Azzouz didn't respond to a fax request by GlobeSt.com to share his views on his acquisitions and development plans.
Azzouz has told the town council he wants to build a new urbanism type of small town center, different from Celebration, FL and Winter Park Village in Winter Park, FL, but also different from the pastoral lifestyle residents in the town outside Orlando have enjoyed for 120 years. Windermere has 2,300 permanent residents.
Azzouz and family members, through their Kosta Holdings LLC company, have purchased the estimated 25,000-sf Union Church Downtown for $1.4 million or $56 per sf, according to a published report.
Kosta has also purchased other Downtown properties but wants to use the church building for the pilot town center project which might include a bakery, bicycle shop and a bank.
"So far as big-league commercial real estate deals go, this one is in the peanuts gallery," one area broker tells GlobeSt.com on condition of anonymity.
But other brokers intimate with the affluent Windermere residential submarket tell GlobeSt.com Azzouz could be a quarter of the way to owning all of the town's commercial properties already. And that would amount to commercial, retail and industrial real estate holdings valued in the millions, they tell GlobeSt.com.
The developer has told town council members he likes Athens, GA as an urban village model, according to a published report.
Azzouz made local real estate headlines in May when he unveiled plans for Veranda Park, a planned eight-building, 550-apartment urban village-concept venture on 43 acres in the 1,800-acre MetroWest community, one of Orlando's most successful mixed-use developments.
He is still awaiting city approval for the residential component of the project; 383,206-sf of commercial; 300,000 sf of retail; a parking garage; movie theatre and post office. Apartments would be built above the retail and office space in two-story, three-story and four-story buildings.
Azzouz, who heads a half dozen real estate-related companies in metro Orlando and elsewhere, plans to open Veranda Park in fall 2003 along Hiawassee Road, south of MetroWest Boulevard. The site is 15 miles from Walt Disney World. Veranda Park would be the largest retail undertaking in 20-year-old MetroWest.
For Azzouz, real estate development and real estate-related ventures have always been his primary interest after high-tech enterprises, former associates tell GlobeSt.com.
According to recent Internet biographies of him, Azzouz is CEO of Watertown, MA-based Primix Solutions Inc. with Lennart Mengwall, who is also supposed to have a silent interest in Veranda Partners, area brokers tell GlobeSt.com.
According to Internet biographical material, Azzouz is also a general partner of Avix Associates LP, the general partner of Avix Ventures LP.
From 1994 to 1996, Azzouz was president/chief operating officer of Arcada Software in Silicon Valley, CA. Azzouz had turned his Quest Development Co. into Arcada in December 1993.
Azzouz's Seagate Software Co. bought Arcada in March 1996.
But in June of that year, Azzouz left Seagate to spend more time with his family in the southwest Orlando town of Windermere, a fact the developer has confirmed in published reports.
In July 1997, however, Internet biographical material has Azzouz buying a controlling interest in One Wave Inc., another software venture. But today, Azzouz tells Orlando Sentinel he is no longer associated with the software industry.
Orlando-based Azzouz Holding Corp. is the general partner of Azzouz LP, a principal stockholder in Azzouz Holding.
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