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City of Lake Mary

AAA Building in Lake Mary

Heathrow

Colonial Town Park

Alaqua

Lake Mary is one of Central Florida’s hottest growth areas, thanks in part to the dogged persistence of Jeno Paulucci, a blustery self-made millionaire who made his first fortune selling frozen Chinese food and a second one selling frozen pizza.

The city today sits at the epicenter of Florida’s High-Tech Corridor, which follows I-4 from Tampa through Seminole County and northeast to Daytona Beach and Melbourne. Along the route, government and industry have joined forces to attract leading-edge companies in such fields as telecommunications, medical technology and microelectronics.

In Lake Mary, population 14,000, dozens of such companies have set up shop in several sprawling business centers that have combined to create a Central Florida version of Silicon Valley.

But it all started as an isolated railroad station known as Bents, the surname of a local grove owner. In 1900, industry arrived in Bents when Planters Manufacturing Company built a factory to produce starches, dextrins, farina and tapioca.

The facility closed in 1910, however, and Bents – later renamed Lake Mary, for the wife of a local pastor – seemed destined to remain and out-of-the-way country town.

That was the case for another half-century, until the construction of I-4 and a successful campaign by community boosters to get a Lake Mary interchange tacked onto the project.

The resulting tracts of easily accessible land caught the eye of Paulucci, founder of Chun King. In the late 1970s he announced plans to build a luxurious residential development and business hub called Heathrow.

Few thought the audacious Paulucci would be successful, and the project floundered at first. But then the plainspoken old salesman quieted naysayers by persuading the American Automobile Association to relocate from suburban Washington D.C., to his Heathrow Business Center.

The AAA coup, at the time Central Florida’s most important corporate relocation in decades, jump-started Heathrow and opened the door for all the business and residential development that followed.

Lake Mary officials are using a $100,000 federal grant to advance plans to redevelop the old downtown area to better reflect the city’s prosperous image. And there are an array of new projects, such as Colonial Town Park, a 175-acre mixed-use development featuring shops, restaurants, movie theaters and apartments in a village setting.