Unicorp National Developments, Inc.

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SMALL BUSINESS, BIG MISSION ‘Numbers are coming back slowly’

Orlando Business Journal’s Dec. 18, 2020, weekly edition features this year’s final segment of our Small Business, Big Mission stories, as we circle back to see how eight of these small businesses fared, their lessons learned and what they anticipate for the coming year. The insights they shared are in their own words to give you a real sense of what they’ve experienced this past year. Read their previous stories from Part 1 and Part 2, as well as full online coverage.

Chuck Whittall, CEO, Unicorp National Developments Inc.

All of our retailers have been getting by these past few months, but some on International Drive are doing well, like Starflyer and the Wheel. We’re pleasantly surprised. Not everyone is back yet, but numbers are coming back slowly.

However, they’re looking for an explosive 2021. It will be a strong year since the vaccine will be administered. Consumer confidence will grow each month. In the second or third quarter, things will get strong again.

I’m under construction on multiple apartment and retail projects, including The Mark and Glass House. Portillo’s hot dog restaurant is expected to open in March and White Castle in the third or fourth quarter next year. I also plan to break ground on Celebration Pointe and Town Center at O-Town West in early 2021.

Still, not all things are back to normal. Unicorp’s holiday party typically has more than 400 people. But this year, we’re just going to have a small company gathering with employees themselves. We may delay the party until March.

Looking ahead, I think we need to educate more people locally about the vaccine and the importance and safety of getting it. I’m getting black hats made that say “Vaccinated” for my restaurant employees to wear once they get the vaccine.

2020 TIMELINE

Jan. 1: Orlando-based Unicorp starts construction on 2,200 apartments in Central Florida. Three weeks later, the developer inks a lease for a 300,000-square-foot office with Marriott Vacations Worldwide Corp. (NYSE: VAC).
March 30: Unicorp furloughs 500-plus workers.
April 17: CEO Chuck Whittall is named to the Orange County Economic Recovery Task Force.
May 10: Unicorp reopens Slate restaurant and plans to rehire hundreds of furloughed workers.
Nov. 19: White Castle breaks ground at Unicorp’s O-Town West mixed-use development.

Unicorp president forecasts ‘strong’ 2021 as developer remains bullish on construction projects near Disney

Orlando developer Chuck Whittall aims to keep moving ahead on local construction despite pandemic-related challenges to Central Florida’s economy.

Whittall — president of Unicorp National Developments Inc. — said he expects to start construction early next year on Celebration Pointe, a $100 million-plus 127,777-square-foot, Publix-anchored shopping center near Interstate 4 and World Drive near Walt Disney World. In addition, he expects dirt to turn in early 2021 on Town Center at O-Town West — part of a $1 billion mixed-use development near Disney — which will feature retail, restaurants and 400 luxury apartments.

Meanwhile, two new-to-Orlando restaurants are expected to open in the coming months at O-Town West: Portillo’s in March and White Castle by fourth-quarter 2021. Those projects will soon join Unicorp’s Glass House apartments at O-Town, a 900-unit apartment project in O-Town West which is also under construction.

Finally, up the road, construction still continues on the 342-unit The Avenue on Oakland apartments in Oakland.

Whittall said he believes 2021 will be a brighter year for the region’s economy, which is why he continues to build locally. “I think we’ll have a super strong third quarter,” Whittall said.

Earlier this year, Unicorp felt the pandemic-related effects early when the company furloughed hundreds of employees from its restaurants and attractions in late March. However, the economy has slowly improved in recent months, and Whittall has seen business pick up on International Drive. For example, revenue from the Starflyer and The Wheel continue to improve, which Whittall said he attributes to more Floridians supporting I-Drive and the tourist corridor. “We’re pleasantly surprised by that. Not everyone is back yet but slowly people’s numbers are coming back.”

Looking ahead, Whittall wants to create more awareness of vaccination efforts in Orange County. He hopes the county can be a model to the rest of the U.S., which would assure more people that Orlando is safe to visit again. He’s also ordering black hats with the word “Vaccinated” to hand out to his restaurant employees at Slate at 8323 W. Sand Lake Road once they’re vaccinated.

“I want to get back to normal and you have to have people champion that.”

Have a beer and buy some bread: New Winn-Dixie in Lake Mary has suds on tap

A new Winn-Dixie store opening in a space once slated for a Lucky’s Market is offering customers a chance to drink beer and wine as they shop.

