OVIEDO — After years of delays, the long-planned new “downtown” for Oviedo is breaking ground.
Oviedo on the Park will move off the drawing boards and into development during ceremonies Thursday afternoon at the site bordering Oviedo Boulevard, where dignitaries will turn the first shovels of dirt.
City officials, who finally will see construction toward a dream first visualized 40 years ago, are ecstatic.
“It is really going to be something special,” said Mayor Dominic Persampiere. “What Oviedo on the Park brings is a gathering place for the city. And the new downtown will blend with our historic downtown.”
Oviedo has become a sprawling Orlando suburb that years ago outgrew and virtually abandoned its tiny old crossroads downtown where State Roads 434, 426 and 419 intersect. Its outdated image as a bucolic settlement where chickens roamed the streets would get a new face through a core of multi-story commercial and residential buildings around a lakefront park — and more accurately reflect what many see as the town’s fast-paced, techno lifestyle.
