies for its first game this weekend, hopes are high in Parramore that the new venue will help the west Orlando neighborhood that has
been the target of city renewal efforts for decades.
But experts and city officials caution that, while throngs of purple-clad revelers may provide an economic boost, Parramore’s fortunes won’t change overnight.
Development of the surrounding area likely will progress slowly, said Dean Grandin, the city’s top planner.
“The investment will be tentative because there’s some degree of speculation here as to what this area is going to become, but I believe people will take the dive,” he said.
Some business owners already have, including Charles Frizzell, co-owner of Broken Cauldron Brewery & Taproom, which opened last year just west of the stadium. The brewery has soccer-themed beers on tap and plans to host tailgating for home games.
“We expect this to be a pretty happening spot on game day,” said co-owner Charles Frizzell. “I don’t know if we would have chosen this location, if it wasn’t for the soccer stadium.”
A block to the stadium’s east, Eddie James of Chef Eddie’s, a soul food restaurant that moved into Parramore’s CityView building in 2015, said he planned to bring in extra servers, cooks and dish-washers to handle the throng of fans for Orlando City’s season opener at 5 p.m. Sunday.
Team officials say the 25,500-seat stadium is sold out.
“We’re going to prepare for the worst and hope for the best,” James said.
Even Faith Deliverance Temple, the church whose owners refused to sell to make way for the stadium, now hopes to capitalize on soccer by leasing spaces in its parking lot on game days. Officials also expect nearby residents will sell parking at their homes.
“It has not all been positive, but there are many positive benefits to having them next door,” said Jonathan Williams, whose parents founded the church.
While nearby businesses can expect a boost from soccer, experts say stadiums tend to have a muted impact on revitalization efforts, as they only bring in people and money on game days.
“A lot of people just want to go to the game and go home,” said Neil deMause, a New York-based journalist and author of “Field of Schemes,” which offers a critical look at stadium projects.
Tim Chapin, a Florida State University professor who studies the impact of stadiums on redevelopment, said elements of Orlando City Stadium’s design bode well, such as the lack of on-site parking, forcing visitors to walk through the neighborhood.
Still, soccer faithfuls won’t change Parramore’s fortunes by themselves , he said.
“That sounds like a lot of economic activity, but it’s a tiny drop in a very large pond in terms of the economy,” he said. “There will be a few winners in this, but it’s not a rising tide that lifts all boats.”
Parramore has heard this story of economic revival before. Businesses that hoped to capitalize on the Amway Center when it opened on the eastern edge of the neighborhood in 2010 struggled to find footing.
Draft Global Beer Lounge, despite taxpayer subsidies, fell into debt before closing at the Church Street Parking Garage, which has since been torn down, while Parramore mainstay Johnson’s Diner also failed after moving into the CityView building.
Commissioner Regina Hill, a Parramore native who represents the neighborhood on the City Council, credits a job at the old Amway Arena, which opened in 1989 and was demolished in 2011, with offering her hope as a young woman.
“It was $7-an-hour, parttime, but it gave me the ability to get off that couch and start to feel valuable,” she said.
A historically black community between Orange Blossom Trail and Interstate 4 in downtown Orlando, Parramore saw its population fall by 65 percent since the 1960s. In 2013, only about 6,200 people were living there, almost three quarters of them renters, according to city officials.
Orlando City has taken steps to boost Parramore, including plans to highlight a different local business during each home game. The team said it hired locals to help build the stadium and, more recently, to staff it in a variety of roles, including as cooks and cashiers.
The team also has partnered with local youth organizations, created community gardens and soccer fields and sponsored charitable giveaways, including turkeys at Thanksgiving and backpacks at back-to-school time.
Officials have held regular community meetings to address the concerns of locals.
“There were some very feisty, interesting meetings [and] definitely opposition, but I think we’ve shown that we’re in this for the long haul,” said club co-founder Kay Rawlins. “We just kept showing up, and we kept listening.”
That made an impression, said longtime resident Vencina Cannady.
“At least we’re being heard and we’re being given the utmost respect,” she said.
Officials acknowledge game days will take getting used to. Several roads around the stadium will be closed for hours before games, though city planners say that could eventually change.
“We really don’t know how fans are going to behave,” Grandin said. “The ideal would be that we don’t even close the streets at all. We’re not sure if that’s possible.”
James said the closures are a concern but also an opportunity.
“You’ve got 20,000 or 25,000 people walking by you,’’ he said. “There is definitely an opportunity there.”
Orlando officials say the new stadium’s fit into Parramore is a piece of a much larger puzzle.
The city sees the stadium as part of an entertainment corridor from the Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts to Camping World Stadium, with an urban park beneath Interstate 4 eventually linking the east and west sides of downtown.
A variety of affordable housing projects are being developed, including within the Creative Village, where the downtown UCF campus will boost Parramore’s educational offerings, along with a soon-to-open K-8 school.
But ultimately, officials say, before businesses there can truly thrive, what Parramore needs most is more people.
“The reason why downtown is starting to come back is because of the permanent residential development that’s been occurring in the heart of downtown, the core,” Grandin said. “The same thing needs to happen in Parramore.”