ORLANDO, Fla. — Disney’s pullout of their planned 60 acre, 1.8 million square foot campus in Lake Nona has left many people, including business owners, wondering what’s next for the space that Disney was supposed to develop and move into.  Some business owners and developers are optimistic, despite disappointment over the decision.

With her love of arranging beautiful bouquets, Lauren Brown chose Lake Nona as the place to turn her talents into treasure.

“In the beginning we kind of thought it would be a hobby and then we realized we could actually make something out of it and make money doing it, so we’re kind of dream-jobbing right now,” said Brown, owner of Poppy Flower Co.

Brown says it was support from the Lake Nona community that helped her initial flower truck survive the pandemic, and eventually blossom into the stand-alone store where she is now.

Brown says she was disappointed to hear that Disney, and a couple of thousand employees, would not be moving into the area.

“Change in general kind of makes you uncertain about things, said Brown. “We were hopeful there would be a lot more foot traffic through here, especially small businesses to support other businesses.” 

But like her growing business, she says Lake Nona’s economy is already strong.

“Even looking around at commercial real-estate spaces, you can’t find anything quick enough to get in anywhere,” said Brown.

She is in a space with two other businesses, and they all feed off each other – with mutual customers.  She says while the future is now uncertain, she says change doesn’t have to be bad – it could bring an opportunity to add more small businesses to the area where Disney would’ve been.

“We’ve got the infrastructure built out, we’ve got some great box retail, now I think it would be fun to get a little more culture with some smaller maybe one-off businesses that we could support – especially if it was back over there – that would be close for us to get to,” said Brown.