Air travel firm brings US headquarters to Lake Nona
Emirati air and travel services provider dnata has selected Orlando’s Lake Nona neighborhood as the location for its new U.S. headquarters.
The company plans to take the entire fifth floor and naming rights at one of Tavistock Development Company’s newly built office buildings at 13495 Veterans Way in the Lake Nona Town Center.
According to a news release, the new dnata headquarters space will accommodate 50 staffers, “with room to grow.” Employees include the executive team, functional heads, and all support functions such as payroll, finance, analytics, equipment, procurement, IT, and safety/training.
It’s unclear how many of the 50 employees for the new Lake Nona office are coming from its current office in Central Florida or how many new positions will be created.
dnata’s U.S. operations provide a range of ground, passenger, and cargo handling services to more than 60 airlines at 26 airports across the country. The headquarters will also feature one of dnata’s training centers, which will be used for leadership training.
The office is expected to open later this year.
GrowthSpotter first reported plans for the five-story office building in 2020.
It’s located at the intersection of Lake Nona Boulevard and Veterans Way, near the Orlando International Airport. Early renditions of plans showed a mixed-use building with 5,000 square feet of ground-floor retail. The office building will feature new smartglass technology that reduces heat and glare, called View Glass.
Developer doubles up land holdings in Osceola
South Florida-based developer BTI Partners doubled its land holdings in Osceola’s East Lake Toho district after closing on the purchase of nearly 1,200 acres that comprise the balance of the former Edgewater project.
The deal follows BTI’s 2019 acquisition of the Edgewater East property for $40 million and gives the developer control of roughly 2,600 acres with mixed-use zoning and entitlements for nearly 9,000 residential units. BTI rebranded the Edgewater East project Crossprairie and is developing the first phase, where it will deliver finished lots this year to a trio of homebuilders: Meritage, Jones Homes and M/I Homes.
“This transaction highlights BTI Partners’ appetite for land in Central Florida,” CEO Noah Breakstone said. “We are actively pursuing land acquisition opportunities across the state. As a master land developer, we plan to develop the site’s infrastructure and supply developers with ready-to-build land so they can build homes to address Florida’s severe housing shortage.”
Breakstone said the community would be “centered around Osceola County’s beautiful natural resources,” including the eastern shoreline of Lake Tohopekaliga and its surrounding wetlands. Edgewater West will be a separate community designed to complement Crossprairie, where homebuilder demand actually exceeded what BTI could supply.
Earlier this month, Osceola County approved the Concept Plan for Edgewater West with a development program that creates four neighborhoods with a combined 2,530 single-family homes and 956 multifamily units. The plan also creates a new K-8 school site and allows for up to 120,000 square feet of both office and commercial space in four separate neighborhood centers.
Daryl Carter and Clyde Wells with Maury L. Carter & Associates represented the sellers, members of the Cecil E. Whaley Jr. family, who have ranched the land for generations.
BTI expects to complete the construction of the Cross Prairie Parkway, the main road traversing Crossprairie, in the spring. Once a new Turnpike interchange to serve the area is completed in 2026, BTI will begin construction of the urban center in the northern portion of the community. The urban center will be home to 1 million square feet of commercial space, 1.9 million square feet of office space and 600 hotel rooms.
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