Let's get the important thing out of the way first: there is going to be a place in Winter Garden, Florida, where you can grab a fresh calzone, browse a florist, and then walk over to look at the rear leg of a woolly mammoth. All under one roof. That roof belongs to The Old Packing House, a 1909 citrus packing plant on Tildenville School Road that has been through more plot twists than most TV dramas. And somehow, after 117 years, it is still standing and gearing up for its strangest chapter yet.
But we're getting ahead of ourselves. Let's start with the oranges.
Table of Contents
The Old Packing House Started With Oranges (Mountains of Them)
Way back in 1909, a group of citrus growers pooled their resources, formed the South Lake Apopka Citrus Growers Association (based out of nearby Oakland), and built a serious packing operation on Tildenville School Road. And when we say serious, we mean serious.
The complex eventually sprawled across 3.7 acres with five industrial buildings. The main packing plant alone clocked in at roughly 52,000 square feet, which, for context, is about the size of a Costco, except instead of bulk paper towels it was wall-to-wall oranges. Two separate railroad lines fed the site.
Workers streamed in from all over, and the Association built two dormitories (one for men, one for women) because apparently "commute from home" wasn't really a thing when your shift started at dawn and the oranges weren't going to sort themselves.
Crowning the whole operation was a water tower visible from the surrounding groves, a steel landmark that basically screamed "Citrus happens here."
And did it ever. The Winter Garden Heritage Foundation has described West Orange County during its peak as "the busiest citrus shipping center on the planet." Not the county. Not the state. The planet. Historic photos show Tavares & Gulf Railroad engines chugging past the Tildenville packinghouse in the 1940s, absolutely loaded with fruit. If oranges were gold (and around here, people literally called them "orange gold"), this building was the mint.
Winter Garden: A Town That Ran on Citrus and Railroad Smoke
You can't tell the packinghouse story without telling the Winter Garden story, and honestly, it's a good one.
The town got its start in the 1850s as a farming settlement on the south shore of Lake Apopka. Citrus and vegetables were the main attractions. By the early 1900s, two railroad lines cut through town, and packinghouses popped up near the tracks like mushrooms after rain. After a series of downtown fires torched the original wooden buildings (because early Florida was apparently just on fire a lot), brick replacements went up along Plant Street and Main Street, and citrus businesses filled every available storefront.
Then the post-war boom hit, and things got really wild. Frozen concentrate was invented. National ad campaigns convinced every American household that breakfast without orange juice was basically a crime.
By 1950, Florida was cranking out over 100 million boxes of citrus annually.
By 1970, that number had doubled. The Tildenville plant was running flat out, and West Orange County was the beating heart of the whole operation.
Good times. Great oranges. What could possibly go wrong?
Three Freezes Walk Into a Grove (Nobody Laughs)
The 1980s, that's what went wrong.
Three catastrophic freezes, the kind locals still call the "killer freezes," swept through West Orange County and murdered citrus trees right down to the roots. These weren't minor cold snaps you could bounce back from with some patience and fertilizer. The trees were dead. The groves were dead. The economics were extremely dead.
By the early 1990s, citrus production in West Orange County was essentially zero. What was left of the industry packed its bags and headed further south in Florida, chasing warmer ground. The thousands of acres of groves around Winter Garden were gradually replaced by subdivisions, or just left to go feral.
The South Lake Apopka packing plant? No more fruit to pack. Processing stopped in the 1990s. The beloved water tower, already battered, got knocked flat by a vicious storm, leaving a crumpled heap of steel where a landmark used to be. If this were a movie, the sad piano music would be playing right about now.
Winter Garden as a whole wasn't doing great either. Lake Apopka was badly polluted. Highway bypasses were siphoning traffic and commerce away from downtown. The town that citrus built went quiet.
The Building That Refused to Go Away
Here's where things get interesting, because the Tildenville packinghouse did something most obsolete industrial buildings don't do: it stuck around.
Nobody launched a dramatic "Save the Packinghouse!" campaign. No one chained themselves to the loading dock. The complex just… didn't get demolished. Through the 1990s and 2000s, the main building and its four smaller companions sat on their 3.7 acres with corrugated metal slowly weathering, old conveyor remnants gathering rust, and the whole site quietly vibing as a time capsule of the citrus age.
And then (this is the part that matters) downtown Winter Garden started pulling off a comeback. The old railroad corridors were turned into the West Orange Trail, which attracted cyclists, runners, and visitors by the thousands. In 1996, the downtown commercial district landed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Old buildings were being repurposed left and right. Plant Street filled up with shops and restaurants. The message was clear: in Winter Garden, old buildings don't get torn down. They get second acts.
People started eyeing the packinghouse on Tildenville School Road. The gears started turning.
Enter Gary Hasson, a Man With a Plan and a Megalodon Jaw
In 2018, Gary Hasson, operating through Crown Property Holdings, purchased the Tildenville site for about $2.1 million. Hasson had a background in California citrus and apparently the kind of imagination that looks at a century-old industrial complex and thinks, "You know what this needs? A woolly rhinoceros head."
But first, the stated mission: "Restore the old citrus packing house to its old glory and honor the families and history of the citrus industry in our community."
He christened the complex The Old Packing House (OPH), leaned into the 1909 heritage, and brought a site plan to the Winter Garden City Commission, which approved it in late 2019.
