PHOTO VIA DR. PHILLIPS CENTER
Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts (Website) is asking Orange County to help fund a master plan that would nearly double its downtown Orlando campus, growing from nine venues to 20 as part of a broader push for Tourist Development Tax dollars.
The arts center presented its case to the county’s Citizen Advisory Task Force on Tuesday, one of several sessions the 30-member panel has held this summer to weigh more than 50 funding requests tied to the TDT, more commonly referred to as the hotel or bed tax.
The master plan calls for 11 new venues, including a 750-seat theater, a 200-seat black box theater, a 180-seat stage theater, a flexible performance venue and a 4,000-person capacity outdoor amphitheater. It also includes new education studios, a rooftop terrace event space, expanded food service, 1,150 additional parking spaces and enhancements to the existing Walt Disney Theater and front-of-house areas.
Dr. Phillips Center says the expansion is a response to demand it can no longer meet inside its current footprint. The center reports it operated at up to 97 percent capacity during fiscal year 2024-25, drawing 910,000 attendees, and says it is regularly forced to turn away students, ticket buyers and organizations seeking rental space. Since opening in 2014, the venue says it has welcomed more than 6.2 million guests from all 50 states and 80 countries. Reporting by Ryan Lynch for Orlando Business Journal put the budget at $1.4 billion.
According to Dr. Phillips Center, an economic impact study commissioned from Tourism Economics, a subsidiary of Oxford Economics, found the center generated $227.6 million in economic impact and supported 2,483 jobs in the most recent fiscal year, along with $13.2 million in state and local tax revenue. The center says the study also found 175,000 visitors travel from outside the region specifically for its events, spending $73.1 million at off-site restaurants, hotels and retailers.
If the master plan is built, Dr. Phillips Center projects annual attendance could grow to an expected 1.5 million guests and the number of free programs offered each year would rise to 1,000. The center says students served would increase by 80 percent, which, according to a recent interview between CEO and president Kathy Ramsberger and real estate/talk show mogul Ken Pozek for Orlando Real, is much needed as the center is already at programming capacity.
This is not Dr. Phillips Center’s first attempt at a large-scale TDT ask. A previous version of the project, referred to internally as Phase 3, sought $145 million in TDT funding plus $15 million from the city and Community Redevelopment Agency and $15 million in philanthropy, for a total of $175 million, in 2023. That request was ranked fourth by a citizens’ task force at the time, and the center withdrew it voluntarily.
The current TDT funding cycle also includes competing multimillion-dollar requests, among them $523 million for an expansion of the Orange County Convention Center and separate proposals tied to a planned baseball stadium and an Eatonville cultural campus.
Dr. Phillips Center says TDT funding would cover infrastructure costs, while private philanthropy would continue to fund programming, scholarships and operations. The center has been encouraging supporters to contact their county commissioner ahead of the vote.
