Osceola County touts NeoCity as possible home for Amazon
The other three spots are downtown Orlando’s planned Creative Village, Lake Nona and Tupperware’s property.
Fisher’s speech was directed to about 100 real-estate and design professionals from around the region.
Osceola County owns the property at NeoCity, which is one possible benefit for the Amazon hunt.
The biggest challenge for the site is probably transportation, which Fisher said could be overcome. He said the proximity to Orlando International Airport and highways is a plus, but mass transit is currently almost nonexistent.
“We are planning a circulator to connect NeoCity to the downtown Kissimmee SunRail station,” Fisher said.
Osceola County was once known for cheap hotels south of Disney World and cow pastures. But county and state leaders, including UCF, are bent on investing heavily in jump-starting a higher-wage tech economy in the region. The overall cost of the NeoCity project is expected to be more than $200 million but could eventually generate 20,000 well-paid spinoff jobs, if successful, according to studies done by the Partnership.
Another issue for NeoCity is housing. There are plenty of new homes in the region, but they aren’t necessarily what young, hip tech employees are looking for.
“My main strife is to get people to move here,” said Bert Gyselinckx, who is general manager for a major partner at BRIDG, imec USA. “We need housing, smaller and more luxurious.”
Gyselinckx, also a VP, formerly worked at the Netherlands location of imec. He said Europeans want more compact homes with tech and design features.
Fisher also referred to Gyselinckx’ advice on the name of NeoCity. Osceola had previously planned to call the Tech Farm.
“Bert said, ‘Don, you can’t do The Farm; Europeans won’t understand it. They’ll think it’s a cornfield,’ ” Fisher said.
Another speaker at the event, Ankush Oberai, of Synopsys Inc., said NeoCity is like upstate New York before tech development took off there. He said much of the technology fabrication in the U.S. moved to China, and now the remaining ones in the U.S. face overwhelming demand.
“This is the perfect time for NeoCity,” Oberai said. “The United States needs more local fabrication labs for semiconductors. Like James Bond, the defense sector here needs a trusted fab; they do not want these [microelectronics] chips made by anyone outside the United States.” it The Farm, or