To qualify for lucrative defense research work, Florida research park undergoes anti-terrorism makeover

For nearly two years now, Central Florida Research Park in east Orange County has been quietly and subtly transforming some of its most prominent facilities into anti-terrorism fortresses for the high-tech military agencies located there. Now, with the multimillion-dollar makeover almost complete, Florida’s largest research park has a defense-industry “nerve center” that looks and operates more like a military base than ever before — and includes some nearby civilian buildings where military personnel work.

Security measures such as vehicle-resistant fences, steel entrance gates and concrete pylons have been installed with the aim of hardening what the military calls “soft” targets for terrorism.

Orlando Sentinel’s Richard Burnett writes that the research park, next door to the University of Central Florida, was a prime candidate for enhanced security, with its military complex built into in a suburban setting that is part college campus, part office park. The project is the result of a Pentagon edict, issued after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, calling for security upgrades at any building with a substantial military presence.

For the civilians working in the project’s non-military buildings, adapting to the added military security — which in addition to the heavy-duty hardware includes surveillance cameras and other high-tech gear —has been no simple matter. From the get-go, the park worked with the military in an effort to maintain the property’s civilian “aesthetic” as the security upgrades were planned, said Randall Shumaker, executive director of UCF’s Institute for Simulation & Training, which is located in one of the affected buildings.

That joint effort led to more-attractive hardware designs, new landscaping, less-stringent protocols, and other modifications that helped the civilian buildings look less like a military installation while still meeting the new Pentagon requirements, Shumaker said. “There were a lot of meetings that were necessary to hammer out all of that,” he said. “In the end, we got a number of aesthetic improvements — instead of chain-link fences, for example, ours are based on a wrought-iron look.

“The entrance gate has some nice big columns,” he added. “It still gives us an entrance that looks like a college, instead of one that goes into something like a penal facility.”

Overall, a half-dozen buildings in the heart of the 1,027-acre park were involved in the security upgrade, park officials said.

Much of the work was paid for by the Pentagon itself, including improvements at the military’s 280,000-square-foot high-tech training-systems complex, which contains major