Real Estate Inverlad Development, the group behind The Yard at Ivanhoe mixed-use project, paid $6 million on Friday for 2.34 acres along Virginia Drive where it has long-term plans for a second phase of “The Yard.”
There’s no timeline for Phase 2, a lead executive with Inverlad reaffirmed for GrowthSpotter on Friday. The developer is focused now on starting to relocate utilities and a local road for The Yard at Ivanhoe, with foundation work expected to start on the building site in First Quarter 2017.
“We’ve got a whole lot of site work ahead on the first Yard, as we’re vacating Alden Road and moving a substantial amount of utilities from Alden over to Philadelphia (Avenue),” said Chance Gordy, senior vice president. “We just got that permit in recent weeks for the utility site work and changing the road configurations. So that work will carry us through end of year, it’s a major undertaking.”
Inverlad’s Phase 1 of The Yard will include nine stories, more than 600 apartment units and ground floor retail. General contractor is Jack Jennings and Sons.
As GrowthSpotter first reported last October, Inverlad reached a deal over the past year with Daryl M. Carter and Scott Crossman to acquire a 15-lot assemblage the two veteran land brokers have built over 12-plus years along Virginia Drive, earmarked a second “The Yard” development directly across the street from Inverlad’s first site now being cleared.
Carter and Crossman, close friends who lead two of Orlando’s biggest commercial real estate brokerages — Maury L. Carter & Associates and Crossman & Co., spent more than a decade assembling the 2.34 contiguous acres north of Brookhaven Drive, east of Alden Road, south of Virginia Drive and west of Ferris Avenue. The duo invested $3.8 million, per county property sale records.
Inverlad bought the Phase 2 land via affiliate Virginia Brookhaven LLC, and took out a $3 million loan this week from Mutual of Omaha Bank.
Inverlad earned approval in mid-March from Orlando’s City Council to develop Phase 2 of The Yard, when it adopted an ordinance to amend the Growth Management Plan, changing the Future Land Use designation from Industrial to Mixed Use Corridor-Medium Intensity, and rezoning from an Industrial class to Mixed Use for the property.
Plans for The Yard-Phase 2 call for a mixed-use development of five stories, with 174 apartment units, a parking garage, 18,000 square feet of ground-floor retail space, and 45,000 square feet of office space on parts of the fourth and fifth floors.
Phase 2 would start at the southeast corner of Virginia Drive and Alden Road on a parcel already owned by Inverlad Development, and run east to cover a total of 2.957 acres.
“Right now we want to get the first project well along before we do anything on the second site,” Gordy said. “We have some really good tenants on that (Phase 2) property now with great uses for the neighborhood. We’ll continue to let them operate and see how The Yard goes.”
The assemblage includes buildings that are currently leased by CrossFit Orlando, Central Florida Wrestling Academy, Riot Creative Imaging and Loch Haven Veterinary Hospital. It does not include the Hideaway Bar, which the development at this point will be built around.
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