After Jacksonville-based Dream Finders Homes signed on in September to build a portion of the single-family component of what would be the Crossroads at Kelly Park community on 205 acres in Apopka, Clearwater-based developer Mike Galvin is now prepping for the next phase of his mixed-use project.
That piece, while still early in the process, has also garnered interest from a prominent developer. Texas-based D.R. Horton, America’s largest home builder, appears on site plans submitted to the city of Apopka for a 280-unit apartment community just west of S.R. 429. D.R. Horton builds apartments under its affiliated company, DHI Communities.
Galvin told GrowthSpotter the company isn’t officially under contract yet.
“We are negotiating,” he said. “We are not committed yet.”
While details continue to take shape, what is clear is that the large-scale vision Galvin put together roughly a year ago is inching closer toward reality in one of Orange County’s hottest residential submarkets.
Over the summer of 2021, Galvin invested roughly $30 million on about 180 acres between Effie Drive and Round Lake Road, just north of Kelly Park Road. The plan for this property is to build 675 single-family units and 300 multifamily units.
Dream Finders Homes acquired a large chunk of this land on Sept. 12, buying 113 acres for $10.3 million. The company will build 175 of those single-family homes while Galvin develops the rest.
This marks Dream Finders’s entry into the booming Kelly Park District.
“We’ve been looking to dive into new markets…and this definitely caught our eye,” said Steven Thorp, the land entitlement manager with Dream Finders. “Apopka is a pretty dynamic area. There’s a lot of growth opportunity, not just for (homes) but there’s a lot of commercial activity, there’s a lot of industrial, there are some future schools being built. It appears to be an ideal place to get a project off the ground and into the market up there.”
Thorp said the homes here would be built on 40- and 50-foot lots.
Galvin hasn’t yet tabbed a developer for the multifamily element in the first phase.
Construction is expected to start on the first phase of Crossroads at Kelly Park in the first quarter of 2023, Galvin said.
“We are in the process of getting construction plans approved for the access road,” he said.
In December of 2021, Galvin acquired another 40 acres to the south of this property with frontage along Kelly Park Road for a little more than $6.2 million, according to property records. This second phase will consist of the 280-unit apartment community along with another 95 single-family lots and 5 acres worth of commercial space.
The entire Crossroads at Kelly Park master plan — which calls for a total of 1,350 housing units — also sets aside space for a future village center at the southeast boundary.
“That’s more of a long-term goal,” Galvin said, adding that the plan is to get the residential units in place first.
Plans submitted to the city for the multifamily project in phase two show eight, four-story residential buildings with 40 units apiece.
The apartment would consist of 136 one-bedroom units, 120 two-bedroom units, and 24 three-bedroom units. A surface parking lot with 505 spaces would fill in the middle of the property, which will also feature a pool, park and dog park, according to site plans.
As for the single-family plans in this phase, lot sizes would range from 0.11 acres to just shy of a quarter of an acre.
This is among a number of development programs in the pipeline for the Kelly Park Interchange District, which covers a stretch of Kelly Park Road on each side of State Road 429.
Just to the west of Plymouth Sorrento Road, Evans Properties is working to deliver the city’s largest mixed-use community to date with more than 2,900 apartments and over a million square feet of retail, commercial, and industrial space.
An early master development plan submitted to the city by engineering firm Kimley Horn shows the site divided into four districts: Village Center District, Interchange District, Employment District and Transition District.
The Village Center District, on the northwest edge of the property with the most frontage along Kelly Park Drive, would include the most residential units, as many as 1,150, along with 500,000 square feet of non-residential uses. The Employment District, on the back end of the property along the west side of SR 429, would feature the most non-residential space — as much as 1.8 million square feet — along with as many as 300 multifamily units.
The Interchange District, at the corner of Kelly Park Road and SR 429, calls for as many as 1,031 residential units and as much as 350,000 square feet of commercial space while the Transition District, the smallest, calls for as many as 450 apartment units and a maximum of 250,000 square feet of non-residential space.
Recently, California-based homebuilder KB Home submitted plans to the city for 150 townhomes and 27 detached homes on 45 acres at the southwest intersection of Kelly Park Road and Chandler Road. That amounts to 5 units per acre.
Illinois-based Wingspan Development Group is teaming up with Tampa-based developer ABC Capital Corp to bring a mixed-use village with restaurants, retail space and apartments to the Kelly Park Interchange. The Village on Kelly Park development, if approved, would be a blend of indoor/outdoor cafes, sit-down restaurants and retail along with 388 apartments, according to plans.
Pulte Homes is pursuing what could become its second residential community in the Kelly Park Interchange district, seeking to bring another 140 homes to 40 acres at 3100 Ondich Road and 5704, 5706 and 5708 Plymouth Sorrento Road.
Dream Finders Homes, which has been particularly active in the Horizon West area of Orlando, will join in on the activity soon.
“We knew this was a market we needed to keep our eyes focused on,” Thorp said.
After forming in 2008, the company quickly become one of the nation’s fastest-growing homebuilding companies.
It closed 6,126 homes in 2021, nearly doubling the number of sales in 2020 and moving it up seven spots to 17th on Builder Magazine’s Top 100 Builders list. DFH builds homes in Florida, Texas, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Colorado, Virginia and Maryland.
Meanwhile, D.R. Horton has developed in Apopka before. The first phase of its build-to-rent Avian Pointe Community —which includes 56 single-family homes and 118 townhome units — sold earlier this month to the country’s largest multifamily operator, Greystar, in a deal exceeding $38 million.
Have a tip about Central Florida development? Contact me at (407)-800-1161 or dwyatt@GrowthSpotter.com, or tweet me at @DustinWyattGS. Follow GrowthSpotter on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.
