The City of Orlando is giving people who bought commemorative bricks on Church Street in the 1980s a chance to find them and claim them before construction crews remove them forever.
City staff are stationed at Church Street and Garland Avenue this week to help people locate their bricks, according to the Public Information Office. The sessions run Monday through Friday, October 12 to 16, from noon to 2 p.m. and 4 to 6 p.m., and Saturday, October 17, from 9 a.m. to noon. And then, you’re out of luck.
Once someone finds a brick, an ambassador marks it with masking tape and the person’s name. Participants fill out a form confirming they identified their brick and show a photo ID.
Any bricks left unclaimed will be stored and repurposed for future downtown development, the city said.
The bricks were sold in the 1980s to help pay for Church Street development. They carry names and personal messages and have been part of the corridor for decades.
They sit in the path of the Church Street Festival Street project, part of the city’s Downtown Orlando Action Plan. The project will turn Church Street between Garland and Magnolia avenues into a pedestrian-focused corridor in three phases. Phase I, from Garland Avenue to the railroad tracks, broke ground in July and is expected to be finished in the second quarter of 2027. Gods willing. Phase II, from the tracks to Orange Avenue, is expected in spring 2028. Phase III, from Orange to Magnolia, is expected in the early fourth quarter of 2028 and will convert the street from one-way to two-way traffic and add LYMMO service.
Orlando Shine reported in August that the lowest bid for Phase I was about $4 million. The bid documents included a $73,680.98 line item for new roadway brick to replace the historic bricks being removed, which the mayor’s office said would be stored offsite for a future project.
For more on the project, visit orlando.gov/churchstreet.
