In recent days, I have been running almost every day, and because I choose my lunch break for a 10K run in Avalon Park Orlando, I can feel summer has arrived!

Twenty-seven years ago, in June 1998, I was not running through Avalon Park Orlando, but rather inspecting infrastructure construction in Live Oak Village—the first village built in Avalon Park—driving in an SUV and sometimes getting stuck in the mud.

We have come a long way from the 100+ cows to around 50,000 residents within a 3-mile radius of Avalon Park Orlando.

If somebody had asked me almost three decades ago whether I would be running through Downtown Avalon Park in the summer of 2025, I would have been skeptical. Well, I just did today, and the memories are coming back of when we started to build a city from scratch.

Has summer changed over the decades in Avalon Park? Well, not the heat and humidity. However, back around the turn of the millennium, it often felt that the majority of residents in Central Florida were “snowbirds,” leaving in the summer and returning in the fall.

These days, summer is full of opportunities, and many people enjoy Avalon Park as a getaway and take time off from work while staying in the “bubble.”

As we near the of building the town of Avalon Park, my “last” wish for the community will be for a regional community park. We will provide a few acres over the next few years on the commercial land called Flagpole (for which we have been paying high property taxes for years). The cricket players are enjoying it, and many others as well. This is obviously only a temporary solution; hence, we need to stand together to find a permanent, much larger park for all.

My wish is that local government would finally come through on a regional park. There are more than 10,000 acres of land next to Avalon Park owned by public entities (St. Johns Water Management District, OUC, City of Orlando, Orange County). The community would need only 1–2% of that land to have a regional park with football, baseball, soccer, and cricket fields. Why is it that we were able to build a city, but the county is not able to simply provide 100–200 acres of land (just 1–2% of currently unused land) for that cause?

The land is here—it is owned by all of us taxpayers. Let’s get to work on it, with the goal of having a 100–200 acre park within two years, not only to complete the town of Avalon Park as approved and planned since 1997, but to finally give the community what is long overdue: a regional park for all. If you are interested in joining me in this venture, please send an email to me at info@AvalonParkSun.com.

I hope to see you at our annual 4th of July event, Friday, July 4^th, 5-9 pm.