Supporters of Eatonville’s bid to be home to the first Florida Museum of Black History were unbowed Friday by a task force’s vote narrowly favoring St. Augustine over the Central Florida town as the preferred site.
State Rep. Bruce Antone, sponsor of the bill that created the museum and the task force charged with planning it, was sharply critical of its 460-page final report recommending St. Augustine for the 100,000-square-foot museum intended to spotlight achievements and struggles of Black Floridians.
But the panel’s final report contained one recommendation suggesting the issue remains unsettled: It asked the Legislature to pay for feasibility studies of the task force’s top three sites: St. Johns County/St. Augustine; Eatonville/Orange County; and Opa-locka in South Florida.
That issue keeps Eatonville’s foot in the door, other advocates said.
“A feasibility study should, I think hands down, improve our position,” Eatonville Mayor Angie Gardner said after the panel’s tenth and final meeting. “With our historical foundation, our location is key — easy access and market-wise the best, the land of Mickey and Minnie.”
Incorporated in 1887, the town is the oldest self-governing all-black municipality in the United States.
Task force chair Geraldine Thompson, whose state Senate district includes west Orange County, failed to persuade fellow panelists, many with ties to St. Augustine or neighboring Jacksonville, to “lay the report on the table” for legislators to review without adopting the final recommendation.
State Rep. Anna Eskamani, who addressed the task force before its final vote advocating for Eatonville, said afterwards that she believes “100% Eatonville still has a chance,” despite the panel’s lean for St. Augustine.
“This is a recommendation to the Legislature not a contractual agreement,” she said. “The next steps will involve budgetary decisions. There could be an ask for more research…so Eatonville is absolutely still a top contender for this. By no means is anything final yet.”
The panel’s report is due Sunday to Gov. Ron DeSantis and the Legislature’s majority and minority leaders.
Antone thanked the panel for its work in a letter, which he provided to the Orlando Sentinel, but he criticized it for failing to complete tasks required by the legislation. He said he provided the task force with documents that could have served as a template for a conceptual design and sustainability plan, which would have made Eatonville the better choice for a world-class museum.
Antone argued the museum would benefit from a location in Central Florida, which 74 million tourists visited last year.
About 17% of the region’s annual visitors are “cultural tourists” who will visit a museum or attend a cultural arts festival, studies say.
He also alleged four of the nine panelists seemed “predisposed” to St. Augustine regardless of the quality of other bids.
Antone’s letter additionally argued the proposed site in St. Johns County is not as accessible as Eatonville’s location near Interstate 4.
“St. Augustine is an hour from Jacksonville, an hour from Gainesville, an hour from Daytona, two hours from Orlando,” he said.
But the task force did not include Antone’s letter in its report.
