Great Day in the Country Moves Into the Oviedo Mall's Reinvention

In November 2024, Great Day in the Country set up at CrossLife Church, 45 W. Broadway St., close to the center of old Oviedo. This year the 52nd edition takes over Oviedo Mall's outdoor events space on Nov. 14 and 15, and more vendors line the center walkway inside.

The Oviedo Woman's Club has run this fair for 52 years. Now it lands at a property whose leadership has started remaking it, with a plan built around apartments, a new entrance and a different kind of tenant. For one weekend, the mall will look a lot like the version of itself it has been describing.

The weekend itself

The basics come first because they are what you need on Saturday morning. The organizer's visitor FAQ lists these hours:

1. Saturday, Nov. 14: 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
2. Sunday, Nov. 15: 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.
3. Admission: free, and the FAQ calls the fair kid-friendly without hesitation.
4. Parking: spread across the Oviedo Mall lots, with handicap spaces throughout. Check the FAQ the week of the fair for current parking details.
5. Food: hamburgers and hot dogs, ribs, BBQ, Greek food, sausage, pickles, ice cream and gelato, and kettle corn, among others.

The City of Oviedo's event listing shows the same two days, with the fair spread both inside and outside the mall.

Vendors sell rustic crafts, household goods, clothing, fine art and jewelry, toys, hand-stitched leather bags and oil paintings. The family program includes a cornhole tournament, a hay ride, a pie-eating contest, a pickle-eating contest, and contests for Most Country Outfit and Most Patriotic Outfit. That lineup comes from the club's 2026 announcement in Oviedo Community News. The organizer's entertainment page also lists a main stage of local choirs, dance groups and student performers, and says stage times can shift during the day.

The fair has had two formats recently. The 2025 edition was a single day, Saturday, Nov. 8. This year it runs both days of the weekend, so Saturday crowds no longer get the only shot at the vendor booths.

Why a craft fair carries this much weight in Oviedo

Its organizers call the fair the club's largest fundraiser of the year, held on the second weekend of November. The money goes to scholarships for local high school students, grants for schools and teachers, and grants for underfunded community programs.

Here is the money over time, as the club and local reporting have stated it:

• Since 1998: more than $850,000 in philanthropic donations, according to the organizer.
• 2023: putting on the fair cost about $21,000. The City of Oviedo contributed $5,000 a year, which paid city workers such as police officers who staff the event, and the club asked the City Council to double that to $10,000 because costs were rising. That's according to Oviedo Community News.
• 2023 scale: the fair had more than 300 vendors that year, plus a student art fest, entertainment and food.
• 2024–2025 club year: $67,500 donated toward student scholarships and teacher grants.
• 2025: fair proceeds went to scholarships for seniors at Hagerty and Oviedo High Schools who plan to attend college or technical school.

A fair that cost about $21,000 to stage in 2023 is the main fundraiser for a club that gave $67,500 toward scholarships and teacher grants in its 2024–2025 year.

The club's own history says seven women formed the Oviedo Magazine Club in 1906 to share reading material. They built a clubhouse in 1914 that also served as the town's first library, and they took the name Oviedo Woman's Club in 1915. The current clubhouse went up in 1961 on land donated by former member Mrs. R. L. Croom. The club's list of early projects reads like a small-town ledger:

"raising funds by penning up the loose pigs; making ice cream and taking turns baking cakes for trainmen stopping in Oviedo; selling government bonds and stamps, and raising over $250,000 to purchase two B-24 'Liberator' aircraft for the war effort."

The same history credits the club with Oviedo's first organized garbage pickup, early board and clay sidewalks, and the city's first Christmas tree lighting.

What the mall says it is turning into

The fair's move matters because of where the mall stands right now. Here is how 2026 has gone at Oviedo Mall, based on ClickOrlando's reporting:

• April: the mall's development director, Kevin Hipes, described a mixed-use direction that includes medical uses, food and beverage, and alternative retail. He named D'Amico & Sons, a market and bakery, and Bruder Latin Restaurant & Brewery as projects in the works. He also said redevelopment needs agreement from four separate property owners on the mall site. That's according to ClickOrlando's April 29 report.
• July: ClickOrlando reported that every agreement needed for roughly 700 apartments on mall property had been signed. "Everything's been executed, signed and approved," Hipes told the outlet.
• Phase I: Picerne Development Corporation of Florida closed on the 15-acre former Macy's parcel in late June and had site plan approval. Plans call for taking down the Macy's building and putting up about 400 apartments. Picerne also committed to a new east-side mall entrance meant to give residents walkable access to the shops and restaurants inside. In July, Hipes put the full timeline at "a year and a half to two years away."
• Phase II: Woodfield Development Co. is under contract on a 14-acre parcel on the west side for about 325 market-rate apartments, with construction expected in late 2027 or early 2028.
• September: the mall announced a year-round Toys"R"Us store, timed for the 2026 holiday shopping season. That's according to ClickOrlando.

Josh Gunderson, the mall's marketing and events director, summed up the goal in that same ClickOrlando story:

"We want Oviedo Mall to be a place where people actually want to spend their time, and Toys'R'Us fits beautifully into that."

A two-day fair with a main stage, a cake walk near the indoor train and a cornhole bracket fits that sentence well. Most of the plan is still on paper. Under the July estimate, the apartments and the new entrance that comes with them are still more than a year away. On Nov. 14 and 15, the outdoor events space and the center walkway will host the kind of all-day gathering the plan describes.

A Saturday route through it

To see the whole fair, the outdoor vendors and the indoor walkway together, try this route:

1. Arrive close to 10 a.m. Saturday for the opening ceremony on the main stage, while the outdoor rows are still easy to walk.
2. Work through the outdoor vendors first, then head inside along the center walkway, where the extra booths are.
3. Eat lunch from the fair's food vendors: ribs, BBQ, Greek food and kettle corn are all on the organizer's list.
4. Stay into the afternoon for the contests. The pie-eating contest is on the main stage, and the cornhole tournament runs near the vendor booths.
5. If you have kids, come back Sunday for the outfit contests and the student art awards on the main stage.

The club's other tradition is on the city calendar too

The Woman's Club's history credits it with organizing Oviedo's first Christmas tree lighting. The City of Oviedo's calendar carries that tradition into the weeks after the fair, all at Center Lake Park:

• Friday, Nov. 20: Food Trucks and Movie Night, 5 to 9 p.m. at 357 Center Lake Lane, with The Polar Express planned for around 6:30 p.m.
• Thursday, Dec. 3: Oviedo Tree Lighting, 5 to 8:30 p.m. at 299 Center Lake Lane.
• Saturday, Dec. 5: Oviedo Winter Parade, 4 to 9 p.m.
• Saturday, Dec. 12: Winterfest 2026, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

On the morning of Dec. 5, before the parade, the Artistic Hand Holiday Market runs 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at 353 North Central Avenue.

If you'll be at Great Day in the Country and want to talk through what the Oviedo Mall plans could mean for the east side of town, I'm glad to walk you through what's been approved and the timeline behind it. Find me through Omar Cotto. Let's Connect.