Blue Bamboo Pulls AI School Sublease from City Commission Agenda

The president of the arts group that rents the old library from the city of Winter Park said it will “take a pause” on the idea of renting out the second floor to a private school

May 12, 2026

By Beth Kassab

The leader of the Blue Bamboo Center for the Arts said on Tuesday morning that he would pull a request from this week’s City Commission agenda a request to rent out the second story of the group’s venue to an artificial intelligence-driven private school.

The sublease request, first reported by the Voice on Friday, prompted a number of community questions about whether the for-profit school to be run through a Winter Park couple’s disaster relief foundation met the original intent of creating an arts hub in the old city library building.

“The Blue Bamboo Board of Directors has decided to take a pause on the agenda item at this time,” read a message from President Jeff Flowers to the group’s supporters. “We feel that the issues the sublease raises will be better addressed by requesting a city work session where the best use of the facility can be addressed.”

Todd Weaver, a former city commissioner who was instrumental in securing the lease for Blue Bamboo during his tenure, is now the group’s vice president.

The Commission, including Weaver, voted 4-1 in July of 2024 to lease the building to the small nonprofit arts venue. Mayor Sheila DeCiccio was the only no vote after she questioned the group’s financial sustainability. Before the Blue Bamboo won the lease, Rollins College was aiming to repurpose the building into a new art museum.

The venue opened in the summer of 2025 and just months later Blue Bamboo founder and musician Chris Cortez died from brain cancer.

But questions about the future use of the building were already mounting. Just months before Cortez died Central Florida Vocal Arts, which had partnered with Blue Bamboo to secure the city lease as well as a nearly $1 million Orange County grant for the venue and was planning to occupy the second floor, walked away from the deal when the two groups couldn’t come to terms.

That left Blue Bamboo without a sublease to help meet a higher rent obligation to the city that is set to begin in August.

Blue Bamboo’s lease payment is scheduled to increase from $132,000 a year to $276,000 a year in three months.

The proposed sublease to Matthew and Paige Wideman’s Love & Life Foundation was the first concept for the second floor to be brought to the commission since Central Florida Vocal Arts opted against moving forward with Blue Bamboo.

The draft lease calls for the foundation, which says it specializes in helicoptering in aid after hurricanes and other disasters, to pay an annual rent of $198,000 for the second floor, or about $18 per square foot for 11,000 square feet.

The lease between Blue Bamboo and the city calls for the second and third floors of the building to be renovated within two years for “arts education, recording studio and local non-profit use.”

Matthew Wideman told the Voice he planned to use the space to start a location of Alpha School, a for-profit model of private school founded in Austin, Texas that has been lauded by the Trump administration and where tuition is expected to be about $45,000 a year.

The Alpha model calls for students to spend about two hours a day on core subjects such as math using AI-led instruction. Human staff members — known as “guides” rather than teachers — spend the rest of the day helping students develop business, public speaking and other project-based skills.

“The school shall not have more than 50 students, and will not accept school vouchers funded by the State of Florida for those students’ tuition or expenses,” according to a copy of the lease posted with the City Commission agenda for Wednesday’s meeting.

The idea, Flowers told the Voice last week, was to use the music and arts expertise of Blue Bamboo to help instruct students at the school.

City spokeswoman Clarissa Howard said commissioners will now discuss on Wednesday whether to hold a potential work session about the lease at a later date.

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