Happy New Year! I am so excited to begin 2019 because this is the year that Vision 2022 starts to become a reality!
In the coming days, the first Request for Proposals will go out for the design of our brand new Westside Campus, which will take all the ideas we have been discussing for the past two years and put them into actual architectural plans! Shortly after that, the Orlando Campus (RFP) will be put out there. This will be a staggered process, with the Winter Park and Mid Florida Campuses following down the road. Now the real work begins as all the visioning and preparation have to come to an end and actual decisions have to be made.
It will be exciting, and yes, it will be nerve wracking as well. Going through a major renovation with my own house these past several months, I can tell you that there is no simple decision. Even something as easy sounding as choosing white subway tile became a challenge! Who knew that white came in so many shades, and who knew that “subway” tiles came in so many different sizes and styles, from 4″ x 6″ to 3″ x 12″ to at least seven other sizes and that they could be flat, angled or even wavy on the surface-and don’t get me started on grout colors!
So knowing that we wanted white subway tiles sounded easy, but let me tell you, it wasn’t! The same went for everything, from wood floors to appliances, from kitchen cabinets to paint colors! Did you know that if you couldn’t decide between one of the hundreds of beiges, or one of the hundreds of greys, you could look at samples of the hundreds of “greiges” that are out there-yes, that’s a combo color-grey/beige!
In truth, it has been fun looking at all the possibilities and all the things we could do or select. Even recently, Sandi and I went to a warehouse, where we could see full size slabs of quartz countertop material, because the 4″ square samples just don’t give you the whole picture, and in fact, when we saw the whole slabs, we reversed our decision from the one of two we had settled on, and went with the other one!
The point of all this is that for 20 years we talked about what we wanted in our kitchen and had some great ideas, most of which will be included when we are finished in the next three or four weeks, but even though we had a good idea and great plans, we had no idea just how complicated the simple could become.
The same will be true for the OTC rebuilding process. We have great ideas and a deep understanding of where we are headed and why, but it will be in constant flux and we will need to adapt to things that we can’t even imagine are coming. However, one thing is for certain, there will be a point in the process where a decision will have to be made, and there will be no going back. I still remember the day the contractor said, “My tile man comes on Monday, I need to know which tile.” That is where we are in 2019-the tile man is coming ☺.
I hope you are as excited as I am to be a part of what will certainly be another incredible step in the journey of Career and Technical Education here in Central Florida as we continue Changing Lives Through Education at the highest level possible! Thank you for being a part of our CTE family as we take this giant leap!
Have a Happy CTE New Year! Mike