Orange County Mayor Jerry Demings on Oct. 17 announced a new innovation lab is coming to Pine Hills, a west Orlando neighborhood.
The location — a vacant 17,000-square-foot building at 7149 W. Colonial Drive which was once a Gooding's supermarket will be home to a new “innovation lab” come the end of 2025, he said during MetaCenter Global Week's kickoff at the Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts which drew about 2,000 attendees.
The new innovation lab site shares space with two other related ventures: he Orange County Multicultural Center, which opened Sept. 19, and a soon-to-open senior center where residents can access fitness equipment and other services.
According to Demings, who has history as a Pine Hills resident, the neighborhood was a residential hub where people working in tech fields lived in the 1970s. “Over time, it transitioned as people left to pursue the new, but it is now on an upswing. The county got together a year ago and decided to acquire this facility that had sat vacant for 15 or 20 years.”
The innovation lab will help young people engage with cutting-edge technologies and the associated careers. What’s more, Demings said, having people of all generations use the spaces in the building will help build connections in the community. “I think it's cool that seniors will be there, these grandmothers and grandfathers who will interact with these youth. There’s something good about that. We're going to expose senior citizens to the emerging technology of today, as well.”
The lab will be a private/public partnership, though Demings did not identify the county’s partners in the endeavor. “We’re going to bring in thought leaders from around the country to interact directly with children and young adults at the facility. We’ll be in partnership with corporations to fill the lab with the equipment needed to give kids hands-on experiences so they are immersed in the innovations of tomorrow."
Demings told Orlando Inno there's a workforce development angle to the innovation lab.
"A child who enters kindergarten today, by the time they have finished 12th grade, 80% of the jobs that existed when they were in kindergarten no longer will exist. That means we have to look at it differently because technology is moving so quickly. To prepare that workforce for tomorrow, we have to start today during the formative years so they can be exposed to the greater technologies — whether that's artificial intelligence, robotics, all of that," he said.
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