Orlando colors

Last issue we had a potshot at the Orlando Exwy Auth’s ‘glitzy’ newsletter for its profusion of orange and purple. After a week in Florida we don’t retract from that harsh esthetic judgment. But we understand. The place is totally color crazy. One parking garage we saw in Tampa deployed eight colors on one wall. Three or four colors are quite usual.

When we went looking for OOCEA’s head office – looking for a highrise building of alternating bands of orange and purple with a life size bust of CEO Hal Worrall set in a formal pond in the forecourt – we went by it twice before a local firehouse guy told us: “It’s in among the plants there underneath the expressway, a little speckly brick place.”

He was right. It’s about the most unassuming building in Orlando, rather New York City-ish, plain on the outside, but very nice inside. And placed underneath the 408 Exwy as it rises towards the big downtown interchange with I-4, it looks smaller than it is – a very comfortable, functional brick building. Enough light to have an open feel. And like so much in Florida it’s luxuriantly planted up. So planted in front of a mottled brick that it’s invisible from more than 20 yards away.

“We like it that way. We don’t want a high profile,” says CEO Worrall.

Oh yea! Such a low profile guy, eh?