A Los Angeles pharmacist has spent two years and nearly $4 million assembling 12 acres along U.S. 192 in front of NeoCity, and now he’s applied to rezone the property.
Mohammad Etminan, CEO of Total Remedy Pharmacy, purchased the three vacant parcels under three different entities, but all with the same address.
The first transaction closed in September of 2020 when Etmanan’s Fuller SM LLC paid $1.35 million for 6 acres. This year he purchased the two adjacent parcels in April and July for $1.6 million and $900,000, respectively. The site has 700 feet of frontage on East Irlo Bronson Memorial Highway, directly across from Osceola Heritage Park, and it overlooks the Center for Neovation at NeoCity.
Two of the parcels currently have Commercial Restricted zoning, but the future land use is Employment Center. The owner has applied to Osceola County to rezone 9 acres to Employment Center Perimeter, which matches the zoning on the third parcel. Etminan could not be reached for this story.
Orlando gastroenterologist M. Asif Mohiuddin, who sold one of the parcels, had previously considered it an ideal location for a mixed-use project with a hotel, apartments, retail and offices.
But the E192 corridor has been mostly sought after for new multifamily development, according to FL Retail Advisors’ Brian Capo, who has a listing next to the Etminan assemblage.
Capo also sold the Valencia Village site at the Gateway to NeoCity earlier this year to Dallas-based Lantower Residential for $15.5 million. Lantower’s preliminary plans called for a 4-story, surface-parked luxury apartment community with 381 units with construction slated for mid-2023.
Just west of the Lantower property is the recently completed 14 Fifty NeoCity luxury apartment community, formerly NeoSquare, where leases for a one-bedroom apartment start at $1,972. Across the street, Park Square Commercial is building the 287-unit Aston Square luxury apartment community.
Within NeoCity, New York City construction firm Sciame has formed a joint venture with Edward J. Minskoff Equities, to develop the first 25-acre town center on the lakefront. Sciame told Osceola Commissioners their vision is to include three mixed-use residential buildings, a hotel and shops along a main-street corridor on NeoCity Way. The first phase would be anchored by a performing arts center, which serves an architectural beacon for the waterfront.
The tech campus is also set to receive a $50.8 million federal grant funded through the Biden administration’s Build Back Better act.
The grant will go toward six projects: expanding Neovation, which is a lab within NeoCity that manufactures semiconductors; constructing a roadway called Neovation Way Road that provides southern gateway access to NeoCity; creating a new prototype and program that can manufacture advanced microelectronics packaging; creating a “digital twin” of the facility to assist in analyzing the microelectronics process; expanding a skills-based workforce pipeline to graduate talent that can work on these projects, and expanding Cornerstone Osceola to develop mixed-income housing.
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