The 68-acre, $1 billion Creative Village project in downtown Orlando, the largest transit-oriented project in central Florida, is expected to break ground on May 14.
This mixed-use project, which had been delayed for a number of years, is already being touted as mecca for business, colleges, and residents. The Orlando Business Journal reports that the University of Central Florida has committed to anchor the Village with a $207 million downtown campus that would create 4,000 jobs. UCF has stated its intention to bring 6,000 students downtown.
Creative Village is a public/private partnership between the City of Orlando and the Master Developer, Creative Village Development; a joint venture between Banc of America Community Development Corporation, and a local developer-investment team lead by Ustler Development. Baker Barrios Architects, the project’s design architect; and Emerge Real Estate Ventures, are part of that group.
The city’s Amway Arena was demolished in 2012 to make way for Creative Village. That demolition’s debris—including 94 million pounds of concrete and 13 million pounds of steel—was recycled and/or sorted for future reuse to build Creative Village’s infrastructure.
The development expected to take 15 to 20 years to complete, and include when finished 1.2 million sf of office and creative space, 500,000 sf of education space, 1,500 housing units, and 225 hotel rooms. A PS-8 school is planned nearby. Construction will create 6,500 jobs, and the Village would offer 5,000 permanent jobs. The Building Team estimates that Creative Village would also generate between $800 million and $1 billion in new development.
Road and utility work in Phase 1 would accommodate the expansion of the Lynz Lymmo bus circulator system to Orlando’s west side, near the Parramore District. Craig Ustler, MAI, CCIM, president of Ustler Development, said that about $13 million in infrastructure work on the bus route and the building paths is already taking shape.
Vertical construction is scheduled to begin in later 2015 or early 2016.
Related Stories
| Aug 11, 2010
Outdated office tower becomes Nashville's newest boutique hotel
A 1960s office tower in Nashville, Tenn., has been converted into a 248-room, four-star boutique hotel. Designed by Earl Swensson Associates, with PowerStrip Studio as interior designer, the newly converted Hutton Hotel features 54 suites, two penthouse apartments, 13,600 sf of meeting space, and seven "cardio" rooms.
| Aug 11, 2010
Aloft hotel opens at Washington National Harbor
A partnership of five developers, including the John Hardy Group and Peterson Companies, have completed a 190-room aloft hotel at Washington National Harbor, a mixed-use retail/entertainment development in Oxon Hill, Md., near Washington, D.C. Designed in conjunction with David Rockwell and the Rockwell Group, the aloft prototype offers atmospheric public spaces designed to draw guests from the...
| Aug 11, 2010
Manhattan's latest boutique hotel will be LEED Silver certified
New York-based developer Tribeca Associates has commissioned Brennan Beer Gorman Architects to design its latest mixed-use office and boutique hotel at 330 Hudson Street. Located in the downtown Hudson Square area of Manhattan, the LEED-Silver development will involve the redevelopment of a historic, eight-story warehouse building into 292,000 sf of office space, 15,000 sf of retail space, and ...
| Aug 11, 2010
Luxury Hotel required faceted design
Goettsch Partners, Chicago, designed a new five-star, 214-room hotel for the King Abdullah Financial District (KAFD) in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The design-build project, with Saudi Oger Ltd. as contractor and Rayadah Investment Co. as developer, has a three-story podium supporting a 17-story glass tower with a nine-story opening that allows light to penetrate the mass of the building.
| Aug 11, 2010
Westin Hotel
Mid-twentieth-century projects are in a state of limbo. In many cities, safeguards against quick demolition don't even cover “new” buildings built after 1939, yet many such buildings may be obsolete by current standards. The Farmers and Mechanics Savings Bank, located in downtown Minneapolis, was one such building, a rare example of architecture from a time when American design was ...
| Aug 11, 2010
Platinum Award: Monumentally Hip Hotel Conversion
At one time the tallest building west of the Mississippi, the Foshay Tower has stood proudly on the Minneapolis skyline since 1929. Built by Wilbur Foshay as a tribute to the Washington Monument, the 30-story obelisk served as an office building—and cultural icon—for more than 70 years before the Ryan Companies and co-developer RWB Holdings partnered with Starwood Hotels & Resor...
| Aug 11, 2010
Hilton President Hotel
Once an elegant and fashionably trendy locale, the Presidential Hotel played host to the 1928 Republican National Convention where Herbert Hoover was nominated for President, and acted as a hot spot for Kansas City Jazz in the '30s and '40s. The hotel was eventually abandoned in 1984, at which point it became a haven for vagabonds and pigeons, collecting animal waste and incurring significant s...
| Aug 11, 2010
CityCenter Takes Experience Design To New Heights
It's early June, in Las Vegas, which means it's very hot, and I am coming to the end of a hardhat tour of the $9.2 billion CityCenter development, a tour that began in the air-conditioned comfort of the project's immense sales center just off the famed Las Vegas Strip and ended on a rooftop overlooking the largest privately funded development in the U.
| Aug 11, 2010
Gold Award: Westin Book Cadillac Hotel & Condominiums Detroit, Mich.
“From eyesore to icon.” That's how Reconstruction Awards judge K. Nam Shiu so concisely described the restoration effort that turned the decimated Book Cadillac Hotel into a modern hotel and condo development. The tallest hotel in the world when it opened in 1924, the 32-story Renaissance Revival structure was revered as a jewel in the then-bustling Motor City.
