Rosen Hotels & Resorts plans to expand its Shingle Creek Resort property with a new 640-key, 16-story hotel tower dubbed “The Reserve,” boost its convention space by roughly 50 percent, and add a new parking garage and on-site operations building for the company, President Harris Rosen confirmed to GrowthSpotter Tuesday.
Early-stage development plans filed with Orange County show the new hotel, garage and convention space would be built on Shingle Creek Resort land that’s now home to golf course greens and the current parking lot, directly south of the entrance road from Universal Boulevard.
The plan filed describes the tower as having 320 units, which Rosen clarified as 640 keys. Rosen said the rooms will be standard and comparable to those now at Shingle Creek Resort.
A new single-story spa building would sit closest to Universal Boulevard, with the proposed 16-story hotel connected to its right, according to the filed plan. Behind that would be a 3,600-square-foot pool bar/grill area, and to its east would be 250,380 square feet of additional convention space, as well as a three-story, 2,250-space parking garage.
A new 2,500-square-foot bus shelter would be built on the property, as well as a 70,000-square-foot, four-story operations building for Rosen Hotels company. The office building will house the company’s IT operations, insurance division, human resources division, laundry service and the Rosen Academy.
GrowthSpotter first reported on Aug. 14 that the hotel company had plans to expand its golf course at Shingle Creek Resort onto a 24.6-acre parcel the company owns directly north of the property, and was considering the addition of 650 rooms for the resort off of Universal Boulevard.
That was followed on Aug. 28 with news that Rosen Hotels plans to expand its three main convention properties by a combined 1,200 to 1,500 rooms in the coming years, which include Rosen Centre, Shingle Creek Resort and Rosen Plaza Hotel.
As the initial development plan stands now, Phase 1 involves having holes 12, 13 and 14 relocated to about two-thirds of that 24.6-acre parcel that fronts Destination Parkway. Phase 2 focuses on building the new operations center on the remaining third of that parcel, with entry from Destination Parkway.
Phase 3 includes the new parking garage, and Phase 4 would build an extension to the existing convention center, the new 16-story tower, its related pool and bar area and the proposed spa building.
No details were available Tuesday on a projected investment by Rosen Hotels in the project.
Rosen said he could not yet offer a timeframe, as he’s interested to see what happens nearby with 474 acres that should go up for sale soon by real estate investment firm Colony Capital. That land comprising 19 parcels lies generally east of Universal Boulevard and north of Destination Parkway.
“We don’t know who will develop that property or what they will do, but we’re very interested in seeing where that goes before we move forward,” Rosen said.
Independent sources told GrowthSpotter in August the hotel expansion for Shingle Creek Resort was being planned for a target opening of Fall 2017.
These additional entitlements for Rosen Shingle Creek Resort such as the spa, operations building, hotel tower and convention center expansion have to be extracted from the overall entitlements from the Universal Boulevard PD. Master developer of the land use plan, Universal City Property Management, will have to grant those entitlements.
Shingle Creek Resort is the seventh and newest hotel in the Rosen portfolio, having opened in September 2006. Sitting on 230 acres, the full-service convention hotel boasts more than 1,500 guest rooms and suites, 490,000 square feet of meeting space, and one of the nation’s largest column-free ballrooms at 95,000 square feet. Rosen Hotels’ portfolio has more than 6,300 rooms in Orlando.
Architect on the new project is HHCP, while civil engineer is Harris Civil Engineers and landscape architect is Verlander Landscape Architecture.
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