New York-based Island Estate Group has 14 acres near Reunion Resort under contract with plans to build one of the market’s largest Class A self storage facilities.
Partners Shawn Kruk and Kevin Rossi told GrowthSpotter they’re in the due diligence period now for the property on C.R. 532, and have already engaged an architect and engineering firm.
Island Estate Group currently owns and manages a portfolio of 600 apartment units valued at $31 million. Now the firm is branching into the self storage arena.
Most of the new self storage product introduced locally has fallen in the range of 90,000 to 100,000 square feet, and is built on lots that are 3 acres or less.
This complex would span 8 acres and have 1,193 units totaling 153,150 rentable square feet, Rossi said.
The project would include a mix of one-story drive-up units and two-story climate-controlled locker units. The complex would also include RV/boat storage internal to the facility.
Osceola County revised its Land Development Code in 2016 to require new self storage facilities to be designed so they look more like office or retail buildings.
“We know we have to meet standards so it looks like a specific type of building, so it conforms to what the county or town wants,” Rossi said. That means there would be no visible doors from the street or adjacent properties.
The site is about 800 feet from Reunion’s Palmer Golf Course, buffered by a large wetland, and is immediately south of the Ashebrook subdivision on Sullivan Road.
AVID Group‘s Peter Pensa met with Osceola’s Development Review Committee in December to discuss the building layout and zoning requirements for the site.
The seller, Haroldo de Barros, purchased the land in 2014 for $600,000 under his U.S. affiliate Danpol Development. De Barros successfully rezoned the parcel to Commercial Tourist zoning for a potential multifamily complex or commercial/mixed-use. That classification specifically prohibits self storage uses.
Rossi said he’s aware they have to rezone the site to a category that allows self storage as a permitted use. The partners were drawn to the location because of the explosive growth in the Reunion/ChampionsGate submarket.
Orlando-based K4 Investments, which owns property right across the street, has also explored building self storage as part of a larger mixed-use planned development.
The site is across the street from D.R. Horton’s Tanglewood Preserve and just a few blocks from Crystal Ridge, a new vacation home townhouse community currently under construction.
The Four Corners area has also seen a boom in new luxury apartments over the last few years, with several more to break ground this year.
Those include a 300-unit complex in Reunion West by DeBartolo Development; a 300-unit complex by RIDA in ChampionsGate and a 240-unit big house-style community by The Garrett Companies.
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