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Link gone.. However I got the stoy out of factiva
Posted by Paul McMillan on Mon Oct 14, 2002 05:06:47 AM
In reply top Mayor of Orlampa --- K Weeks story posted by Matt on Sun Oct 13, 2002 02:22:57 PM
Halfway between Orlando and Tampa, there's a place called Orlampa.
So says the sign -- Future Site of Downtown Orlampa -- stuck in the middle of a large, flat field along Interstate 4.
Rising as it does from a monotonous stretch of road filled with acre after acre of dusty green shrubbery, the sign, several oil rigs next to it, and what looks like a crashed airplane are all delightful diversions for bored motorists.
But that's all they are. There is no Orlampa. It's as nonexistent as the oil coming out of the untapped earth, as the crash that didn't happen. Orlampa is an idea, one that has existed mostly in the minds of growth wonks.
One man wants to make Orlampa real. He put up the sign. He put up the pumps and the plane. He owns most of the 1,180 acres they sit on, as well as the 350-acre, $33 million Fantasy of Flight attraction next to it. He built the attraction to house his world-famous collection of planes, but it has become much more than an expensive hangar. It is part of his dream, an expansive dream that includes a resort and entertainment complex, a line of merchandise, a book, and maybe even a TV series, all built around the notion of entertaining, educating and inspiring.
It is the kind of dream a man named Walt Disney once had. But this dreamer is Kermit Weeks, and he is a mustachioed pilot with a big pot of inherited millions and a fondness for airplanes, his wife, mowing grass, and what he calls "my little jokes."
Like oil pumps that don't produce oil.
At least, "I haven't found any [oil] yet. But you've gotta understand -- in the future, this property is gonna be a gold mine," he says. "This is gonna be downtown Orlampa one day. Yeah, it's 10 to 20 years away. It isn't gonna happen overnight. But people are gonna start thinking about the reality."
We should all start thinking about this dream of Orlampa, Weeks says. Which is why he put up the sign, and why he recently had a photo taken of himself standing next to one of the fake oil rigs. He e-mailed the photo to Gov. Jeb Bush.
"I told him, `I just want you to know that we're at the center of the Florida oil industry. I didn't know whether your brother wanted to get in on it.' "
Weeks says he received a polite e-mail reply, but it did not say whether the president wanted to "get in on" the oil deal.
Which is OK with Weeks. At least he got a chuckle out of it, and maybe got the governor thinking. Weeks has plenty of "little jokes," and it is sometimes hard to see where they end and where his serious plans begin.
But those who know him will warn that he is not a guy with his head in the clouds.
They will point out that the 49-year-old ponytailed man has zipped from one feat to the next -- from competitive gymnast to airplane designer to world-champion aerobatics pilot to internationally known airplane collector to quasi-theme park developer -- all on his own exhaust.
If he says he can make Orlampa rise from the Green Swamp, just watch him, they advise.
"You don't want to underestimate Kermit Weeks," says Jim DeGennaro, director of business development for the Polk County Office of Economic Development. "He has, for one thing, tremendous vision. He has a wonderful entrepreneurial spirit. And having a cargo bay full of cash doesn't hurt, either."
INSPIRED BY A POP SONG
When he was 13, Weeks heard a song on the radio. It was 1967's "Snoopy vs. The Red Baron," by one-hit wonders the Royal Guardsmen.
In that moment, he devoted his life to aviation.
"This song came out," he says, "and man, a spark lit up inside."
As a boy he had built a toy plane out of wagon wheels and wood. Now he checked out every book on flight from the library. He ran control-line airplanes, then radio-controlled models and then, using money he earned as a Publix bag boy, 17-year-old Kermit built a plane in the garage of his Miami home.
Nobody told him no.
"He wanted to and we said `Fine, go to it,' " recalls his mother, Marta Weeks, 72, who still lives in Palmetto Bay, a Miami suburb. "Then when I got to the point where I had to climb through the fuselage to get to the washing machine, I said enough is enough."
His parents made him move the thing to a shed in the back yard. He had to take the wings off to get it through the fence.
"All his allowance went to nuts and bolts and tools," says Marta Weeks. "He preferred airplanes to anything. When he had an opportunity to go to the prom, we encouraged him to go and have fun. When he got home, he said, `Do you have any idea how much money I could have spent on my plane, instead of a corsage and a date?' He was married to his plane."
How does one get from a goofy song on the radio to eternal wedded aviation?
"No, no, no, that song was a cue," Weeks says. "Not only was it somewhat of a remembrance of my past, but it was also a remembrance of what my purpose was here."
