ORLANDO
In the heart of one the nation's biggest hotel markets sits a downtown where a new hotel hasn't opened in more than a decade. That's about to change.
Buoyed by the year-old Amway Center, a new performing-arts center set to open in 2014, and a commuter-rail line slated to start operating that same year, developers plan to open three new hotels in downtown Orlando during the next two years. At least one of the developers see the three projects as racing each other and questions whether the city center, with an office-vacancy rate of 18 percent, can support three more hotels.
Starwood Aloft has contracted with Baker Barrios Architects, which as offices in Orlando, to transform the former Orlando Utilities Commission headquarters building at Orange Avenue and North Lucerne Circle into a 118-room hotel. Rida Development, with Orlando-area offices, intends to expand its Central Florida portfolio with a 100- to 150-room hotel tied to the planned Sunrail station near the county courthouse. And Concord Eastridge, of Arlington, Va., is pushing to demolish law offices on Lake Eola to make way for a 155-room Cambria Suites.
Each of the projects is small compared with a resort hotel in the attractions area. All three will be aimed at business travelers, with room rates below those charged by the luxury Grand Bohemian Hotel, downtown's newest hotel.
