● Welcome the new Conference logo. It's the work of Florida Journeys Communications graphic designer Linda Kubecka.  We made first use of the logo in our request for funding to Manatee County and will now apply it to everything we publish. Next will come the website already in development, and then materials to attract registrants.

● Meetings continue with our team leaders, most recently with civic activists Susan and John DuPree of DeLand. We feature DeLand below, as fourth installment about our four focal conference places.  

DeLand and Northwest Volusia   

Downtown DeLand courtesy of MainStreet DeLand Association     

Three big changes planned for DeLand in the next four years will likely strengthen the "good bones" of this Volusia County seat, long a model of smart growth. The city's 25,000 residents fight to keep the "Palmetto Curtain" of protected lands that limits westward sprawl by Daytona Beach. They view their city as the hub of West Volusia, a name noplace on maps but etched in rural heritage.

Residents live in mostly single-family houses on shady grid streets. They socialize along two-lane Woodland Boulevard where street events supply popular entertainment. They work in small business and otherwise for county and city government, at a hospital, at District 5 FDOT headquarters, and at Stetson University that in 1883 helped set the city's healthy start.

Uncommon in a town this size is a twice-weekly regional newspaper, the restored Athens Theatre, seven museums, a sculpture walk, Chess Park, a Fourth Friday hobnob in Artisan Alley, and, beneath highly ornamental rooflines, blocks of mom-and-pop retailers including one for books and two for bikes. DeLand is also food wise, with a large natural foods market, a crop of organic farmers that sell direct, and the top town restaurant esteemed for gourmet natural cuisine.

Visitors come chiefly for Stetson events, for houseboating, skydiving and for America's winter training center for trotters and pacers. Others come for fishing the St. Johns River, for winter manatees at Blue Spring State Park, for swims at DeLeon Springs State Park, for Lake Woodruff National Wildlife Refuge, and for the Pioneer Settlement for the Creative Arts.

Most people expect changes afoot to prove bone-strengthening, not bonecrushing.

In 2013, Stetson will field its first football team in 57 years. The Hatters will play at downtown's Spec Martin Field. Football will jump Stetson's student body of 2,200 by an estimated 300. More students will stick around weekends. Town will grow livelier.

Town and gown will draw still closer in 2016 when DeLand's first loft apartments fill a block between campus and town shops. Another 60 residents will arrive, many likely to move around by foot and bike.

Risk does attach to arrival of Orlando-centered SunRail that will reach DeLand also in 2016. DeLand Depot that already serves Amtrak sits in the county outside the city. Seven years after SunRail start-up, state subsidy of the system will end. Counties and cities will have to cover revenue shortfalls. That will pressure an early start on transit-oriented development that others call sprawl -- a testing time for those good DeLand bones.