Fashion Square redevelopment to feature apartments, retail, hotel
A conceptual site plan for the potential Orlando Fashion Square redevelopment would lean heavily on residential uses to support the new open-air retail center, according to Unicorp National Development CEO Chuck Whittall.
Everything except the existing Macy’s store and the parking garage next to J.C. Penney would be demolished and the entire site rebuilt with a main street going from the signalized intersection on Colonial Drive through the heart of the project. The concept includes four apartment buildings, all five stories with groundfloor retail, a hotel and a grocery store.
“It’s a pretty nice redesign of the site,” he said, noting the similarity to Baldwin Park Village, another Unicorp project. “This is like Baldwin Park. It’s got the grocery, it’s got the retail, it’s got the apartments.”
The plan also shows an event lawn, a container park and a bowling alley with a luxury dine-in movie theater above it. Unicorp would also build a second parking garage to serve the new retail section.
Unicorp is paying $23 million cash for the land under Fashion Square, but still needs to reach a deal with Bancorp, which owns the mall building.
Whittall said he plans to call Bancorp as soon as the ink is dry. “I will call them up immediately, we’ll sit down and make a deal.”
The estimated $1 billion Fashion Square redevelopment is one of 26 projects Unicorp currently has in development or in the pipeline.
That includes the massive O-Town West mixeduse development on Sand Lake Road at I-4, set to close in late August, and the second take down of Celebration Pointe at Disney’s World Drive interchange and a retail parcel in Horizon West. Penthouse office goes up for sale
A rooftop penthouse office with a terrace overlooking downtown Orlando is on the market as part of an office condo portfolio that makes up 20 percent of the leasing space in the Plaza North and South towers.
Thornton Park-based Stirling International Real Estate is representing the property.
The seller, an affiliate of Colorado-based Real Capital Solutions, controls more than 83,000 square feet within the mixed-use development at South Orange Avenue and Church Street.
A selection of ready-tomove-in suites are available ranging from 2,400 square feet to an entire floor with nearly 20,000 square feet, according to Stirling’s John Kurtz and Roger Soderstrom, Jr.
The portfolio pricing will average around $240 per square foot, with vary floor, finishes, views and special features like private balconies, Soderstrom said.
They see the penthouse, which has 10,891 square feet of office surrounded by a private 10,000 square foot wrap-around garden terrace, as an ideal location for a corporate headquarters office.
Golf course slated for apartments Aventura-based
wants to convert a former golf course near the Mall at Millenia into a new multifamily community that will feature nearly a thousand apartments and 30,000 square feet of retail space.
The shuttered 18-hole Eaglewood Golf Club, located at West Oak Ridge Road and South John Young Parkway, was acquired by an affiliate of MIR Development last year for $3.9 million. It closed in 2008.
MIR Development CEO Mark Rousso said the firm had sought the property out for redevelopment. Closing on the deal meant taking control of more than 40 acres of infill development opportunity near I-4, which they recognized to be “very valuable,” Rousso said.
A recently filed site plans in Orange County shows the firm intends to build 960 apartments and 30,000 square feet of commercial space in a project called Millenia Park.
The units will be spread across eight five-story buildings.
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