Photographs by Christopher Morris
Lake Nona is a nearly 11-square mile planned community at the southeastern limits of greater Orlando—a vast, watery exurban frontier of raw newness and sun-suffused possibility. Dump trucks rumble past half-peopled housing developments, designed and arrayed in the New Urbanist style: snug blocks, walkable street grids, neo-traditional homes and apartment buildings of various shapes and sizes harmonized by their dusty pastels. The palms lining the main thoroughfares are still staked, and black plastic liners remain visible along the edges of man-made ponds. In the tawny fields that stretch between the clusters of fresh construction, cattle graze.
The here here is an idea, or so it seems—an idea that makes it something more than yet another example of Florida real estate reach. That idea is 21st-century wellness. It’s a place devoted to getting and keeping fit. Yes, there are strip malls and gated communities of modern manses in Lake Nona. But there is a near-Scandinavian commitment to footpaths, bicycle lanes and trails, and open space. I saw lots of folks taking dawn runs and speedy bike rides past billboards exhorting them to “live forward.” Lake Nona is a mixed-use development, and the industries anchoring it are mostly health-promoting too, centered on biotech and medical research: advanced hospitals, the Johnson & Johnson Human Performance Institute, the health-science campus of the University of Central Florida. Sports is another related industry Lake Nona has been working to attract. A training complex for pro soccer’s Orlando City Lions is nearing completion. Why not learn and prepare where the weather is warm, the medical and performance experts are gathered, and the airport—an international airport, and one of the nation’s largest—is just minutes away?