After Covid-19 put their plans on pause, brothers Amin and Ramzan Gulami are ready to bring a Marriott-branded Fairfield Inn & Suites to Apopka.
The local development duo acquired 12 acres along E Semoran Boulevard in 2016 for $1.03 million and submitted a preliminary application to the city a year later for a four-story, 91-room hotel and neighboring three-story self-storage facility.
Not only did a pandemic sweep in, but in the years following Gulami’s land purchase dozens upon dozens of new development projects have taken root in Apopka, which is now among the hottest real estate submarkets in the Orlando area.
The city, as of this time last year, had 84 projects in the pipeline totaling nearly 10,000 dwelling units and more than 14 million square feet of nonresidential space.
The conditions for a new hotel in this part of Northwest Orange County are better now than they were pre-pandemic, Amin Gulami said.
For all the uncertainty and hesitancy COVID-19 caused, waiting it out “was a blessing in disguise with the way Apopka has grown,” he told GrowthSpotter.
“There’s just a lot of business out there now,” he said.
Amin Gulami said he’s hopeful to secure a construction loan soon for the project. If that occurs, he expects to begin work on the site by this summer with the anticipation that it can be greeting guests by the end of 2024.
Meanwhile, the brothers are awaiting final permits from the city.
“With a name like Marriott, we expect it to be a very successful project,” Gulami said.
Tucked behind a Culver’s restaurant and an Aldi grocery store, the property at 1616 E. Semoran Blvd sits in a heavily commercialized area about 2.5 miles east of Apopka’s downtown.
When the Gulami brothers pursued the land nearly a decade ago, they did so after attending a conference where Marriott officials expressed a desire to enter the Apopka submarket due to its growth prospect.
“When Marriott said they wanted to get into Apopka because of the way the city is growing, we knew we could buy land there,” Amin Gulamali told GrowthSpotter in October of 2017. “And then because we had such a large (parcel) we did a feasibility study for the market, and found we could fill a self storage need as well.”
Altamonte Springs-based Interplan is involved in the project as engineer and lead architect.
The latest site plans submitted to the city show a 51,588-square-foot Fairfield Inn & Suites in the center of the property with a 60,732-square-foot self-storage facility on the western edge of the site.
The hotel will include 106 surface parking spaces while the storage facility will come with 67 parking spaces.
Maryland-based Marriott is one of the largest hospitality brands in the world. Its Fairfield Inn & Suites flag has more than 1,240 properties in 16 countries and territories. There are more than 10 in the Greater Orlando area.
This is one of several hotels in the works for Apopka.
In early March, Alabama-based hotel developers Doradus Partners bought into theFloridian Town Center, a 75-acre mixed-use project under development along Plymouth Sorrento Road.
Doradus, which has built three hotels at Flamingo Crossings Town Center near Walt Disney World, purchased the land for $2.7 million from the Floridian Town Center master developer, Alabama-based Home Communities.
Parcel 5 of the Floridian Town Center, directly in the middle of the site, is entitled for 120 hotel rooms, according to development plans. Specific plans related to the hotel portion of the project have not yet been submitted and representatives with the buyer or seller were not immediately available for comment.
Floridian Town Center is also slated to include 300 multifamily units, an assisted living facility with up to 180 units, and more than 200,000 square feet of commercial space.
Vero Beach-based Evans Properties is planning to deliver two hotels to Apopka as part of a massive 230-acre mixed-use project coming to the Kelly Park Interchange District.
Formerly known as Kelly Park Crossings, Wyld Oaks calls for 3,000 multifamily units, 1.1 million square feet of non-residential office/commercial/retail uses, and up to 1.8 million square feet of industrial space at the intersection of Kelly Park Road and Golden Gem Road, near S.R. 429.
The project will include a performance stage for live concerts and comedy shows, a farmer’s market and specialty grocer, two hotels, convenience stores, coffee houses, a craft brewery, multiple restaurants, and a gym.
Amin and Ramzan Gulamali own and have developed fuel stations, retail properties, office buildings and multiple hotels across Florida through affiliates of their Farish Enterprises, LLC.
The development duo bought the EO Inn at Lake Eola in downtown Orlando in 2019 for $3.45 million with plans to expand onto an adjacent vacant parcel.
Amin Gulamali said they’ve had discussions with the city about a long-term plan to bring residential and commercial space to the land.
“That will hopefully be our next project,” he said. “But it’s a very long-term project.”
Have a tip about Central Florida development? Contact me at (407)-800-1161 or dwyatt@GrowthSpotter.com. Follow GrowthSpotter on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.
