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If you've watched my channel for any given time, you know I'm a big fan of development and things coming to the area. Whether that's redevelopment of old industrial areas and bringing up new things in its place, or unfortunately sometimes the spreading out of Central Florida to make way for the 1,500 people a week that are moving here, places [music] for them to live, things for them to do. It's something that we need as a growing city. And so today, I'm going to go over roughly six things or so that I've announced in the past and give you an update, some insights that you won't find anywhere else online on where these projects sit as of today. And in the comments below, I'd love for you along the way to let me know, is this something that you think is a positive or a negative? Stay tuned.
So before I get into the first story, I want to talk about why this is taking so long for so many of these projects to move forward. >> Why? Over the past two or three or maybe even four years, the overall lending climate has gotten to be pretty tough with interest rates going through the roof. More recently, we've got tariffs and sort of the unknown of what's going on. And then when you think about overall construction costs, if you're trying to build something that's a half a billion dollars or a billion dollars, it's a big swing one way when price overruns might be 10, 20, 30% one way or the other. And yet, what I've been told is that things are starting to unlock a little bit. And we are hearing that Q1 next year when we have a new Fed chair and we have a lot of other things going on that that the banks are going to be a little bit more apt to lend money. And so developers are getting in now saying, "Hey, all the projects that were approved over the past couple [music] years, we're ready to move forward."
And the first one that I believe is going to move forward based on what I'm hearing in the background is [music] the West Court development. This is right across from the Kia Center. Literally like you spill out of West Court and there is the Kia Center. This is brought to us by the Devos family, JMA Ventures, and the Machete Group. And so overall, if you don't know what the West Court is or West Court area is going to be, it's going to be a 260key hotel, 270 units. This is going to be like high-rise above the hotel. You're going to have a 3500 capacity live venue. There's 2 to 300,000 ft of office space. And what I'm told is that the Orlando Magic are going to move from across I4 to in front of the Kia Center, which is kind of crazy that they're not right in between there already. 125,000 ft of retail space and 1140 spaces for on-site parking. So, more parking in that area is great. Now, this is on the heels of travel and leisure that's going to be opened up right next door to that. And so, when they open up in Q1, they're almost done. If you walk by there, you can look in in the lobby and you can see that things are almost ready to go. When that's open, West Court's open, then the rest of Church Street starts to sort of unlock. Bumby Arcade and a lot of those other things that we've been waiting for will finally take place. But West Court is going to apparently break ground in Q1.
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I start thinking through some of the big numbers that are being invested into infrastructure and projects here in Orlando. One that sticks out to me is the Orange County Convention Center. There's $560 million being invested into that area. And that's actually going to be for an additional 44,000 ft² of meeting space and 100,000 ft² of the ballroom space in the north south building as well as a new entrance and covered walking area between the buildings which now you have to go up over and down to get into. And so it'll be a little bit easier to get around. And why is this actually important to Orlando? Well, there's $5 billion of economic impact that happens over at the Orange County Convention Center. That's not the county making $5 billion. That's local restaurants, retail, uh, small business owners, and employees at the convention center that are being able to make that. It's like $2,500 or so per attendee that comes here. And so in 2019, there were 1.5 million people that attended events at the convention center. In 2025, it's 2.3 million people, which means there's a 50% bigger attendance today than there was back precoid, which actually blew my mind when I started studying some of these numbers. And so, when you look at Vegas and Chicago, which are the two convention centers that can hold more people than here in Orlando, it makes sense that they're investing back into our convention center in order to bring more tourist dollars to the area, which then helps retail and restaurants and workers and all of that sort of thing. Let [music] me know. Have you been to an event here in Orlando?
Probably the biggest development news in 2025 is the redevelopment of the Orlando Sentinel site. So, it's a $2 billion development to start on 20 acres of the Orlando Sentinel site. Midtown Development has owned the land for quite some time and now they've announced they're going to move forward on this redevelopment. They're partnering with Heatherwick Studios out of London, who also created the Vessel and Little Island in New York, as well as Cold Drops Yard in London, as well as some other beautifully designed properties throughout the world. From what we hear so far, it looks like it's going to be apartments, maybe condos, retail, office, parking, and green space [music] outside. And so, this is more restaurants, this is more shops, this is more things in the middle of the city that's visually beautiful. And so, I'm very excited to see this develop over the next 10 years or so. The redevelopment of the property could start as early as next year, but does need to go through some city approvals to get there as well. We'll keep you [music] updated.
