Development partners plan first luxury Fairmont hotel in Orlando
A luxury hotel under the acclaimed Fairmont banner is being planned in Central Florida.
New York-based Development Ventures Group (DEVEN), which co-developed Orlando’s Bonnet Creek Resort, has announced it’s teaming up with hospitality group Accor to bring a new Fairmont Hotels & Resorts branded hotel to Orlando.
GrowthSpotter revealed in September DEVEN’s intention to build a luxury hotel with an attached conference center on 30 acres just across I-4, at the southeast corner of the World Drive interchange.
The seven-story Fairmont Orlando hotel will feature 550 rooms, including 90 suites, 12 villas along the perimeter of three planned pools, and 87 Fairmont Gold rooms, a news release said. The top floor will include a 5,000-square-foot private lounge.
Amenities include a 140-seat signature restaurant, a specialty Mediterranean restaurant, an upscale steakhouse, a gourmet café, and various bars and lounges with both indoor and outdoor seating. Other features are a 12,000-square-foot spa and wellness center; over 44,000 square feet of meeting and event space; three swimming pools, including a family pool, a lazy river and an adults-only pool; children and young adult centers; a library and business center; and ample retail space.
DEVEN also co-developed the nearby Bonnett Creek Resort in Orlando, which features a similar upscale design. The resort features the 1,000-room four-star Hilton Hotel and a 500-room 5-star Waldorf Astoria Hotel, the first all-new Waldorf Astoria to be built since the original in New York, with an 18-hole Rees Jones golf course.
The Fairmont brand has more than 80 locations around the globe, including the Fairmont Banff Springs, The Savoy in London and Fairmont Le Château Frontenac in Québec City.
OUC’s Lake Ivanhoe building hits market
The historic landmark building that once housed Orlando’s first power plant is officially on the market, and brokers from Bishop Beale Duncan are marketing it to a global audience of potential buyers looking to move into one of the city’s hottest downtown neighborhoods.
BBD beat out a half-dozen firms for the exclusive contract with Orlando Utilities Commission to market and sell the Ivanhoe building at 1111 N. Orange Ave. The team of Jill Rose, JP Beaulieu and Mike Beale created a website for the property, which was rebranded as “The Current.”
Rose told GrowthSpotter the team has been reaching out to firms that specialize in adaptive reuse of historic properties, but they left the potential uses and price openended. While the Orange County Property Appraiser estimates the value at around $5.9 million, the market and user will determine the fair market value.
“It could be a myriad of different things, and really the value is what the value is to that buyer. Nothing is off the table.”
The brochure focuses on the location, proximity to high-wage employers and neighborhood demographics of the Lake Ivanhoe Village and Lake Highland area.
“There is no comp,” Rose said. “It’s nearly 60,000 square feet of history, on a lake, with I-4 visibility and next to one of the city’s largest employers.”
The Ivanhoe building operated as a power plant from 1922 until 1958, then the utility renovated it in the 1980s. In 1992, after OUC moved to another building, it was converted to an arts center to create the temporary home for The Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts.
Built in the Italian Palazzo Revival style, the two-story rectangular building is divided into three bays with a hip roof covered in red ceramic tile.
This is a sampling of stories from GrowthSpotter, a premium subscription service from the Orlando Sentinel that focuses on the early stages of real estate development. To subscribe, go to GrowthSpotter.com