Weeks struggles for words. He is worried that what he is about to say may be misunderstood or misconstrued. But he says it anyway.
He believes in reincarnation. He believes the song reminded him of a past life.
"This is about my fourth lifetime in aviation on this planet," he says. "I'm not gonna get too much into that, but . . . I have a very strong sense that I flew balloons in the early 1800s, I flew with the German side as a figher pilot in World War I, with the Americans I flew P-51s in World War II. . . . They were steppingstones for me, like steps up to this life."
Weeks is sitting in a padded booth at the Compass Rose, the restaurant at Fantasy of Flight. He has designed it to look like a diner from the 1930s, with chrome stools that spin, curved walls and a bank of enormous windows that look out on the runway. Big-band music hums over the P.A. system.
Weeks looks at home. He is a tall and solid man with a thick mustache, and an open polo shirt the color of his blue eyes. His hair is thinning on top but long in back, held with a filigreed silver cuff he designed and soldered himself.
The hair, he says, is because he's a rebel. Plus, "I have to grow it where I can!"
Weeks' mystical beliefs are important to his plans for the new Fantasy of Flight. The current 85,000-square-foot ochre art deco building will be a backlot shop tour, and a new attraction that will probably cost at least $100 million will include "immersion environments," where vintage aircraft will be displayed in period sets, with music, architecture and costumed workers all complementing the plane.
Surrounding the new Fantasy of Flight will be Orlampa, which Weeks envisions as a sort of Lake Buena Vista meets Branson.
"I've got some ideas," he says. "There's a little stand-alone property where I'd like to do a Polynesian restaurant. A hotel, convention center, a musical type theater. Being in the middle of these two big metro areas, you could tap into both of them, have things in the daytime and night. I think it could be a downtown Disney, an Ybor City. A destination place."
But that doesn't even begin to describe it. The new Fantasy of Flight will be more than a paean to airplanes or a happening nightspot. It will be about flying.''
What's the difference? "Even my people don't always understand," Weeks says. He grows excited. He starts using words like "ping" and "spark." He talks in a rush, backing up and fast-forwarding and interrupting himself, like a large, happy dog bounding around a full room, not sure whom to lick first.
"When you understand the concept, it's something we're trying to wrap our arms around right now, and it's really about, I'm gonna get back to that mission statement, fantasy of flight is about, OK, I realized not everybody likes airplanes, but everybody has a fantasy of flight . . . "
Mayday, mayday! But then Weeks pulls up the words.
"I want people to leave with something like a little spark of inspiration. So when they go home they may tackle something they were afraid to do before."
He may be the perfect teacher. His sense of adventure -- whether in piloting antique planes or shepherding complicated developments or playing "little jokes" -- appears boundless.
"You know, a lot of people have a fear of failure or a fear of looking stupid, but he doesn't care," says his wife, Teresa, 40. "He just takes a bite out of life and lets those juices run all over him."
THANKS, GRANDDAD
Kermit Weeks has never had to work for a living, and he can hop a flight to Bali in a heartbeat.
But he did not grow up wealthy. He has his grandfather to thank for his privileged adulthood.
Lewis Weeks was a retired petroleum geologist for Standard Oil, hired as a consulant to help a company find minerals in Australia. He told them he could help them find oil, but after years of watching his company strike it rich, he wanted a stake himself. In lieu of a consulting fee, he opted for a royalty --21/2 percent of the gross paid at the well head, before expenses, should it produce. He did some advance estate planning, dividing any proceeds among his family members.
For years, nothing happened, as technology struggled to catch up to the senior Weeks' conviction that oil existed off the southern coast of Australia.
"Then all of a sudden, my last year of high school, the first quarterly check comes in," Weeks recalls. "Mine is for $600. We all sat around the table and laughed."
Within five years the laughter was replaced by whoops. The trickle turned into a gusher of more than $100,000 a year. In later years it grew higher, although Weeks does not discuss how much he's worth.
While the money may have allowed him the luxury of leaving Purdue University before he completed his degree in aeronautical engineering, it never distracted him from a love of airplanes.
But now, instead of longing for them, he could buy them.
"Kermit has been blessed by the fact that financially, he's able to do what he'd like to do, but he's stayed true to who he is," says Tom Poberezny, president of the Oshkosh, Wis.-based Experimental Aircraft Association, and a friend of 30 years.
