Development duo begins work on Registry on Grass Lake apartments in Four Corners

It took more than four years to secure all of the proper permits and approvals, but Winter Park-based Brossier Development and Virgina-based Wakefield Residential have started construction on a five-story luxury apartment community in Four Corners.

The 320-unit Registry on Grass Lake is rising along the west side of Avalon Road, just south of the rapidly-growing Horizon West area and north of the Osceola County line. It’s an $80 million construction project, said Bob Reese, the president and CEO of Brossier.

“It’s high-end resort-style,” he told GrowthSpotter. “It’s a real high-end vibe.”

Brossier first began pursuing the apartment project on the 18.3-acre tract in December of 2018 when the company submitted an application to Orange County seeking to rezone the land from its original agricultural designation to allow multifamily. When the county board of commissioners signed off on the zoning change in July of 2019, they also granted four waivers related to building height (five stories instead of three stories) and setbacks (buildings were allowed within 80 feet of single-family zoned land, instead of 150 feet.)

In September of 2019, a few months shy of the arrival of a pandemic, Brossier requested adding another 1.3-acre parcel to the PD.

In February 2020, an entity related to Brossier purchased the property for $3 million. And then, after the county approved the PD amendment in August of 2021 — nearly two years after the application came in — Brossier sold the newly-entitled land to Virginia-based Wakefield Residential for more than double what they paid for it: $6.5 million.

“When we got the property, it wasn’t anywhere near marketable,” Reese said. “It was just a mess” with all of the rezoning and land-use amendments that were required.

“What we do is go in and fix everything on a piece of property and then we bring in a big-time REIT from out of town typically that buys into the project and, on paper, takes over ownership, but we are still involved. We are still the boots on the ground.”

Following the sale, Brossier began working on getting approval for the development plan with assistance from Kimley-Horn. The county approved that plan last August.

Site plans show two five-story residential buildings separated by nearly an acre’s worth of recreational space that includes a pool, putting green, cabanas, and an outdoor dining area with multiple grills.

A two-story, 11,500-square-foot clubhouse sits to the east of the open amenity area. It includes a resident lounge, wine bar, coffee bar, cyber cafe, a 2,750-square-foot fitness center, and quiet work spaces for those who from home.

The community will consist of 25 studio apartments, 145 one-bedroom units, 135 two-bedroom units and 15 three-bedroom units.

Deerfield Beach-based Ditman Architecture led the design of the project.

The design “is a contemporary approach using three tiers of color and texture incorporating stone veneer with cast stone, cement board cladding and textured stucco,” Craig Ditman, the firm’s principal, told GrowthSpotter. “There are also Bahama shutters, decorative aluminum railings, and smooth stucco at the balconies to add playfulness to the building elevations. The clubhouse and amenity features build off of these design principles incorporating similar design features and use the same material and color palette at a smaller scale.”

Grass Lake Fl LP, an entity associated with Wakefield Residential, took out a construction loan from American Momentum Bank totaling $54.7 million in July of 2022. The community is expected to welcome its first tenants by the summer of 2024, Reese said.

Since Brossier began this project four years ago, development activity has taken off on nearby land.

On adjacent property to the west, Integra Land Company is planning to build a 280-unit Class A apartment community.

For a project that consists of the construction of six four-story residential buildings across 21 acres, the Lake Mary-based developer is proposing to repurpose a 16,000-square-foot call center, last used by timeshare company Holiday Club Vacations, into a clubhouse and amenity center for tenants.

“It’s going to be a very interesting project,” Integra’s President David McDaniel told GrowthSpotter in February. “We are still in the middle of it, so we don’t really have any details on it at the moment, but it’s a very, nice large space and we don’t anticipate having to do any major reconstruction on the exterior. We will just be moving some interior walls around to make it suit our needs. I think it will work out really nicely for us. It’s a much bigger and better clubhouse than we probably could have built ourselves.”

To the north of the Registry on Grass Lake site, Aventon Companies is looking to build what would be its fifth apartment community in the Greater Orlando area.

The North Carolina-based company is under contract to purchase 18.19 acres along the west side of Avalon Road in Winter Garden. According to a site plan submitted to Orange County on Tuesday, the company is looking to bring 295 apartment units to the property in five-story buildings with space set aside for nearly 90,000 square feet of future commercial development.

Aventon’s senior development director Sean Flanagan declined to comment, citing the early stage of the project.

Across the street, Unicorp National Developments is pursuing a massive 153-acre mixed-use project that calls for 20,000 square feet of commercial space and more than 1,000 housing units across a mix of apartments, townhomes, and single-family houses.

Have a tip about Central Florida development? Contact me at (407)-800-1161 or dwyatt@GrowthSpotter.com. Follow GrowthSpotter on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.