Virginia-based Cornerstone Construction is moving to Florida and eying multiple sites in the Orlando market for potential workforce housing, mixed-use and educational facilities.
“We’re making a huge push in Central Florida,” Sebastian Consiglieri told GrowthSpotter. We are a developer and a non-profit focused on closing the gap to provide attainable workforce housing and early childhood education.”
In Kissimmee, the firm has an LOI for a 119-acre site on Old Tampa Highway, a block from the Poinciana SunRail Station. The property was part of the former Frank E. Brown estate and was sold in late 2021 to BSC Logistics Center for $4.5 million. It has Employment Center zoning and abuts two undeveloped industrial sites owned by Frito-Lay and United States Cold Storage.
Consiglieri and Miguel Kaled, who represents the owner, held a pre-application meeting on Tuesday with Osceola County’s Development Review Committee to discuss a proposal for a mixed-use project with 528 multifamily units and about 20,000 square feet of commercial. The first phase would be east of the future north-south framework road and would include the first 200 apartments and all of the commercial.
Consiglieri said they want to keep 40% of the units below market rate, which would qualify the project for the Live Local Act zoning incentives. But Planning and Design Director Cori Carpenter said they could also develop the property as mixed-use within the existing Employment Center zoning, which allows up to 40 units per acre without height restrictions.
Either way, the developer would need to meet the building standards for the infill urban center land use.
“If you do the Live Local and you do the mixed use, that impacts your parking requirements, more so than what you’d get with in the code,” Carpenter said. “So it’s really up to you what suits you better when you’re ready to go forward, whether you just use our standard zoning or you impose the Live Local standards for some of those.”
The biggest impediment to the project, she said, is the transportation access.
Mahmud Najda, deputy county administrator, called the rail line that runs along the southern border of the property, north of Old Tampa Highway, the “elephant in the room.” The project would require a railroad crossing to access the road, and the developer would need to enter into a developer’s agreement with the county to build the framework roads envisioned by the county’s comprehensive plan.
“The other thing is that Old Tampa Highway is a very substandard roadway,” Najda said. “And the development will be using that (to go) east and west.”
One solution might be to negotiate with US Cold Storage to extend S Rail Avenue from Poinciana Boulevard to the property line. The extension is already shown on the county’s transportation maps, and it could create an opportunity to extend utilities to the site without crossing the rail line.
Transportation Planner Jordan Mueller said he would schedule a follow-up meeting with the applicant for a more detailed discussion. “From a transportation standpoint, I think it’s doable. We just want to make sure that we get you on the right path now,” Mueller said.
Consiglieri told GrowthSpotter the Poinciana site is just one of several locations the company is eyeing. They’re also looking at an 8-acre site on Bass Road in the Kissimmee City limits for a 56-unit affordable housing community and a site near UCF in Orange County for another 62 units.
Additionally, they have two sites under consideration in Sanford, including one across from Lake Monroe, where they’re planning 80 units.
Have a tip about Central Florida development? Contact me at lkinsler@GrowthSpotter.com or (407) 420-6261. Follow GrowthSpotter on Facebook and LinkedIn.