Redefining the gaming experience for families and athletes. I'm talking about the billion-dollar development in AOE by Mterrey Development. Now, this is the idea behind it is it's very expensive to go to Wide World of Sports and Disney and all of the other things [music] and bring a travel uh baseball or volleyball or any of their kind of youth sports [music] to that sector. And so, bringing it maybe 15 minutes away to Akoi right up the 429 and having this development where there's retail and places to stay and 159 acres of $1 billion of development. Everybody's throwing out the billion dollars. It seems like, >> how about a billion dollars? >> All right. >> But basically, you have like these athletic events meets leisure for both people that are visiting here and people that [music] also live here. That's what's going on in Akoi. And so, according to the Orlando Business Journal, the developers behind the Orlando Massive Dynasty Sports Complex say that they've cleared environmental and permitting hurdles and are ready to break ground on the project. So, this is another one that was announced in 2025 that many people were like, "Okay, great." Many people say they're going to do something and will this actually come to fruition. But if you're investing environmentals and uh permitting and all those other things and getting ready to break ground, okay, great. Now, that's when people start to get excited. And so, this is another project that I think is very exciting for 2026 and beyond once it's finished. Let me know in the comments below, whether you visit here or you live here, is this something that you would take advantage of?
A [snorts] massive project that's been going on for nearly 6 years is finally getting ready to move forward in 2026. According to the Orlando Business Journal, the Rose Arts District is finally getting ready to move forward. The project was built around the Lake Orlando Golf Course and Country Club, which was purchased for like $1.6 million back in 2019. This was because in 2017, there was actually a opportunity zone created for certain areas for redevelopment. And so the builder decided or the developer decided, hey, I'm going to buy this property, redevelop it. Well, in 2019, he applied for it. In 2021, he took it off the table and said, "It's not working out. There's a lot of people in the area that don't love development and what's going to go on in the overall golf course." Well, now fast forward to today and they're looking to build over 5,000 units, 350,000 ft of commercial space, which also includes retail and office and others. And this area is going to be built up over three different phases with the first phase that appears to be moving forward in early 2026. And so so much of what we talked about today is moving forward in 2026. And so it appears that things are starting to stabilize that developers are able to say, "Okay, here's how I can move forward based on the financials and the overall tariff situation and hopefully improve the city of Orlando and the greater Orlando in general."
So, those are just some of the major projects that I've been finding really interesting that are finally moving forward after years of planning and talking about it. And there's a massive list of other ones that we could talk about. I'm thinking about the Canopy, which is the under I4 project that will connect West Court to Church Street and have parking and parks and nighttime lighting and a whole bunch of other really cool things in that area that has been talked about, approved, and yet we haven't seen it moving forward yet. [music]
One of the things that we have started seeing move forward is the Gateway project into Lake Eola. You're starting to see old buildings torn down, new infrastructure, and all that kind of stuff. So, there are a lot of these little projects that were promised that are moving forward. I'm also thinking about like the JW Marriott, which is the downtown area, condo, convention center, right up block off of Lake Eola. That's been talked about quite a bit for the past few years, and many people in our comment section have said, "What's going on with that?" Well, I dug in deep and the last time it's been touched was July of 2025 where they were looking for a height variance due to the nearby airport, [music] which does appear that they got approved. And so that's sort of TBD when that actually breaks ground and move forward if so. Next would be like Creative Village phase 2. I know that that's coming here shortly. Neo City got an expansion over the past couple months and yet we're waiting for more things to break ground there. Beyond some of these other projects, I'm thinking about infrastructure and some of the toll roads and expansion to the current roads that we have. Some of that has started, but some of that sort of kick down the road that's coming one day. And so, it'll be interesting.
There was um I went to the state of downtown this past week, uh Craig Osler, who does Creative Village and a bunch of other great projects [snorts] around Orlando. He said, "Good development breeds good development." And I thought that was a really interesting take because when you start seeing cranes in the sky and people moving forward, it gives other developers sort of this push to say I'm not going to be the only one. And so as we see some of these other projects move forward, I'm excited to see more of these come back online and all of the promises that we've seen over the past 2 to 5 to 10 years finally start to take shape.
So that is today's video. So, if you have any questions about any of the projects that you saw here, or you're looking to buy or sell, make sure you reach out at poix.com/youtube to get started and hit the subscribe button as we're putting out new videos every single week about life here in Orlando. We'll see you guys on the next video.