Park Square Homes, led by father-and-son team Suresh and Vishaal Gupta, is in the approval process to build a WoodSpring Suites Hotel on Hickman Drive near Sanford.
Vishaal Gupta told GrowthSpotter Park Square is awaiting building permits to construct the 123-room, extended stay hotel at 133 Hickman Dr., just north of State Road 46. The hotel will not have a pool, but it will have a fitness center.
“We expect to break ground in April,” the younger Gupta said. “We’re also finalizing our financing, waiting for our loan to close, getting our building permits and we’ll be ready to go.”
The company is also getting financing through EB-5 as part of its capital stack, according to Sid Gautem, CRE development manager for the developer.
Park Square Homes has built a reputation over its 34-year history for building high-end vacation homes and resort products. The company is also one of Central Florida’s largest single-family homebuilders. But in 2017, the company announced plans to diversify into hotel and multifamily development.
The company currently has a WoodSpring Suites hotel under construction at Champions Plaza, a 20-acre retail portion of their 40-acre Champions Vu apartment development, completed in 2017 at U.S. 27 and Bella Citta Boulevard in Polk County. The 120-key hotel should open in June, Gupta said.
The 2-acre site of the Sanford hotel is roughly 10 miles west of Orlando Sanford International Airport and the Seminole County Sports Complex, both of which should provide demand for a new hotel in what Gupta described as an undersupplied submarket.
“We just felt for many reasons that the whole Sanford corridor, around I-4 and 46, is doing really well,” Gupta said. “We just felt like this was a great location for this product. At this time there is no extended stay hotel in that corridor.”
Park Square purchased the property near Sanford in May for $1.65 million, according to Seminole Property Appraiser records. It sits next to a relatively new Wawa convenience store and gas station built on the former site of a Days Inn Hotel at the northeast corner of Hickman and S.R. 46.
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