After Orange County commissioners denied a property owner’s request to increase timeshare entitlements for a vacant property next to Disney’s Animal Kingdom earlier this year, the applicant team is now shifting gears and seeking approval for an apartment community on the site.
Carlos Perero of Kimley-Horn, on behalf of property owners Joe and Anette Perez of Amaroni LLC, recently filed an application with the county requesting approval for multifamily entitlements to allow for the construction of 320 senior apartments on 14.7 acres at 15525 W Space Coast Parkway.
A concept plan indicates that the L-shaped property would have eight 4-story apartment buildings, surface-level parking, and amenities such as an outdoor plaza with gazebos, multiple pickleball courts, a clubhouse, and a pool with tiki huts.
The community, which would be called Marbella of Orlando, would be situated next to Madison Waterstar, a 320-unit apartment complex from Madison Capital Group that opened last year. A second phase of Madison Waterstar would deliver an additional 192 apartments on a 6.5-acre parcel directly next to the existing community.
The parcel currently has entitlements for 136 timeshare units, and the property owners applied in 2023 to expand approvals on the site to allow for 342 timeshares. However, county commissioners unanimously denied that request in January, in large part due to a dispute between the applicants and representatives for the nearby Holiday Inn Club Vacations at Orange Lake Resort that reached a boiling point during a public hearing.
Hanna Emlasry, an attorney with BakerHostetler who represented Holiday Inn Club Vacations during the January public hearing, threatened to appeal the prior application in court if county commissioners approved the increase in entitlements. She claimed that the higher-density project would violate the hospitality company’s private easement rights.
Holiday Inn Club Vacations, which owns the parcel with the Orange Lake Career and Training Center directly west of Amaroni LLC’s property, shares private easement rights with the adjacent Miller’s Ale House for use of an access road between the career and training center and the neighboring restaurant. An adjacent Red Robin and Cava were also granted an easement.
However, the applicants don’t have the right to use this access road, and Elmasry alleged that they weren’t doing enough to ensure that traffic generated from the proposed timeshare project wouldn’t flow through the property that connects to E. Orange Lake Boulevard.
Jim Hall of HDSi and attorney Richard Geller with Fishback Dominick represented the applicants, and both claimed that any development would discourage traffic from flowing through the access road. However, Elmasry and John Alvarez, Vice President of Acquisitions and Development for Holiday Inn Club Vacations, claimed that they attempted to reach the applicants for months to discuss a solution, with no response until less than two weeks before the public hearing.
“No proposal is being made to us of how they’re going to limit this direct violation of our private easement rights,” said John Alvarez, former Vice President of Acquisitions and Development for Holiday Inn Club Vacations.
Commissioners ultimately voted against Amaroni LLC’s request and indicated that the two parties should come to an agreement before the commission would consider the application again.
“You’re dragging the county into something that should have been an agreement between two private parties,” Commissioner Nicole Wilson said.
It’s not clear yet if there has been an agreement now that a new application is on the table, but David Warzycha, a broker with Coldwell Banker Realty who is representing Aranorini LLC, told GrowthSpotter that his team has had meetings with Holiday Inn Vacations Club to discuss the issue.
“We’re fully aware of their concerns, and we agree that under the new plan that their property and rights will not be used as part of the project,” he said, without elaborating on how the applicants would engineer the site to discourage traffic flow through the restricted access road.
The decision to transition to senior apartments, according to Warzycha, was a strategic move “based on current market analysis.”
“We decided to create a 55+ apartment community that is quiet, secluded, but at the same time close to restaurants, shops, and near the Orlando theme Parks,” he explained.
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