The vision: turn the 52,000-square-foot main building into a ground-floor food hall and marketplace with second-floor offices, preserve all five historic structures, and connect the whole thing to the West Orange Trail and surrounding neighborhoods. Make it walkable, bikeable, and (because this is Winter Garden) absolutely golf-cart-friendly.
Original target: 2021.
You can probably guess what happened next.
2020: The Universe Says "Not So Fast"
COVID-19 body-slammed the project right out of the gate. Supply chains fell apart. Construction costs launched into orbit. The restaurant industry, which was supposed to fill the ground floor, was busy trying not to collapse entirely.
Hasson hit pause. The Old Packing House sat in limbo for a few years, partially spruced up but nowhere near done.
But here's the thing about a building that's survived 117 years, killer freezes, a toppled water tower, and the total collapse of its founding industry: it can handle a pandemic.
By early 2026, conditions improved. In January 2026, Winter Garden commissioners unanimously re-approved the Old Packing House site plan. Work picked up again. The exterior was already sporting a fresh blue-and-white paint scheme over new metal cladding, and interior scaffolding said this thing was really happening.
New target: summer 2026. Fingers crossed. Knock on (reclaimed industrial) wood.
So What's Actually Going Inside This Place?
Glad you asked, because the Old Packing House tenant mix reads like the world's most entertaining game of Mad Libs.
The Food Hall
The ground floor will be a marketplace with individual vendors serving up: fresh-baked pizza and calzones, coffee and baked goods, Asian specialties, an Italian deli and market, a Mediterranean concept, homemade ice cream, and a Mexican taqueria. It's less "mall food court" and more "the coolest neighborhood market your town doesn't have yet."
CitrusNet: Offices With a Sense of Humor
The second floor becomes "CitrusNet," a co-working and office space with everything from virtual office setups to multi-person suites with balcony meeting areas. The name tips its hat to the building's past. The WiFi, presumably, will be more reliable than a 1940s railroad schedule.
Retail and Services
Beyond the food: a small grocer, a florist, a bike shop (hello, West Orange Trail traffic), a pilates and fitness studio, an art and memorabilia shop, and a mineral and fossil retailer. The variety is intentional. This is supposed to be a place you come back to on a Tuesday, not just when out-of-town relatives visit.
A Natural History Museum (We Are Not Making This Up)
Now for the headliner. Hasson has assembled a personal fossil and mineral collection that would make a university geology department jealous, and he's building a Natural History Museum right inside the old citrus plant. The exhibits will include:
- A full skeleton of a North American bison
- A Megalodon jaw (the prehistoric shark, not a band name, though it should be)
- The head of a Siberian woolly rhinoceros
- The rear leg and foot of a woolly mammoth
- Assorted prehistoric fossils and Ice Age minerals
So yes: a building that once sorted oranges will now house the bones of creatures that roamed the earth millions of years before anyone thought to squeeze an orange. Only at the Old Packing House. Florida, as always, remains absolutely committed to being Florida.
Solar Panels, Golf Carts, and Doing It Right
Some practical details that deserve a shout-out.
The roof now carries roughly 500 solar panels, part of a push to power the complex with significant renewable energy. Tenants are being encouraged to emphasize recyclable materials and environmentally friendly food options. It's not just a pretty face. There's substance underneath the fresh paint.
On the getting-there front, the Old Packing House site plan includes about 35 golf cart spaces and more than 130 car parking spots, new landscaping, a reconfigured drive, and an added sidewalk along Tildenville School Road. Dedicated bicycle facilities tie into the West Orange Trail, so you can pedal right up to your calzone without ever touching a steering wheel.
The Old Packing House: A Timeline That Reads Like Fiction
Let's zoom out and appreciate what this building has been through:
1909 to the 1980s: The Tildenville packinghouse helps make Winter Garden an agricultural titan. Railroads haul orange gold north. The water tower stands tall. Life is juicy. (Sorry.)
1980s to the 1990s: Three killer freezes wipe out local citrus. The plant goes dark. The tower blows down. Sad trombone.
1990s to the 2010s: The complex sits quietly while downtown Winter Garden reinvents itself, proves old buildings can thrive again, and basically writes the playbook for what happens next.
2018 to present: Gary Hasson buys the site, brands it the Old Packing House, survives a pandemic delay, and starts building a food hall / fossil museum / office complex / community hub that absolutely no one in 1909 saw coming.
City staff and developers have described the project as a "community-oriented marketplace," a gathering spot for music, arts, special events, and holiday celebrations. Whether it fully delivers on that promise is a story for summer 2026.
But the building is still here. After freeze, storm, pandemic, and the complete disappearance of the industry it was born to serve, the old packing plant on Tildenville School Road is still here. And this time, it's bringing a Megalodon.
Want lots more awesome Orlando History? Then click right here!
Sources:
https://www.orangeobserver.com/news/2026/jan/28/winter-garden-moves-forward-with-old-packing-house-plan/
https://www.orangeobserver.com/news/2025/jul/31/history-west-orange-county-of-yesteryear-for-week-of-july-31-2025/
https://www.theorlandoreal.com/winter-garden-approves-plan-to-repurpose-historic-property/, https://www.wghf.org/post/oranges-oranges-oranges-and-two-railroads-to-ship-it-all-out-of-here
https://www.cwgdn.com/398/History
https://floridafruitgeek.com/2019/12/04/exploring-florida-citrus-history-at-the-winter-garden-heritage-museum/
https://www.clickorlando.com/news/local/2026/01/22/winter-garden-to-vote-on-historic-old-packing-house-venue-transformation/
