Reclusive Billionaire Plans to Revive Dying Downtown Corner

Retired British industrialist Joseph Lewis and his family-owned Tavistock Group plan to erect an estimated $120 million mixed-use project tentatively dubbed, Main at Main.

The complex would comprise a 16-story, $50 million, 250,000-sf class A office tower; a 14-story, $30 million, 150,000-sf class A office building; 75,000 sf of ground retail; 200 luxury apartments; and two garages, a 750-space structure for the apartments and a 1,000-space building for office.

Lewis and his family members couldn't be reached at GlobeSt.com's publication deadline but area brokers intimate with the project's details, tell GlobeSt.com a ground-breaking is at least six months away.

The project will take two years to build at an estimated office construction cost of $200 per sf and an apartment cost of about $100,000 per unit, construction industry estimators tell GlobeSt.com.

Estimated office rents at the Lewis venture will have to be at least $30 per sf and about the same for retail, brokers tracking Downtown rents tell GlobeSt.com. Current average asking rents for class A Downtown office are $24 per sf, according to a fourth-quarter analysis by CB Richard Ellis Inc. Retail averages $15 per sf, according to active Orange Avenue merchants.

The Lewis family bought the 2.29-acre site from a Saudi Arabian investment group for $7.6 million or $3.32 million per acre ($76.19 per sf). Russell Allan, a Toronto multifamily and retail developer, is an equity partner in Tavistock Group and will build the project's residential and retail components, according to brokers familiar with the undertaking.

For Downtown, the Lewis proposal is a long time coming. "I think their timing is about right," Tom D. Cook, vice president of development for the Orlando office of Carter & Associates-ONCOR, tells GlobeSt.com. "This economic slowdown should be over by the time their project starts coming out of the ground" in 2004.

Locally based Jaymont Realty, which represented the previous Saudi Arabian owners, attempted unsuccessfully to develop the site for the past eight years but was halted each time by the Saudis who felt the time wasn't right for new development on the Orange Avenue-Church Street corner, one of the most visible intersections Downtown.

The six million-sf class A office inventory Downtown has a current vacancy level of 10.4%, up from 9.4% in the fourth quarter, according to the Orlando office of Grubb & Ellis Co.

Lewis and his family are Orlando's wealthiest private property owners. Among their assets are the billion-dollar Isleworth and Lake Nona golf course communities in south Orlando. Lewis has never been interviewed by the print or electronic media or had his photo published in a newspaper or on television.