"If he were doing this strictly as a financial business plan, he wouldn't be doing it. [Microsoft co-founder] Paul Allen built the Jimi Hendrix museum and spent millions of dollars, but he's passionate about Jimi Hendrix. Kermit's passionate about flying. Those of us who are interested in aviation are very appreciative of what he's doing."
Weeks comes from a family of philanthropists. His parents are benefactors of a $10 million music library at the University of Miami, as well as several buildings at Miami's Metrozoo and YWCA. There's also a Lewis G. Weeks Hall for Geological Sciences at the University of Wisconsin in Madison.
Weeks says his "passion has changed" in recent years. His travels to Sedona, Ariz., a metaphysical mecca where he bought land and plans to retire one day, have inspired him to focus more on "inner flight."
"I'm fascinated by what's out there we can't see, looking beyond our reach. That's what I want Fantasy of Flight to be."
Marriage has also grounded him. When Weeks talks about his wife, a former model from Atlanta who still has an accent as thick as peach juice, he tears up.
"Teresa," he says, "is the nicest person I know. She's an angel incarnate. She's my soul mate."
Weeks loves his wife so much, he has had her painted on the sides of two of his bombers.
The fake oil pumps that dot his property are also tributes, to his grandfather -- a private joke, a reminder of what has made it all possible.
A SWAMP OF REGULATIONS
Since coming into his money, Weeks has poured millions into what may be the finest and most extensive private collection of airplanes in the world. He opened a museum to house them in Miami, but by the time the Weeks Air Museum was built, it was too small to hold all the planes. Weeks says he now has about 150 planes, valued at more than $40 million.
In addition to being too small, the Weeks museum was also landlocked. It could not contain Weeks' dream.
So in 1987 he began flying across Florida. He was looking for enough land for long runways for his larger planes, with a body of water where he could land his seaplanes. He wanted it to be close to major roads and cities, and ideally near a tourist area, so others could share his enthusiasm.
When he flew over Polk County, he knew he had found the place to build his vision -- more than 1,000 acres of cow pasture along the Interstate 4 interchange at exit 44, just outside Polk City.
There was just one teensy problem: The land is part of the vast Green Swamp, a state-designated "area of critical concern" which serves as a recharge area for the deep aquifer that supplies drinking water.
Weeks was undeterred. Some of his property was not within the area of critical concern. But some of his plans required extensive permitting and environmental mitigation.
Building Fantasy of Flight ended up taking 31/2 years, the permission of 17 regulatory agencies, and prodigious dips into Weeks' vaunted cargo bay of cash.
Weeks never swerved.
"Kermit knows what he wants, and he's not a person who believes in shortcuts," says Ron Burchfield, CEO of Engineers of Central Florida, which helped Weeks through the permitting process. "I've been doing this 35 years, and he's one of the few clients I've had who does everything the regulatory agencies want him to do. That's highly unusual -- in most cases developers will try to minimize or take shortcuts."
During this time, the Weeks Air Museum was hit by Hurricane Andrew. Although many of the planes were saved when a roof collapsed on them, Weeks took it as a sign.
"The hurricane was one of those events in my life that was kind of a kicking me in the butt to get out of Miami," he says. "It's one of those fascinating little nudges you get, that you look back on with perfect clarity. This was my destiny."
WANTED: MORE VISITORS
Fantasy of Flight opened in 1995. Aviation buffs speak of the place with awe, marveling at the reverence with which aircraft have been restored, down to the authentic labels and stickers in the cockpit.
There are planes that have flown in battles around the world. There are replicas of famous aircraft, such as Charles Lindbergh's Spirit of St. Louis, and even the popsicle-stick-looking contraption flown by the Wright Brothers. The planes are hanging from the rafters of the squeaky clean giant hangar, or set on the ground, open for children to touch and climb in. There are also theme environments where visitors can pretend they are jumping from a plane, in a World War II situation room before a critical mission, or taking a ride in a bomber. There are flight simulators, a restaurant and gift shop.
The attraction has provided about 70 jobs, and civic leaders are gaga in their faith in Weeks' potential as a force for positive growth. Some townspeople, however, call him "Kermit the Hermit" because he does not frequent local haunts, and a few grumble over the prospect of Weeks bringing too much development to the rural community.
Weeks has also angered some aviation fans for planting a vintage DC-3 airplane nosedown along the interstate. With Fantasy of Flight lettered on its side, and a bomber-jacketed pilot hanging from the tail, the plane serves as a come-on for I-4 motorists. Sometimes the pilot becomes Santa or Uncle Sam.
The plane initially spurred some calls to police from motorists concerned about a crash, but people finally got the joke and now just think it's funny, Weeks says.
