While plans to build two new hotels in Orange County are winding their way through the development process another near Orlando International Airport is under new ownership.
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. built in 2009.
Representatives of the owners, including Gregory Crawford with engineering consultant Thomas & Hutton, discussed the plans March 18 with the county’s Technical Review Group.
“This site’s always been designed to allow another hotel on the south side of it,” Crawford told the panel. “We’re just looking to see what we have with regards to adding the building and to get the feedback from the county.”
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’s Development Review Committee to process development, subdivision and land use applications
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 and must comply with relevant codes. They specifically mentioned issues including sidewalks, parking, landscaping and drainage, among others.
Jason Sorenson, chief planner with the county, pointed out how the building’s footprint on plans and its frontage to adjacent streets could pose problems under I-Drive codes.
Crawford, responding to the comments, said frontage issues would be difficult to address considering the existing hotel’s location behind where the new one would rise.
Sorenson acknowledged complying with I-Drive codes can be challenging.
“I’m not trying to be rude, I’m just saying that it can be a heavy lift for a lot of applicants,” he said. “We just don’t give out deviations like the typical waivers you would get in DRC.”
Toward the end of the 30-minute discussion, Crawford said it was clear there’s quite a bit of work to do.
“It’s kind of a surprise here with some of the stuff we have to do, but we’ll go ahead and work through that and kind of find out what it looks like, and we’ll probably have a lot more questions,” he said.
Elsewhere in the county, an entity tied to Ashish Kapadia — founder and president of Perfect Petroleum in Orlando — 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.
Because the land is zoned C-2 (community commercial) the city must grant a special exception to put a hotel or motel on it.
The city’s 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.
Brett McFarlane, the city’s concurrency/commitment coordinator, told commissioners that in October 2024, the city commission denied a special exception to allow building a HomeTowne Studios extended-stay hotel on the property. The commission said the applicant could resubmit after six months.
Russell Maynard, with Central Florida Engineering Consultants in Sanford, told the panel that the previous denial was “due to a length-of-stay situation and not being a standard hotel, which the Holiday Inn Express is a standard hotel, so we’ve made that change.”
Both deals are in the pipeline at a time when Orlando’s hospitality market still faces challenges for select-service hotels. Marcus & Millichap’s 2026 Hospitality Investment Outlook noted that most of the area’s tourism recovery in 2025 resulted from higher spending by visitors staying at luxury and full-service hotels.
“While 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,” the report states. “Those service levels are affected by lower available discretionary spending by middle- to lower-income households.”
Still, Orlando’s 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.
Near Orlando International Airport, the 136-key Country Inn & Suites by Radisson 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. That breaks down to $102,941 per key for the six-story building constructed in 2002 on 3.4 acres of land.
The seller, an entity tied to the San Francisco-based Flynn Group, manages over 3,000 restaurant and fitness locations, including Applebee’s, Taco Bell, Panera, Arby’s, Wendy’s, Pizza Hut and Planet Fitness. The Flynn Group bought the property in 2006 for almost $13 million.
Michigan-based Bloomfield Capital provided $10.5 million in financing for the transaction. The property is adjacent to another owned by Pinnacle, La Quinta Inn & Suites by Wyndham, and across the street from Hyatt Place Orlando Airport.
Brian Bell can be reached at bbell@orlandosentinel.com. Have a tip about Central Florida development? Email Newsroom@GrowthSpotter.com. Follow GrowthSpotter on Facebook and LinkedIn.
