Edwards Wins $1 Mil Job at Ginn's $2 Bil Resort

The golf structure is currently in for permitting and is expected to break ground by the end of the month, Ron Smith, Edwards' vice president Ron Smith, tells GlobeSt.com. Completion of the seven-month job is scheduled for July. The site is on County Road 532, southeast of Interstate 4.

The pre-engineered structure will house 4,000 sf of office for the golf maintenance support staff; a mezzanine for storage; 1,200 sf for equipment service areas; and a chemical storage building. The maintenance building will service three 18-hole championship courses designed separately by golf professionals Tom Watson, Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus.

Orlando's ECSI office will manage the golf maintenance project. The design consultant is Tampa, FL-based Horton Harley and Carter.

Construction of the golf courses heads the development priority list in the first 630-acre phase of the 15-year Reunion Resort & Club project, Three hundred prime acres of the 630 acres face Interstate 4 and State Road 545, two of the most heavily traveled roads in Central Florida.

Reunion Resort will comprise 540,000 sf of commercial; 3,000 hotel rooms; and 5,000 resort units made up of timeshares, townhomes and single-family residences. No ground-breaking dates have been set for the other development phases. Funding sources for the entire project haven't been disclosed.

The Orlando division of Houston-based Centex Homes plans to construct 700 for-rent and private ownership single-family and townhome units within Reunion Resort.

Ginn, a developer in Florida and the Carolinas for 30 years, bought the 2,500-acre Reunion Resort tract in 2000 from the Herman J. Heidrich family, a pioneer Orlando citrus and land-holding family. The senior Heidrich conceived the current resort project's plans in 1952--16 years before the late Walt Disney secretly began buying up virgin land 25 miles south of Downtown Orlando for an average $200 an acre or a quarter of a cent per sf.

Heidrich paid about $12.5 million for the dirt, or about $5,000 per acre (12 cents per sf). Ginn paid Heidrich about $45.5 million or $18,200 per acre (42 cents per sf), according to deeds filed in the Orange County records division.

Ginn is one of metro Orlando's busiest developers. Besides Reunion Resort & Club, Ginn is developing a 1,713-acre mixed-use community on the Central Florida Greeneway (State Road 417). The developer and his backers plan 3.5 million sf of office; one million sf of industrial; 450,000 sf of retail/restaurant/other commercial; 3,000 hotel rooms and 1,200 multifamily and single-family units.