ORLANDO, Fla. — Making Apopka a destination spot is a goal for city leaders.

What You Need To Know

  • An iconic space in Apopka will soon be seeing major improvements

  • The City of Apopka is preparing to spend $13.1 million dollars to revamp their Northwest Recreation Complex and Amphitheater

  • That money is thanks to Orange County’s tourist development tax dollars

Soon, an iconic space in the city will soon be seeing major improvements. Orange County leaders recently voted to approve $75 million to fund 11 projects over the next 5 years as part of excess Tourist Development Tax dollars.

The City of Apopka is preparing to spend $13.1 million dollars of that to revamp their Northwest Recreation Complex and Amphitheater.

That money is thanks to Orange County’s tourist development tax dollars.

Bill Friedrich, general manager at the Hilton Garden Inn Apopka City Center, says he’s confident the TDT grant to Apopka will help generate more hotel stays here.

“It’s going to help us compete with other cities,” he said.

Friedrich says his hotel sees an influx of business travel, but also leisure, and people coming in for sporting events.

“The Northwest Recreation Complex is a gem for the city, but we need to maintain it, we need to modernize it and we need to stay relevant,” he said.

Apopka Mayor Bryan Nelson shared his vision for the park.

 “It’s a 300-acre park, so it’s kind of the crown jewel of Apopka,” said Nelson while riding around in a golf cart.

The mayor said the city will be adding amenities to the amphitheater where they have outside concerts to make it more user-friendly. 

“Like for the bathrooms, right now they have to bring porta-potties, well that’s an extra expense for the promoters,” said Nelson.

Right on the stage of the amphitheater, Apopka Mayor Bryan Nelson shows Spectrum News the renderings that show an additional ring at the top of the hill where food trucks will be.

“We’re going to be adding another bathroom, a ticket booth, another bathroom at the top of the hill,” he said.

With amenity improvements, the city hopes to have bigger and better concerts here and bring more tourists to Apopka.

“This is east of Jason Dwelley [Parkway], which is where we’re going to put the four additional softball fields,” he said.

Apart from the current 12 baseball and softball fields, to promote bigger tournaments.  

“You have more teams coming, which means they come from farther away which means more hotel night stays, more sales tax dollars coming in to the City of Apopka, Orange County and the State of Florida,” he said.

Nelson says the money hotels are already collecting here in Apopka will come back to Apopka.

“We in the City of Apopka have five hotels, so we generate between 3/4 of a million to a million dollars a year in hotel taxes,” he said.

Nelson says toward the first quarter of next year, the improvements will be kicking off.

The city will pay for the project in stages and then Orange County will reimburse the $13.1 million over three years.