The Westcourt Sports and Entertainment District in downtown Orlando has been delayed, its developer disclosed, due to the economic uncertainty surrounding U.S. tariffs.
The high-profile project now hopes to break ground later this year and would not open for at least another two years, according to a report in GrowthSpotter. But a nearby, $60 million mixed-use project in Creative Village is moving ahead.
“We’re the only two cranes in Downtown Orlando,” Creative Village master developer Craig Ustler said during the “Gamechangers” panel Friday at the Urban Land Institute’s Florida Summit held at the JW Marriott Bonnet Creek.
This aerial image taken on Feb. 19, 2026 shows the construction site of the Parcel H building south of Luminary Green Park and The Beacon just west of The Julian apartments. (Courtesy of Ustler Group of Companies)
The 7-story Parcel H building, located south of Luminary Green Park, will have 122 market-rate apartments, 14,500 square feet of commercial/retail space on the ground floor, and two 3,750-square-foot offices on the second floor. Ustler said it was a challenge to secure financing for the project and get it off the ground in today’s market. “It was hard to do,” he told GrowthSpotter, but he secured a $36 million loan from Synovus Bank.
The lot was originally envisioned for a skyscraper, but Ustler said he had to “right-size” the project to respond to market conditions. He hopes it will be an instigator for the larger projects planned in the next phase of the Creative Village.
“There’s no demand for skyscrapers right now,” he said. “It’s good we’re doing something.”
A second project, The Beacon, is being co-developed by Atlantic Housing Partners and Banc of America CDC and will add 115 units at the corner of Parramore Avenue and Amelia Street for $40 million.
The redesigned Beacon at Creative Village will be five stories and will have 115 apartments. (Rendering by Slocum Platts)
The next big project to kick off in Creative Village will be the $30 million adaptive reuse of the historic Bob Carr Theater. The City selected Baker Barrios Architects to lead the design of the project that will convert the century-old building into a creative hub for technology and innovation.
“They’re scheduled to wrap up the design this year and will start construction drawings in the fall,” Ustler said. “They should be able to start construction in mid-2027 and hopefully deliver in 2029.”
Nearby, the Westcourt sports and entertainment district could also get underway sometime this year, later than hoped. It will serve as the future home of the Orlando Magic, a luxury Kimpton hotel, housing, entertainment and retail space.
Some of Orlando’s top developers updated their game-changing projects at the ULI Florida Summit. (L to R) Creative Village master developer Craig Ustler, Machete Group founder David Carlock, Tavistock Development President Craig Collin, moderator Michelle Adeeb. (staff photo)
“The tariffs set us back a year,” explained David Carlock, founder and managing partner of Machete Group. “We were planning to close on our construction loan in April, then our lender said to hold off. They realized this wasn’t a one-time deal; it created a lot of uncertainty.”
President Trump announced his sweeping “Liberation Day” tariffs on April 2, 2025. Last month, the U.S. Supreme Court invalidated the tariffs, ruling that the president lacked the emergency powers to enact them without approval from Congress. Trump later issued an executive order setting a 10% universal tariff on all imports, but it will expire later this year unless approved by Congress.
Carlock said Machete Group’s subcontractors couldn’t guarantee their pricing for Westcourt because they didn’t know how the tariffs would affect lumber and steel. “It’s not a force majeure situation, like a hurricane,” he said.
“We really had to go back and restructure the way we thought about the debt side of our capital stack,” he said. The Westcourt opening is now likely pushed back to at least 2028.
Both Carlock and Ustler said they hope the two projects complement each other to rejuvenate downtown Orlando’s west side and Church Street corridor.
“I think this level of investment, combined with some of the other things that happened specifically in Creative Village, is meaningful for the community,” Carlock said. “I think we can really help transform the way that Orlando thinks about what’s happening on one side of I-4 versus the other.”
The two also agreed that bricks and mortar only go so far in building a successful mixed-use district. The secret sauce is having professional management and programming of the public spaces, like Westcourt’s paseo and Creative Village’s Luminary Green Park. Ustler said that element is still lacking in Creative Village, and he hopes to emulate what Tavistock Development created with Lake Nona’s Boxi Park.
“Creative Village is a collection of buildings, but does not yet have a sense of place that we want to have,” he said.
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