Weeks is lionized in the aviation universe. Unlike many private collectors, he is rated to fly every plane he owns. A former U.S. national aerobatics champion, Weeks has won more than 20 medals in international competition.
"Hi, folks, how ya doin'?" Weeks will say to a group touring the hangar. He chats about his life's work, and often hops into the cockpit and taxis down the runway for the "Plane of the Day" flight demonstration.
But aviation buffs have not been enough to, as Weeks says, "pay the light bill."
The new Fantasy of Flight, he envisions, will attract a varied crowd. It will spark the imagination of everyone, he promises -- even those who don't know the difference between a B-24 and a P-15.
A TV PROJECT, A BOOK . . .
"You have to listen to this," Weeks says.
He is behind the wheel of his Chevy suburban. Weeks has just given the four-wheel-drive a workout, bumping over 26 acres of muddy grass that will one day be his dream home, replacing his modest house in Polk City. He has already planted an orange grove at the top of what will one day be the driveway. For fun, he likes to mow the grass.
Weeks pops a cassette into the Suburban's tape player. Chirping birds and a voice straight out of the barbershop quartet starts singing about being "naked in Jamaica." That, it turns out, is the name of the 10-minute-long song. Weeks wrote it and sings it.
"This, I think, has the potential of being a cult song and video," he says. "I think all of a sudden the music industry, if this thing becomes what I think it could be, is gonna wake up and go, `Damn, let's imitate that!' "
He is equally excited about a TV project he has in the works. He likes to call it The Kermie Show. It will be a travelogue of his adventures. Kermit meets a Tuskegee Airman. Kermit goes helicopter-skiing. Kermit flies over the Grand Canyon. So far the series is in production, but Weeks hopes to land a syndication deal.
"I have a sense that this TV thing is gonna make me, like, the Crocodile Hunter," he says. "Somebody suggested to me, and it's a good idea, that you get me and the Muppets together, and it's Kermit and Kermit. We do some flying adventures together, and Miss Piggy's probably going, `I don't know which Kermit to go after -- the one with the nice skinny green legs, or the one with the ponytail.' It could be a funny thing."
Another idea Weeks is working on is a book about an adventuresome, um, creature. He doesn't want to reveal too much for fear someone will steal his idea; it's that good.
"It's a universal story, a concept that adults, kids, everybody can relate to," Weeks says. "Absolutely everybody will relate to it."
There is a box of books-on-tape in the back seat of Weeks' Suburban: Manifest Your Destiny, 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, How To Build a Network of Power Relationships.
Weeks has more books at home on his nightstand. He is taking a speed-reading course, to get through them faster. After teaching himself how to build an airplane, how to fly it, how to play the banjo and the piano, and how to build an attraction, he is teaching himself how to be a CEO.
He figures he needs to learn, if he wants to be the driving force behind "a little Disney," the metaphorical mayor of Orlampa.
"I stood with Kermit one day on the top of Fantasy of Flight," recalls Polk's Jim DeGennaro, "and, almost surreally, he waved an arm to the east and said, `Everything you see, and beyond, I either own or control.' It's kind of like being with a feudal lord who flies.''
Weeks loves to bring people to the top of his building. He sometimes has them close their eyes.
"Just sit here and look out," he says. "It's a starry night. The hot tub's hot. The champagne's cold. You're with your loved one."
It is a lovely vision.
But wait! There's more!
When you open your eyes, there are lighted fountains dancing on the perimeter of Fantasy of Flight.
"I can assure you," Weeks says, "that Eisner doesn't have this at Disney."
Nancy Imperiale can be reached at nimperiale@orlandosentinel.com or 407-650-6323.
Another fantasy? The sign and the fake oil pumps sitting in a field along Interstate 4 at Fantasy of Flight are a couple of Weeks' little jokes. The notion of Orlampa may sound like more whimsy, but Weeks' friends point to his life of accomplishments. `You don't want to underestimate Kermit Weeks,' says one. SHOUN A. HILL/ORLANDO SENTINEL Big ideas. Weeks says that one day his Fantasy of Flight attraction near Polk City will sit in the center of downtown Orlampa. Weeks at work. His office is a grand display that includes velvet walls, ebony furniture and alabaster statues representing the four seasons. Early handiwork. Inspired as a teenager by a pop song about Snoopy, Weeks built this plane when he was 17. It hangs in the attraction. BOBBY COKER/ORLANDO SENTINEL BOBBY COKER/ORLANDO SENTINEL BOBBY COKER/ORLANDO SENTINEL