The Winn-Dixie is set to open today in the Griffin Farm shopping plaza at 211 Wheelhouse Lane in Lake Mary.

It will include a taproom offering eight beers, 11 wines, and hot and iced coffees.

It will be the first Winn-Dixie in the Orlando area to have a taproom. Including another new Winn-Dixie also opening in a former Lucky’s in West Melbourne, the feature has been installed in seven of the chain’s grocery stores, said a spokeswoman for the chain.

The first Winn-Dixie taproom opened as a test in Neptune Beach two years ago, said Eddie Garcia, executive vice president of store growth for Winn-Dixie’s Jacksonville-based parent company Southeastern Grocers.

“The customers really were excited about it,” Garcia said. “A lot of people, it’s a chore for them to go grocery shopping.”

The new Winn-Dixie in Lake Mary will feature a taproom. The taproom at a Winn-Dixie in Gainesville is pictured here. (Deremer Studios LLC/Photography by Deremer Studios,)

The Lake Mary space was to become a Lucky’s Market, but that Colorado-based chain filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in January and announced it was closing all of its Orlando locations.

Southeastern Grocers acquired four Lucky’s properties, Garcia said, including the Lake Mary and West Melbourne sites.

Lucky’s, known for its affordable organic offerings, had also let customers drink beer and wine while shopping.

Garcia said it’s less about replicating what Lucky’s was doing than giving customers the specialty offerings they want along with a full shop.

“We believe these locations will give the customers the best of both worlds,” Garcia said. “We wanted to capitalize on some of the offerings. … We want to make sure that we fit into the community.”

The Lake Mary Winn-Dixie deli will offer specialty cheeses, fresh sushi, take-and-bake pizzas, a sandwich station and plant-based proteins made at the store.

The produce department will feature “signature categories” including peppers, mushrooms, tomatoes and tropical fruits and berries. It will include more than 100 organic offerings.

“I see items in that produce department that I’ve never seen before,” Garcia said.

A STORIED PROPERTY

Eight years and one chance meeting later, an Orlando developer inches toward groundbreaking on the $600 million hotel-condo St. Regis Longboat Key

An Orlando developer has secured a $48 million loan to fund a critical piece of the redevelopment of The Colony Beach Resort, a crown jewel property on Longboat Key.

With the loan from Centennial Bank in hand, Unicorp National Developments Inc. now has the funding in place to acquire the remaining unit shares of The Colony, which sits on 17 acres on the Gulf of Mexico. Though the physical buildings on the site were demolished in 2018, some of the condo owners still own shares of the property.

The acquisition of those shares is another piece of a complex redevelopment project that’s been in the works since 2012, when Unicorp president Chuck Whittall first looked at the property. The Colony, a legendary hotel-condo where President George W. Bush spent the night before the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001, has been mired in litigation and multiple bankruptcies since 2008.

In place of The Colony, Unicorp plans to build the St. Regis Longboat Key Resort, a $600 million project which will include 69 condominiums and 166 hotel rooms. About half of the condos have been reserved, and Unicorp is in the process of converting those reservations to contracts representing $200 million in sales, Whittall said. In condo sales, moving from reservation to contract requires a nonrefundable deposit.

The condos are priced from $2 million with an average price of $7 million.

The development is moving forward at an unprecedented time for Florida’s real estate market: The novel coronavirus has brought leisure travel to a halt, but luxury home sales are booming. The condominium portion of the project, Whittall said, makes the resort rooms possible. Construction loans for hospitality projects are all but dead as lenders re-evaluate their balance sheets and shy away from anything dependent on tourism.

“They’ve seen unbelievable presales that have really even shocked me in this market,” said Robby Barrows, commercial loan officer at Centennial Bank.

Whittall said he anticipates beginning construction in mid-2021. He wants to presell 60 percent of the condos and believes he’ll hit that benchmark in the first quarter.

“I believe we will get the debt, but we’ll have more equity in it than we would prefer,” Whittall said on a construction loan. “But I do believe the availability of the debt is tied to the condo project — if we didn’t have a condo and it was just the hotel, I think it’d be nearly impossible.”

For a property as storied as The Colony, it’s fitting that Whittall has his own tale about the project. Shortly after he began looking at the property, he struck up a conversation at The Masters Tournament in Augusta, Georgia, with a woman wearing Lilly Pulitzer. Pulitzer’s bright floral patterns are de rigueur at The Masters, but the fashion designer died just a few days before the 2013 tournament, and Whittall remarked that the Lilly-clad woman must be sad.

