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Floridian of the Year: Lift Orlando
Non-profit Lift Orlando is revitalizing a poor, crime-ridden neighborhood around Camping World Stadium
NOTABLES
JEFF VINIK
A Wall Street legend who once ran the $50-billion Fidelity Magellan Fund, Jeff Vinik came to Tampa in 2010 after purchasing the Tampa Bay Lightning hockey team. A decade later, the Lightning have won back-to-back Stanley Cups (2020 and 2021) and Vinik’s $3.5-billion, 56-acre Water Street Tampa project — a joint venture with Bill Gates’ Cascade Investment — is transforming a section of downtown Tampa near Amalie Arena into a bustling mini-city of its own with several new apartment buildings, two new hotels, high-rise office space and an entertainment hub called Sparkman Wharf. Water Street is the world’s first WELL-certified community, with walkability, air quality, water quality and other wellness features built into the design. The neighborhood’s focus on wellness proved prescient amid the COVID-19 pandemic, driving tenant and resident interest into “hyperdrive,” Vinik told CNBC in an interview earlier this year.
TOM BRADY
Super Bowl LV wasn’t just any game. The Tampa Bay Buccaneers’ 31-9 victory over the Kansas City Chiefs earned veteran quarterback Tom Brady his seventh championship ring — an NFL record — and it was the first time any team played (and won) a Super Bowl in its hometown. Bucs’ fans celebrated in Tampa Bay fashion, with a boat parade down the Hillsborough River that will be best remembered for Brady tossing the Lombardi Trophy from his boat to another. Now in his 23rd NFL season, Brady, the so-called GOAT (greatest of all time), will earn more than $41 million playing for the Bucs this season and has shown no signs of slowing down. “Hopefully, I’ll be here a long time. For many years,” he recently told the Tampa Bay Times.
SYD KITSON
When Syd Kitson purchased the 91,000-acre Babcock Ranch in Southwest Florida in 2006, he sold 73,000 acres in Charlotte and Lee counties back to the state for preservation — the largest preservation land deal in state history. He planned to develop about half of the acreage he kept. His vision: The nation’s first ever solar-powered town. While the subsequent housing market bust and recession slowed his plans, they didn’t stop him — and 15 years later, Kitson’s vision is becoming a reality. The community recently surpassed 1,500 homes sold and is harnessing the power of the sun via a deal with FPL, which put a 75-megawatt solar field on 870 acres on the north end of the Babcock Ranch property. Commercial buildings in the business area are topped with solar panels. With other eco-conscious features — including community gardens and plans for all-electric driverless mobility system — Babcock Ranch is on its way to becoming the nation’s first self-sustaining city.
THE FLORIDA MANATEE
Five years ago, the Florida manatee was doing well enough that it was reclassified from an endangered to a threatened species — but 2021 proved catastrophic for the sea cow, with 968 manatee deaths counted through the beginning of October. Of the 397 mammals necropsied, 18 had succumbed to cold stress, 86 were killed by watercraft and 141 perished from natural causes, which include diseases, birth complications, accidents and natural catastrophes, such as red tide blooms. One-third of the deaths occurred in Brevard County’s Indian River Lagoon, where harmful algae blooms decimated the sea grass, the mainstay of the manatee diet. Another dozen died from human-related causes or being crushed or suffocated in flood gates and canal locks.
Read more in Florida Trend's December issue.
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