big business than focusing on Democratic economic concerns such as bringing up Orlando’s very low wage base, promoting unions, or openly advocating for the poor, issues the business leaders would rather he not bring up very often. They call him a “Chambercrat.” “I’m very frustrated,” said Doug Head, a longtime chairman of the Orange County Democratic Party, once one of Dyer’s champions and now is one of his sternest critics. “He seems to be geared toward helping the powerful.” No one denies Dyer has Orlando booming with Big City projects, or that he involves anyone, from any party or business background, who might help. One of his first, working with Tavistock Development, began the transformation of the Lake Nona community on the city’s far southeast side into a city of its own, complete with a medical treatment and research campus known as Medical City. SunRail, a Central Florida commuter train system that’s been, in various versions, a dream of mayors for more than 20 years, finally commenced service in 2014. Dyer figured out how to get a major performing arts center built downtown, another dream of Orlando mayors for 20 years. He figured out how to get the Florida Citrus Bowl stadium (now renamed the Camping World Stadium) transformed from an eyesore to a showcase. He figured out how to get the Orlando Magic what they wanted, a glitzy new arena. Smaller projects also have emerged, including a third- or fourth-generation revitalization of the downtown entertainment district centered on Church Street and a boom in downtown housing. Major League Soccer came to town, and Dyer helped clear a spot for the team’s self-financed stadium. But the project that perhaps most illustrates Dyer’s vision, Creative Village, is only now getting started. That is to be an urban community for all those hip, young, 21st century digital industry entrepreneurs to learn, work, live, and play, right in downtown. The cornerstone was laid this year after state officials signed off on money and plans for the University of Central Florida to build a campus there. To get that to 110 | INFLUENCE SUMMER/FALL 2016 happen, Dyer made several trips to Tallahassee to meet with Republican Gov. Rick Scott, and helped negotiate the terms the reluctant governor would support. Buddy Dyer’s Big-City dream has a small-town problem though. Orlando’s metropolitan area has a population the size of a Portland or a Pittsburgh. Orange County is the size of Cleveland’s Cuyahoga or Minneapolis’s Hennepin. But the City of Orlando? The truth is, Dyer is mayor of a place that’s actually only the size of a Toledo, Ohio, or a Stockton, California. The big employers of a Big City are around. The resident population is around. The education centers are around. The money is around. All the anchors and resources are around. But they’re mostly outside the city limits. How might he tap them? How might he invite them in and convince them to buy into and invest in his vision? The 2006 “venues” deal, which built Orlando’s Dr. Phillips Performing Arts Center and the Orlando Magic’s new Amway Centre arena and rebuilt the Citrus Bowl, may have been Dyer’s defining moment to answer those questions. The proposed Big City performing arts center and the desperately needed Citrus Bowl renovation had been in talks for decades. A new basketball arena was a fresher and more immediate concern, as the Orlando Magic’s owners were making no promises about staying unless they got a better home. None had enough money, and certainly Orlando’s city coffers didn’t either. But Orange County had money, with the state’s most robust tourist tax. It had been tapped before for a previous generation’s Citrus Bowl renovations, and for the Magic’s original arena. To do so again, however, would be tricky. Central Florida’s tourism industry and its leaders were very protective about how that tax is spent — to promote tourism, only. And to add in the performing arts center would require all kinds of maneuvering, including the need for a voter-backed increase in the tourist tax to six cents. Each had its own supporters and strong community opponents. None could appeal to everyone. But together, they might. Dyer convinced then-Orange County Mayor Rich Crotty to just consider the prospect, and set up a working team of top city and county officials to work out possibilities. He then went to Walt Disney World President Al Weiss and Universal Parks & Resorts President Tom Williams. His pitch to them: Never mind their customers. For the sake of their employees, for the sake of themselves, Central Florida needs a world-class urban center. They signed on. With Disney and Universal aboard, it was hard for other big players to say no. Crotty signed. The Magic signed. Florida Citrus Sports signed. The arts people signed. The tourism industry, except for International Drive leader Harris Rosen, signed. The region’s chambers of commerce signed. “They came to appreciate how important having a great downtown and venues were,” Dyer explained. “It was a calculated deal that if you put the arts, and the sports and arena all together you had something for most people. So there was talk about splitting the package up and I would not let them do it.” All of it might have seemed improbable in 2002, when Dyer, fresh from losing a bitter statewide race to then-Republican Charlie Crist for state attorney general, pivoted to run for a job he’d never really thought about before. Gov. Jeb Bush tapped then-Mayor Glenda Hood to be his secretary of state. A special election was called. The campaign season was to be just a couple months long. There were plenty of takers, including some big Orlando names — Pete Barr, Bill Sublette and Tico Perez. People urged Dyer to run — Head did so while he was with Dyer the night he lost to Crist. But Dyer was content, at first, staying busy coaching his sons Trey’s and Drew’s flag football team. He also was sitting on an offer to join U.S. Sen. Bob Graham’s ultimately doomed 2004 Democratic presidential campaign. Then Pastor Sam Green of Orlando’s African Methodist Episcopal Church made an impassioned appeal to Dyer, imploring him to run, as the best hope to unite the city. Dyer said he had never set foot inside City Hall in his life before he announced his candidacy. “To be truthful about it, I didn’t know very much about local government,” Dyer said. But he knew Orlando. And he knew a lot about consensus building, and campaigning. John Hugh Dyer was born August 7, 1958, in Orlando but grew up in Kissimmee, the son of an agricultural truck driver and a western-wear store proprietress. The man destined to be Orlando’s Big City mayor CENTRAL FLORIDA The only other thing Buddy Dyer ever talks about as a dream ambition beyond being mayor of a Big City called Orlando, would be the presidency of the University of Central Florida.
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