“She said, ‘I’m wearing her clothes to celebrate her life,’” Whittall said. “And she said, ‘Where are you from?’ And I said Florida, and she said, ‘Oh, we’re from Sarasota.’”

Whittall told the woman and her husband he was trying to buy a piece of beachfront property in the Sarasota area. When they learned it was The Colony, Whittall remembers that it felt like destiny.

“Her husband said, ‘I’m the bankruptcy attorney. Here’s my card.’”

Unicorp updates groundbreaking details for Orlando Fashion Square mall redevelopment

Groundbreaking may begin in mid-2021 on a roughly $1 billion redevelopment of the long-struggling Orlando Fashion Square mall northeast of Maguire Boulevard and Colonial Drive near downtown Orlando.

That’s according to Chuck Whittall, president of Orlando-based Unicorp National Developments Inc. which owns the roughly 46 acres of dirt beneath Orlando Fashion Square along with Orlando-based Maury L. Carter & Associates Inc. The mall, which opened in 1973, was in its prime in the 1980s and ’90s, but since has seen a decline.

Currently, the development team is negotiating with Philadelphia-based The Bancorp Inc. (Nasdaq: TBBK) whose related TBB Orlando LLC owns the mall’s improvements, or the buildings above the dirt. The development team must buy those buildings before it can start construction.

The mall itself appears to be 40-50% vacant, Whittall said. “Discussions have been good,” Whittall said. “I don’t think bank wants to keep it.”

A Bancorp representative wasn’t available for comment. But Orlando Fashion Square appears to be losing value, according to a May 11 Bancorp filing to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. “The March 31, 2020, balance of other real estate owned includes a Florida mall which has been written down to $15 million. We expect to continue our efforts to dispose of the mall, which was appraised in September 2018 for $16.9 million,” according to the filing.

Dirt deal

In September, Unicorp’s and Maury L. Carter & Associates’ Fashion Square Land Trust bought the dirt beneath the improvements for $22.9 million, according to Orange County records. The development team is the latest to attempt to resuscitate the 838,865-square-foot mall, which has changed hands at least four times since 2004.

The redevelopment is expected to include:

1,500-1,600 mid- to high-rise apartments
500,000 square feet of retail and restaurants that may include a bowling alley, dine-in theater, indoor karting and high-end arcade
200,000 square feet of office space
A parking garage
A hotel

The future Orlando Fashion Square, which will retain the name, will be built around plush landscaping, gardens and water features. No plans have been submitted to the city of Orlando.

The architect is Orange, California-based Architects Orange, and the engineer is Raleigh, North Carolina-based Kimley-Horn & Associates Inc.

Despite the challenges, a successful project’s payoff could be a big win for Unicorp and Maury L. Carter & Associates. The demographics around Orlando Fashion Square for a mixed-use project are favorable due to the area’s high population density and affluent residents. In addition, there are many families with kids and, with a dearth of nearby entertainment options, the redeveloped mall could attract them, too.

“Fashion Square is one of the greatest potential sites in Central Florida,” retail expert John Crossman, who isn’t involved in the project, previously told OBJ. “That said, it is immensely complicated and is not for the faint of wallet.”

Apartment, retail stats

The eastside apartment submarket, which includes Orlando Fashion Square, has a 9.1% vacancy rate, which is near the Orlando-area average of 8.3%, CoStar Group (Nasdaq: CSGP) reported. In addition, the submarket’s average apartment rental rate is $1,343 per month, slightly higher than the Orlando-area average of $1,310, showing demand for apartments.

Meanwhile, the downtown Orlando retail submarket, which includes Orlando Fashion Square, has a 6.9% vacancy rate, which is slightly higher than the Orlando-area average of 5.8%, according to Colliers International Central Florida. That shows demand for retail space in the submarket. In addition, the submarket’s average monthly retail rental rates are $29.76 per square foot, well above the Orlando-area average of $18.87 per square foot. That shows demand in the area for new shops and restaurants.

