After 21 years of operating out of the same space on Orange Avenue, the Winter Park Playhouse is being forced to find a new home.

The Winter Park Playhouse (Website) has been located at 711 N. Orange Avenue [GMap] since it first opened in 2002. The non-profit organization is billed as the only professional musical theater in Central Florida and presents year-round arts programming in its 123-seat theater with the latest season featuring six musical features, a cabaret series, and the Florida Festival of New Musicals.

The theater has been located on a fairly ignored stretch of Orange Avenue, but that’s been changing lately with new(er) businesses like Reel Fish Coastal Kitchen, Buttermilk Bakery, and The Courtesy Bar just up the street and the soon-to-open Forward/Slash blending house just around the corner.

With all that buzz on the street lately, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the owner of the building, Winter Park Mercantile Investment Properties according to the Orange County Property Appraiser, is looking to sell. The property, which hadn’t been listed on LoopNet at the time of this post, was valued at $1,755,082 in 2022.

Theater leadership presented at the March 8 City Commission meeting, asking for the city’s help in finding a new space they could relocate to before August 2024 – which is the latest date they can extend their lease according to a report by The 32789Current ideas include a possible addition to the nearby Progress Point park project or possibly taking over the former Winter Park Public Library space.

Another Winter Park arts group, Breakthrough Theatre, closed in June 2020 after 11 years at 419 W. Fairbanks Avenue [GMap], near The Ravenous Pig and Keke’s Breakfast Cafe.

Brendan O'Connor

Editor in Chief of Bungalower.com

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