HallDSi makes news with a Tourist Resort; February 20, 2019

Multifamily, hotel entitlements sought for South I-Drive property

Bill Zimmerman

Bill ZimmermanGrowthSpotter

The owner of the Caribe Royale resort is looking to add entitlements for 341 multifamily housing units, 300 hotel rooms and 100,000 square feet of commercial space to property it owns along South International Drive and State Road 536 in Orange County.

Owner and developer Sierra Land Group, Inc., holds four adjacent parcels with entitlements totaling 481 hotel rooms, 897 timeshare units, 100,000 square feet of commercial space and a convention-center hotel with 1,618 hotel rooms, 200,000 square feet of convention-center space and support facilities, according to a land-use plan filed with the county that could prepare the property for sale.

Sierra requests to move those approved entitlements onto three parcels totaling approximately 93 acres and located west of South I-Drive, and re-entitle a fourth parcel east of the road on 35.46 acres, including 3 ponds, to accommodate the new request. Proposed trips to the parcels in total would increase approximately 5,500 compared to vested/constructed figures, according to the plan.

PE Group of Orlando is listed as civil engineer on the land-use plan changes, with Hall Development Services of Orlando as planner, Traffic & Mobility Consultants of Orlando as transportation planner, Thomson Enviromental Consultants of Orlando on environment issues, and surveyors Base Line Land Surveyors of Winter Garden as well as American Surveying and Mapping, Inc., of Winter Park.

Caribe Royale filed plans in January to expand meeting space by 86,000 square feet and construct new support facilities while demolishing others, as well as move 7.63 acres from a parcel along the west side of South I-Drive to its main developed parcel. Calls to Caribe Royale and to Glendale, Calif.-based Sierra were not immediately returned.

With 1,338 rooms in 11 stories about 1.5 miles east of Walt Disney World, Caribe Royale bills itself as the Orlando area’s largest all-suite resort, and offers more than 72,400 square feet of meeting space.

Nearby, recently planned apartment properties include 278 units in the works by ContraVest on 11 acres of a 51-acre lakefront South I-Drive site.