Things To Do In SW Florida

Construction of Space Mountain at Disney World’s Magic Kingdom in underway on Aug. 24, 1973. (Sentinel file)

View of Space Mountain under construction at Walt Disney World. (Sentinel file)

Walt Disney World opened its new $15 million Space Mountain attraction Jan. 15, 1975, and on hand for the ceremonies were (left to right) astronauts Gordon Cooper, James Irwin and Scott Carpenter (all standing) with Robert Sarnoff, chief executive of RCA, which sponsors the attraction, who is seated next to Mickey Mouse in Lunar Rover. (Sentinel file)

Blue LED lighting fills the ‘Starport’ as guests blast off on Space Mountain during a soft-opening preview at the Magic Kingdom, at Walt Disney World, Nov. 16, 2009. The ride, which will officially re-open Nov. 22, has been updated with new theming, queue enhancements and coaster technology improvements. (Joe Burbank/Orlando Sentinel)

Space Mountain at the Walt Disney World Magic Kingdom on Sept. 18, 2015, in Lake Buena Vista, Fla. (Ricardo Ramirez Buxeda/Orlando Sentinel) read more

A closely-scrutinized vote by the Winter Park City Commission to add a member’s home to the local historic register was abruptly canceled Wednesday at the request of the commissioner after his former foe and the local state senator publicly objected to the move.

But the brouhaha about Commissioner Todd Weaver’s 67-year-old lakefront home looks likely to continue. Weaver says the accusations made about him, and his property, by former Commissioner Pete Weldon, who he defeated in 2019, are false and could result in legal action. And the commission plans to take up the matter again in a few months.

The commission voted unanimously to delay until April 23 — after Weaver’s term ends in March and he leaves office — a vote on his request to add his home to the Winter Park Registry of Historic Places.

He told the Orlando Sentinel on Thursday that for years he’d discussed placing the home on the register with the city’s longtime planning director, Jeffrey Briggs, who he says for decades has been its leading advocate for historic designation. Weaver wanted to add the home to the registry before Briggs retires at the end of the month. read more

The mostly vacant Seminole Towne Center — once billed as a premier mall for well-heeled shoppers in Seminole County — will shutter most of its property by the end of the month, after years of struggling with closed stores and acres of empty parking lots.

Mall owners told the few remaining tenants last month they had until Jan. 31 to vacate the property.

“It’s heartbreaking,” said Asad “Eddie” Hussain, owner of Venetian Jewelers, as he spent most of this week packing merchandise in boxes in preparation to move out to his other store at the Florida Mall. “A lot of my customers have tears in their eyes. We did everything we could to stay in this mall.”

But Hussain, who began working at his family’s store as a teenager in 2005, said he knew the end was near.

“This year, they never brought in Santa Claus. There was no Christmas tree. There was no Christmas music,” he said.

Representatives for Seminole Mall Realty Holdings, which owns most of the roughly 60-acre mall property and 500,000-square-foot building, could not be reached for comment Thursday. read more

By CORA LEWIS

NEW YORK (AP) — Lenders will no longer be able to consider unpaid medical bills as a credit history factor when they evaluate potential borrowers in the U.S. for mortgages, car loans or business loans, according to a rule the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau finalized Tuesday.

Removing medical debts from consumer credit reports is expected to increase the credit scores of millions of families by an average of 20 points, the bureau said. The CFPB says its research showed that outstanding health care claims are a poor predictor of someone’s ability to repay a loan yet often are used to deny mortgage applications.

The three national credit reporting agencies — Experian, Equifax and TransUnion — said last year that they were removing medical collections under $500 from U.S. consumer credit reports. The government agency’s new rule goes further by banning all outstanding medical bills from appearing on credit reports and prohibiting lenders from using the information. read more