Orange County commissioners OK new shopping center

With unanimous approval by the Orange County Board of County Commissioners, The Mark at Horizon West is officially on its way to becoming Horizon West’s newest shopping center.
During the May 5 Orange County Commission meeting, county leaders approved the project’s final development plan. The 21-acre property is owned by Unicorp National Developments Inc., which bought the property from the Walt Disney World Company. Unicorp also is the developer of Westside Shoppes in Horizon West’s Lakeside Village.
The Mark will be constructed south of Seton Creek Boulevard and west of Seidel Road in Horizon West’s Village F. According to county documents, plans call for 95,568 square feet of retail development and 4,700 square feet of outdoor seating in the Village F village center district.“There’s existing multifamily with direct connectivity to the commercial area, and there’s actually a shared stormwater pond that’s already existing on the site which serves the multifamily and will also serve this commercial development,” said Eric Raasch, of the Orange County Planning Division. “There were some waivers that were previously approved by the board to internalize the main street — so the buildings aren’t immediately adjacent to Seidel — to create kind of a pedestrian environment which can be enjoyed by the residential to the north.”
Unicorp describes The Mark as a retail neighborhood center that includes thousands of square feet of both inline and outparcel opportunities. It’s also just a mile from the intersection of Seidel Road and State Road 429, near the upcoming relief high school.
The development plan calls for 10 total buildings ranging in size from the smallest at 2,525 square feet to the largest — a multi-story restaurant building with 14,200 square feet on the first floor, 6,200 square feet on the second floor and a 5,000-square-foot enclosed rooftop.
Originally, The Mark was to be a grocery-anchored retail center and had a signed letter of intent from organic grocer Earth Fare. However, the specialty grocer announced Feb. 3 it is closing all of its stores in the United States.
According to Unicorp leasing information, the newest signed tenant — who will take over that restaurant building — is New York Beer Project, which operates two locations in Lockport and Victor, New York.
New York Beer Project is a destination brewery. The Lockport location includes a brewery, gastropub, taproom and rooftop terrace. The Victor location’s brewery is designed to recreate The Atlantic Garden, a famous beer hall in New York City circa 1870.
Other confirmed tenants thus far include 7-Eleven, Papa John’s, Jeremiah’s Italian Ice, AT&T, Heartland Dental, AdventHealth Centra Care, Walgreens, KidStrong, Johnny Rockets and Encore Nails & Spa. Among the available spaces is an outparcel designated for a coffee shop with a drive-thru, documents show.
Also among inked tenants is a 10,000-square-foot Learning Experience early childhood education center that offers programs for children ages 6 weeks to 5 years old.

War is over at Colony Resort

Ownership and control of the Colony is finally in the hands of Unicorp President Chuck Whittall.
Whittall closed last Thursday on the 75 units of the former Colony Beach & Tennis Resort that were owned by Andy Adams.
The sale marks the end of a more than five-year-long struggle by Whittall to consolidate ownership of the 237-unit former resort.
Now that he bought Adams’ units for an undisclosed amount, Whittall can legally market and sell condominiums that will form the financial basis for a future hotel and resort that was approved by the Town of Longboat Key on the 17.2-acre site.
Whittall told Longboat Key News that he paid Adams a significant down payment in cash with the balance due via a mortgage, over the next 12 months.
Unicorp plans to start selling units the day after Thanksgiving this Fall if the Coronavirus pandemic is fully resolved.
Whittall needs both the housing market to be strong and for the hotel and vacation market to have also fully recovered and waiting precludes having to discount the price of units.
Whittall is optimistic, “Even during the pandemic, northerners are seeing that Florida is a great place to be, and we may not even see a depression in the housing market. We are looking at months, not years anymore, for this project to begin.”
The acquisition of the Colony has happened in stages. Whittall and Unicorp own 115 units outright. He now has bought Adams’ 75 units that had essentially blocked him from moving forward. Whittall has the remaining 122 units under contract with a specific performance clause. He plans to close on the remaining 122 units when he receives bank financing after the presales are accomplished.
Last month, the deal with Adams had not been executed because Whittall said the Coronavirus pandemic had interfered with business. After the month of delay, and with a 10-hour mediation, Adams and Whittall finally closed last week.
“Andy and I have always remained gentlemen with each other, even when we could not reach agreement. Andy wanted one thing, and we wanted another—we met in the middle of the road,” said Whittall about the final negotiation.
Whittall says that Unicorp in total will have spent between $75 million to $80 million to purchase all of the units and land at the Colony and settle the litigation.
“We are not getting a deal on the land acquisition, we will make our money in the development of the property,” said Whittall.
Whittall is approved for and plans to build 69 luxury condominiums, and a 166-room St. Regis Hotel Resort. He said the project will take about three years to complete.