Winter Park gives up Mead Garden operations

An earlier version of this story incorrectly identified Jeffrey Blydenburgh's title with Mead Botanical Garden Inc. He is a board member. Cynthia Hasenau is the executive director.

After more than a decade in the making, Mead Botanical Garden now has a full-time steward with hopes of a thriving event center and revival of a nature preserve dancing in its director’s head.

Friends of Mead Garden, now called Mead Botanical Garden Inc. (MBG), had been working to revive the overgrown nature park for years under the unofficial helm of Executive Director Cynthia Hasenau. At Monday night’s Winter Park City Commission meeting, it became official. The city still owns the park, but the park’s destiny as a combination preserve and event center is now firmly in MBG’s hands.

“It’s your park,” board member Jeffrey Blydenburgh said. “It’s everybody’s park.”

But for the next 50 years MBG will effectively run the majority of the park’s visitor facilities, including the under-construction Grove amphitheater that’s expected to draw in thousands in the years to come.

But the deal is by no means locked in, Commissioner Tom McMacken said, pointing out an opt-out clause that lets the city reevaluate its contract with MBG every six months.

That could include potential future issues about how residents are allowed to use the park during special events or whether the park will be closed entirely.

Commissioner Carolyn Cooper said she’d already heard from angry residents during some of the park’s few closures during the past year. Though those closures, for special events, only netted the city $19,640 in revenue, Cooper said residents noticed the downtime and feared future charges to get into the park.

“I think the people of the city need to be able to be in the park without paying a fee or walk through the park without paying a fee,” Cooper said.

But Mayor Ken Bradley said that groups should be allowed to close off parts of the park during special events, namely weddings.

“I don’t think people having a wedding there want to have people walking their dogs through it,” Bradley said.

Most of MBG’s locus of control would be over the north side of the park, where most of the park’s private events already occur. It’s also where the waterfront Grove amphitheater will rise from the edge of wetland that had become overgrown in recent years.

The non-profit MBG also inherits use of the maintenance barn and the park’s dirigible-sized converted lecture hall and classroom, the same place that once hung plans for Mead’s revival.

And now the onus is on MBG to turn what had been a perpetual financial drain on the city into one that hopes to break even or better in the years to come. The city’s investment last year was $100,000 into construction, maintenance and other expenses. Eventually, McMacken said, the city hopes to not have to fund the park at all, once it’s pulling in enough visitors and special events to pay for itself.

That includes avoiding a gate admission charge such as what Leu Gardens in Orlando charges.

“The goal is to not charge admission,” Blydenburgh said. “Other gardens do, and some charge quite a bit. We want to get to that point where we’re able to increase the amount of money we can charge for certain events.”

All of the revenue the park generates will go back into funding the park. Only a maximum of 20 percent of revenue can be used toward administrative costs. Blydenburgh holds MBG’s sole paid position for now.

McMacken said that it’s a good financial proposition for the city, especially if MBG eventually weans itself off city funding.

“We’re not losing money,” McMacken said. “The money’s all being reinvested back into Mead Garden.”