25-04-2025
- Business
- Business Journals
Orlando Magic playoff games highlight Church Street's retail woes
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As the Orlando Magic gear up for playoff games, the once-vibrant Church Street corridor now presents a stark contrast to the excitement, with vacant storefronts lining the path to the arena.
Story Highlights Church Street in downtown Orlando faces retail decline as NBA Playoffs bring in big crowds.
City plans $750 million revitalization downtown, including for Church Street corridor.
Prominent property owner acknowledges role for area's current state.
When the Orlando Magic host the Boston Celtics in Games 3 and 4 of their opening-round NBA Playoffs series — on April 25 and 27, respectively — north of 18,000 fans will make their way to Kia Center each time.
Many will park downtown and approach the arena on foot, with those walking west along Church Street from Orange Avenue likely numbering in the hundreds, if not thousands.
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They'll be encountering a bleak retail scene.
Once the heart of downtown Orlando, the corridor of Church Street between Orange Avenue and the Interstate 4 overpass is now nearly empty at a time when it might otherwise be teeming with activity.
Not only are the Magic in the playoffs, but arena co-tenants Orlando Solar Bears are in the East Coast Hockey League Playoffs and soccer teams Orlando City and Orlando Pride — which play nearby at Inter&Co Stadium — are in full swing.
Instead, with the recent closings of High-T and 1Up Orlando — at 23 and 25 W. Church St., respectively — the stretch is now bereft of bars and nightlife. This followed a wave of bar closures in the area, as well as the high-profile closures of Hamburger Mary's downtown eatery and sports bar Harry Buffalo at 129 W. Church St.
None of these spaces have been backfilled, despite closing as long as two years ago in the case of Harry Buffalo.
What remains open along the two-block stretch includes a handful of restaurants at 54 W. Church St.'s Church Street Market development — such Cucina Pizza & Bar, The Bao Spot and Birria1983 — as well as American Ghost Tours, which operates out of the former Harry Buffalo building.
Monica McCown, the vice president of the Orlando Hospitality Alliance and founder of consulting firm Make It So Strategies, told Orlando Business Journal the state of the prominent corridor adjacent Kia Center has the potential to give those visiting for the game a negative impression of downtown. "I definitely think it's not a good look."
"We were already seeing on the western end, between the train tracks and Garland, that has been empty for years — but now the other half [between the tracks and Orange Avenue] is emptying out, as well," McCown said. "People are coming and they just see a dead, boarded-up downtown."
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Monica McCown, founder, Make It So Strategies.
Make It So Strategies
That potential for a negative impression is not lost on city of Orlando officials, including David Barilla, executive director of Orlando's Downtown Development Board. Barilla acknowledged to OBJ the area is in a period of transition, adding his message to residents and visitors is to emphasize "what is unfolding for the future of Church Street" — including projects whose construction is imminent.
Barilla noted the contract for The Canopy — the urban gathering space the city will build under Interstate 4 through parts of downtown, which touches the Church Street corridor — moved forward this week and construction should start soon. Other upgrades are forthcoming to sidewalks, design and lighting, as well as the potential for activations along the corridor in light of the lack of businesses operating.
These physical improvements will be part of a larger project to reimagine this same stretch of Church Street as a "festival street" — a project which is part of a larger DTO Action Plan valued at $750 million. Further west along Church, on the opposite side of Interstate 4, work on the Westcourt mixed-use project looms, as does the relocation of Travel + Leisure into the office building at 501 W. Church St. — giving the corridor a major office tenant.
"We are really looking to bring back the excitement, energy [and] the centerpiece role that Church Street has played — not only downtown, but in Central Florida," Barilla said. "For us, it's about helping [visitors to downtown] to at least understand what that vision is and really look forward to hopefully coming back and celebrating in the not-too-distant future with us at another game ... and really be re-introduced to it."
Barilla also said the city has constant contact with the property owners along the corridor, particularly Lincoln Property Co. — which owns several buildings on the south side of Church Street, including Cheyenne Saloon — and Craig Mateer, who owns buildings on the north side including the former Harry Buffalo space.
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David Barilla
City of Orlando
Lincoln's plans for a "super block" — which included the Bumby Arcade food hall and The Edge, a second skyscraper from the developer to rise behind its Church Street assemblage, adjacent its Truist Plaza — appear to have stalled. Mateer's buildings facing Church Street are mostly empty.
Executives for Lincoln and Mateer were not immediately available for comment on the matter, but Mateer previously acknowledged to OBJ that the property owners who had yet to bring their vision for the corridor to fruition — and instead have created a holding pattern of sorts — have some culpability.
"We're part of the problem," Mateer said then. "I can see that, but by the same token, we have to get it right."
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