Representatives of the owners, including Gregory Crawford with engineering consultant Thomas & Hutton<\/a>, discussed the plans March 18 with the county\u2019s Technical Review Group.<\/p>\n \u201cThis site\u2019s always been designed to allow another hotel on the south side of it,\u201d Crawford told the panel. \u201cWe\u2019re just looking to see what we have with regards to adding the building and to get the feedback from the county.\u201d<\/p>\n TRG is an optional, staff-level review for land development proposals to identify issues early, offering feedback to help applicants revise plans. It works alongside the county\u2019s Development Review Committee to process development, subdivision and land use applications<\/p>\n During the virtual meeting, several TRG members from various county departments pointed out how the property, zoned C-2 (general commercial district), is within the I-Drive District Overlay Zone<\/a> and must comply with relevant codes. They specifically mentioned issues including sidewalks, parking, landscaping and drainage, among others.<\/p>\n Jason Sorenson, chief planner with the county, pointed out how the building\u2019s footprint on plans and its frontage to adjacent streets could pose problems under I-Drive codes.<\/p>\n Crawford, responding to the comments, said frontage issues would be difficult to address considering the existing hotel\u2019s location behind where the new one would rise.<\/p>\n Sorenson acknowledged complying with I-Drive codes can be challenging.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m not trying to be rude, I\u2019m just saying that it can be a heavy lift for a lot of applicants,\u201d he said. \u201cWe just don\u2019t give out deviations like the typical waivers you would get in DRC.\u201d<\/p>\n Toward the end of the 30-minute discussion, Crawford said it was clear there\u2019s quite a bit of work to do.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s kind of a surprise here with some of the stuff we have to do, but we\u2019ll go ahead and work through that and kind of find out what it looks like, and we\u2019ll probably have a lot more questions,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Elsewhere in the county, an entity tied to Ashish Kapadia \u2014 founder and president of Perfect Petroleum<\/a> in Orlando \u2014 is seeking to build a four-story, 124-key Holiday Inn Express in Ocoee. The project would rise on 3.71 acres of vacant land on the south side of West Road near the intersection of Ocoee Apopka Road.<\/p>\n Because the land is zoned C-2 (community commercial) the city must grant a special exception to put a hotel or motel on it.<\/p>\n The city\u2019s DRC met March 3 and recommended approval by the Planning and Zoning Commission. That panel met March 20 and recommended the City Commission approve it with conditions that if the brand name or user of the hotel changes, a new special exception request must go before the city commission for approval.<\/p>\n Brett McFarlane, the city\u2019s concurrency\/commitment coordinator, told commissioners that in October 2024, the city commission denied a special exception to allow building a\u00a0HomeTowne Studios<\/a> extended-stay hotel on the property. The commission said the applicant could resubmit after six months.<\/p>\n Russell Maynard, with Central Florida Engineering Consultants<\/a> in Sanford, told the panel that the previous denial was \u201cdue to a length-of-stay situation and not being a standard hotel, which the Holiday Inn Express is a standard hotel, so we\u2019ve made that change.\u201d<\/p>\n Both deals are in the pipeline at a time when Orlando\u2019s hospitality market still faces challenges for select-service hotels. Marcus & Millichap\u2019s 2026 Hospitality Investment Outlook<\/a> noted that most of the area\u2019s tourism recovery in 2025 resulted from higher spending by visitors staying at luxury and full-service hotels.<\/p>\n \u201cWhile the segment maintained demand-side momentum heading into 2026, overall market performance in the coming year will hinge on improving bookings at limited- and select-service hotels,\u201d the report states. \u201cThose service levels are affected by lower available discretionary spending by middle- to lower-income households.\u201d<\/p>\n Still, Orlando\u2019s year-end occupancy rate of 72% is well above the national rate of 61.8%, and the market continues to see steady increases in room rates and revenue.<\/p>\n Near Orlando International Airport, the 136-key Country Inn & Suites by Radisson<\/a> at 5440 Forbes Place sold March 5 for $14 million to New Jersey-based Pinnacle Holdings-XVIII, LLC, an entity tied to Pinnacle Hospitality Group<\/a>. That breaks down to $102,941 per key for the six-story building constructed in 2002 on 3.4 acres of land.<\/p>\n The seller, an entity tied to the San Francisco-based Flynn Group<\/a>, manages over 3,000 restaurant and fitness locations, including Applebee\u2019s, Taco Bell, Panera, Arby\u2019s, Wendy\u2019s, Pizza Hut and Planet Fitness.\u00a0 The Flynn Group bought the property in 2006 for almost $13 million.<\/p>\n Michigan-based Bloomfield Capital<\/a> provided $10.5 million in financing for the transaction. The property is adjacent to another owned by Pinnacle, La Quinta Inn & Suites by Wyndham,<\/a> and across the street from Hyatt Place Orlando Airpor<\/a>t.<\/p>\n Brian Bell can be reached at\u00a0bbell@orlandosentinel.com<\/a>. Have a tip about Central Florida development? Email\u00a0Newsroom@GrowthSpotter.com<\/a>. Follow GrowthSpotter on\u00a0Facebook<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0LinkedIn<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"While plans to build two new hotels in Orange County are winding their way through the development process…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":212140,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[558,28,12687,114,7820,1335,11477,139,141,140,480],"class_list":["post-212139","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-orlando","tag-business","tag-florida","tag-hotel-hospitality-news","tag-latest-headlines","tag-ocoee","tag-orange-county","tag-orange-county-developments","tag-orlando","tag-orlando-headlines","tag-orlando-news","tag-real-estate"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212139","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=212139"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212139\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/212140"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=212139"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=212139"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=212139"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Orlando-based](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/TGS-L-springhill-siteplan-01-01.jpg\")
Orlando-based Universal Hotels Group LLC is seeking to build a seven-story, 137-key SpringHill Suites by Marriott on vacant land adjacent to an existing 156-key Holiday Inn Express it owns at 7276 International Dr. (Site plan by Florida Engineering Group)<\/p>\n