Sanford in line for extended-stay hotel
Sanford could be among the first cities in the U.S. to get an Everhome Suites, the newest brand introduced by national Maryland-based hotelier Choice Hotels.
The city received a preliminary application on Feb. 2 showing plans for a four-story, 114-room hotel on a 3.47-acre site off Rinehart Road, along the south side of Garnet Lane.
The property sits behind the Seminole Towne Center mall, directly across the street from the 360-unit Crosby at Towne Center apartments, and next door to a Bahama Breeze restaurant.
A conceptual site plan submitted to the city by Denver-based 101 Architecture indicates the proposed hotel would bear the Everhome Suites flag.
The Everhomes Suites brand is so new that only one hotel has opened to date. The inaugural Everhome Suites in Corona, California, began welcoming guests in September, nearly three years after the brand was formally launched.
In a Jan. 2020 news release announcing the company’s first new extended-stay brand in more than a decade, leaders with Choice Hotels said the midscale hotel will offer customizable, apartment-style accommodations for longer-term stays.
Choice Hotels also rolled out the brand with the goal of making it easier for developers, investors and franchisees to tap into the success of extended-stay hotels.
Everhome Suites offers a low-cost-tobuild, flexible prototype and lean operating model, the release says.
The newly built hotels come with a selfserve, tech-enabled lobby food and beverage marketplace, multiple room types with multi-functional furniture, work stations, full-sized closets, spa-like bathrooms, fully equipped kitchens with dishwashers, and suites with washer and dryer units.
The company’s website says the extended-stay hotel brand is coming soon to four locations: Newnan, Georgia; Bozeman, Montana; Nampa, Idaho; and Camden, New Jersey.
But dozens are in the pipeline across the U.S. as the company announced in September plans to expand the brand.
College Park building sells for $2.5 million
Longtime Winter Park investor James Veigle has acquired the iconic pink-and-teal building in Orlando’s College Park neighborhood that was most recently home to Top Drawer Consignments.
Scott Taylor, owner of Florida Premier Realty Group, told GrowthSpotter that Veigle closed on the sale Wednesday for $2.5 million.
The plan, Taylor said, is to convert the 75-year-old building at 2500 Edgewater Drive into a medical office. The specific type of medical office has not yet been identified
“We are going to repurpose the property for medical use,” Taylor said. “Whether it be a walk-in clinic, physician office space, or (we could) even enlarge the building footprint for a surgery center.”
Mary and Richard Nunis, the latter of whom was a former Disney chairman, had owned the building since 1995 when they bought it for $254,500. The building, on 0.35 acres, has been vacant since last year.
Taylor said the property was only on the market for a few weeks before the deal closed. It sold just shy of the asking price, which was $2.85 million.
“It’s truly a landmark location,” he said, adding that the availability of parking also played a role. “To have any kind of private parking on that part of Edgewater Drive is very rare, and this property has a private parking lot.”
The parking lot, which holds about 30 spaces, will also be expanded, he added.
The purchase also includes two vacant adjacent lots totaling less than half an acre that will also be used for medical space, Taylor said.
“There’s massive demand for medical space,” he said. “I think a lot of the demand is being driven by the limited number of properties and buildings that are available. There’s always a need for medical space.”