Communication Builds Our Community

Lake Wales Envisioned Documentary Wins 2024 Communicator Award

Film Tracks Development of the Envisioned Plan for Managing Growth, Protecting Quality of Life

Lake Wales Envisioned, a film documenting the development of the eponymous project created to help guide the community through the challenges of rapid development, has been named as a recipient of the 2024 Communicator Award for excellence in film-making.

Lee Dover, Videographer

The Lake Wales Envisioned film, a 30-minute production, showcases Lake Wales and documents the challenges and opportunities before the community. It was also selected for the annual Redfish festival in Panama City, FL. Victor Dover and Joe Kohl of the planning firm of Dover, Kohl & Partners also won the prestigious Seaside Prize for excellence in planning, partly on the basis of their work in Lake Wales.

The 30-minute film was created by Lee Dover of the planning firm of Dover, Kohl & Partners, who were the lead planners responsible for the award-winning plan. It was selected for screening at the Redfish Film Festival in Panama City earlier this year.

The film documents the development of the Envisioned plan, which drew ideas and suggestions from hundreds of citizens in a five-month-long process of meetings, charettes, and a week-long "open studio" inviting the public to guide the process. The finished product calls for "Traditional Neighborhood Designs," sidewalks, street trees, bike tracks, and the preservation of a "Big Green Network" of parks and environmental lands that define the limits of urbanization.

Courtesy Dover, Kohl & Partners

Videographer Lee Dover on Coral Gables created the Lake Wales Envisioned film that won the Communicator Award.

The announcement of the award brought accolades from leading planners across the nation. Eugenie L. Birch FAICP, Nussdorf Professor of Urban Research and Education and Co-Director, Penn Institute for Urban Research at the University of Pennsylvania, sent congratulations, calling it a "wonderful film that captures Lake Wales beautifully."

Dr. Bruce Stephenson of Rollins in Winter Park called it "a new generation of civic art, well done."

Robert Connors

Victor Dover, left, and Joe Kohl guided the development of the award-winning Lake Wales Envisioned plan.

Dover, Kohl & Partners principal planners Joe Kohl and Victor Dover were also awarded the prestigious Seaside Prize for excellence in planning based largely upon their work in Lake Wales. Their designs here closely mimic the transformation the firm achieved in Winter Park two decades ago.

 

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