Unicorp under contract to buy land near Walt Disney World
One of Orlando’s most active apartment developers is planning yet another luxury project.
Unicorp National Developments Inc. is under contract to buy 16.8 acres northeast of Avalon and Seidel roads, President Chuck Whittall told Orlando Business Journal. Unicorp aims to buy the land by October 2021 and break ground on the project in January 2022. In March, Whittall told OBJ he was in talks to buy roughly 20 acres near Walt Disney Co.’s (NYSE: DIS) Flamingo Crossings Town Center. The unnamed high-end apartment complex is expected to feature more than 200 units, and may cost more than $100 million to build, Whittall said. The apartment project may open by mid-2023.
Currently, Winter Park-based Seidel West I LLC owns the property, which has a market value of $1.1 million, Orange County records showed. Meanwhile, Unicorp’s project team includes Royal Oak, Michigan-based Krieger Klatt Architects Inc. as architect; Orlando-based civil engineer Kimley-Horn & Associates Inc. as engineer; and Altamonte Springs-based Roger B. Kennedy Construction Inc. as contractor. No representatives with the project team were available for comment.
Unicorp currently has more than 2,000 apartment units either under construction or in the works in Central Florida, making them one of the most active apartment developers locally. Apartment construction is important as it creates temporary and full-time jobs and results in new homes for Orlando’s growing population.
The apartment development is in an attractive location due to its proximity to Walt Disney World, the largest single-site employer in the U.S., along with other businesses supporting west Orange County’s growth such as Orlando Health Horizon West Hospital. Those employers create jobs which, in turn, create a need for housing. “There’s a lot of growth in the area,” said apartment expert Luke Wickham, senior managing director in the Orlando office of Institutional Property Advisors.
The I-Drive Orlando apartment submarket, which includes the proposed Unicorp development, has an average monthly rent of $1,423, CoStar Group reported, which is above the Orlando-area average of $1,325, showing demand for new apartments. In addition, the submarket’s average apartment complex vacancy rate of 13.9% is above the Orlando-area 9.3% average.