No Space Needle or Gateway Arch: What defines Orlando’s skyline?

St. Louis has the Gateway Arch. Chicago has the Willis Tower and the Bean. Seattle has the Space Needle. And San Francisco has the Golden Gate Bridge.

Why doesn’t Orlando have a skyline that stands out? Members of a City Hall task force say Orlando needs to plan ahead for more iconic architecture and trumpet its other strengths so downtown has a unique and identifiable brand outside of Disney and International Drive.

“The visual is such a huge component of a city’s identity. When you say ‘the city of Orlando,’ the first thing that pops into a lot of people’s minds is Disney World,” said Amanda Day, who chaired a city-led Project DTO committee that studied perceptions of downtown.

One problem: Because Orlando Executive Airport is so close to downtown, developers can build only so high without disrupting flight patterns. That’s one reason why skyscrapers in some of Florida’s other biggest cities are taller than those in Orlando.

At 441 feet, downtown Orlando’s beige-and-green SunTrust Center is the tallest in Central Florida. That’s pint-sized compared with the 789-foot-tall Four Seasons Hotel in Miami, one of at least 10 buildings in Miami taller than 600 feet.

Jacksonville’s Bank of America Tower is 617 feet, and Tampa’s 100 North Tampa building is 579 feet tall.

Orlando doesn’t have a height limit for buildings, but anything of significant height has to be reviewed and approved by the Federal Aviation Administration. Flight paths for Orlando International Airport overlap with Executive Airport, pushing air traffic coming into Executive lower than it would be otherwise.

Flight patterns could be changed if there’s substantial community interest in a particular project, Greater Orlando Aviation Authority President Phil Brown said. But that seems unlikely, and city planners said downtown probably won’t see a building taller than SunTrust Center.

Despite spending two years trying to win over the FAA, the agency in 1997 rejected a plan from Pizzuti Cos. to build a project that surely would have helped define Orlando’s skyline: a tower that would have reached 493 feet, including a 140-foot open cube on top.

The plan was scrapped, though, and the block sat fallow until last year, when another developer began building an apartment building there: a six-story apartment building.

“When the market was good and there was a big demand for office space, that [FAA restriction] was — believe it or not — an impediment,” said Orlando Commissioner Jim Gray.

But market demand for office space is low these days, and certainly not enough to make a new high-rise tower feasible, said Gray, who is national accounts director for Parkway Properties.

Regardless, members of the Project DTO committee, city planners and Mayor Buddy Dyer agree that a skyline is only part of a city’s identity.

“I think they want something that’s recognizable,” Dyer said. “You think of many cities, and you can recognize them by some iconic feature in their skyline. But I’m not sure it necessarily has to be something that is observable from the highway.”

Day agreed: “It’s not a recommendation to go out and build tall buildings. It is about identifying the soul of our city and how we communicate that.”

Other features that could help define downtown’s identity include:

*Open space such as Lake Eola Park — and potentially other connected green space along the Interstate 4 corridor and elsewhere that Project DTO participants are advocating.

*Big festivals or events that become synonymous with a city, such as the cherry-blossom festival in Washington and live music events in New Orleans; Austin, Texas; and Nashville, Tenn.

*Community venues, including the recently opened Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts and a soon-to-be-built Major League Soccer stadium that create a more vibrant experience for visitors.

City planners point out that distinctive architecture contributes to a downtown identity more than a building’s height. The most distinctive ones downtown, they say, are the SunTrust Center, Bank of America building, the Orange County Courthouse and City Hall.

“We want some degree of variety,” Planning Manager Dean Grandin said. “Otherwise we could end up with something that’s very cookie-cutter.

“Is there a unique Orlando style? I don’t know — I think it’s evolving.”

Originally Published: January 25, 2015 at 6:23 PM EST