ORLANDO-Downtown Orlando is adding a new checkmark to its redevelopment calendar--the planned conversion of the 47-year-old, 290-room Marriott Orlando Downtown hotel into a 250-bed dormitory for University of Central Florida students attending the school's one-year-old Florida Interactive Entertainment Academy. The academy is next door in the 100,000-sf Expo Centre, Orlando's first convention-styled and cultural arts structure when it opened in 1936.

Sources close to the deal tell Globest.com UCF officials and a private company are partnering in the purchase of the hotel which has served business travelers at 400 W. Livingston St. since 1957. The City of Orlando is considering developing an office building on the hotel's one-acre parking lot, the same sources tell GlobeSt.com.

Tied in with the hotel's conversion plans is the adjoining Expo Centre, the Downtown landmark that will start a new life as the university's new School of Film and Digital Media, as GlobeSt.com previously reported. The Florida Interactive Entertainment Academy is the master's program portion of School of Film and Digital Media. The academy currently has an enrollment of 29 students and plans to increase that total 60 by fall, according to UCF officials.

Plans for the School of Film and Digital Media include 50,000 sf of new classroom space, a motion-capture studio and a 300-seat auditorium. Last year, the city pledged $4.6 million to transform the little-used Expo Centre into a film and media campus. UCF used $2 million of a $4.2-million state grant to renovate a portion of Expo Centre and create a 50,000-sf facility.

UCF needs another $5.3 million to complete the renovations before moving its entire 1,200-student Film and Digital Media program from its main 50,000-student campus in East Orange County to Downtown, a distance of nearly 15 miles. UCF expects to finish the work at Expo Centre and the hotel by 2008, sources working with the university on various promotions tell GlobeSt.com.