Bonus Episode: HPB Chair Jeff Thompson talks about the Historic Preservation Moratorium

Jeff Thompson is a native Orlandoan, an 18-year member of the Historic Preservation Board, and someone who helped renovate a bunch of Thornton Park homes before it was even a historic district. He spent 30 years as a senior landscape architect at Disney and built a house in Lake Eola Heights he jokingly calls "turn of the century" — even though it was finished in 1999. He knows this city, its buildings, and its history like the back of his hand. So when he says the city is about to gut Orlando's oldest historic district, it's worth listening to. So we did!  Brendan sat down with Jeff at Eola General this week to talk about the proposed 36-month moratorium on historic preservation review for downtown projects — what it means, why he thinks the board only found out about it days before the first council vote, and what he thinks is really driving it. They get into the Plaza building, the Lubbe House, Church Street, land banking, Disney Springs, and why a city celebrating 150 years of its own history is moving to strip protections from the neighborhood where that history all started. The second reading of the moratorium ordinance is June 22.