Central Florida Prep Opens the Robert A. Flanders Athletic & Performing Arts Center

Apopka, FL

Central Florida Preparatory School has opened the 24,000 square foot Robert A. Flanders Athletic & Performing Arts Center, the largest addition to its Marden Road campus since the school's founding in 1990. The center was dedicated on August 28, 2026, roughly seventeen months after ground was broken in March 2025.

For the first time, CFP's volleyball and basketball teams can host games, tournaments and pep rallies on their own campus. The 11,000 square foot competition gymnasium includes stadium seating and new scoreboards, and the same room converts into a theater with a 30 by 16 foot retractable stage and a surround sound system for musicals, concerts, speech and debate, and school-wide assemblies.

The building also houses a dedicated teaching kitchen for the school's farm-to-table culinary program, which draws from CFP's solar greenhouse and outdoor learning center; studio space for drawing, sculpture and design; a video production room for student media projects; eleven new classrooms; and the Compass Café, a concession area for families and fans.

The center is named for Robert A. Flanders, who founded Central Florida Prep with his wife, Rowena, in 1990. An educator, Bob Flanders believed that hands-on learning and strong character belonged at the heart of every school day, and the building was part of his vision for the campus long before construction began.

Three programs anchor the building. Performing arts, led by Emily Muff (BFA in Musical Theatre, Samford University), brings full-scale musical productions and the Junior Thespians to students in grades 6 through 12. Visual arts, led by David Phillips (BFA, Savannah College of Art and Design), a working glass artist and sculptor, takes a project-based, studio-driven approach. Culinary arts, led by Nicole Edwards, a Johnson & Wales trained chef, connects the greenhouse to the kitchen classroom for true farm-to-table education.

Head of School Julia Najera, who cut the ribbon at the dedication, said of her father: "My dad didn't live to see this building, but he didn't need to. He already knew what it would become because he and my mother built it that way from the very beginning, one act of belief at a time."

Nothing a student does at Central Florida Prep is considered extracurricular, and the new center gives that belief a building of its own. Details on the center, its programs and tours are at cfprep.org/athletics/center. The Apopka Chief covered the dedication: Central Florida Prep opens new athletic, performing arts center (September 4, 2026).