$140M Mixed-Use Venture Breaks Ground Downtown

ORLANDO-Five years in the planning stage, local developer Cameron Kuhn's $140 million, three-tower, one-million-sf Premiere Trade Plaza has broken ground on the most expensive 2.3-acre parcel in the central business district. Brasfield & Gorrie Inc., the Birmingham, AL-based general contractor building the project, is shooting for a spring 2006 completion date.

Premiere Trade Plaza's three buildings will comprise 370,000 sf of office, 105,000 sf of retail, 310 condominium homes, a 12-screen movie theater and a 1,600-space parking garage. The structures will be 12, 17 and 22 stories on a block bounded by Orange and Magnolia Avenues and Church and Pine Streets--Downtown's four busiest commercial corridors.

Kuhn, a 41-year-old, former Chicago home builder, and three law partners in Orlando-based Alvarez Sambol Winthrop and Madson paid retired British billionaire industrialist Joseph Lewis and his associates at Orlando-based Tavistock Group and Toronto developer Russell Allan $10.8 million for the previously rundown Downtown property. The deal, done in November of last year, equates to $4.72 million per acre. Planners consider the asset to be the redevelopment core of the central business district.

At $108.26 per sf, the per-sf price is unprecedented in local land deals, according to the Orange County real estate records office. "I've never heard of anything higher," Jack McCabe, CEO of McCabe Research and Consulting LLC of Deerfield Beach, FL, tells GlobeSt.com. "The highs for Downtown Orlando recently have been in the $60-and-$70-per-sf range."

Kuhn's lawyer partners, Raul Alvarez, Griff Winthrop and Steven Sambol arranged financing for the land deal. Birmingham, AL-based Regions Bank and Banco Popular of Puerto Rico are providing construction funds.

The 12-screen theater is expected to be the magnet for the entire Kuhn project, Downtown retail brokers tell GlobeSt.com. Five-year-old Amstar Entertainment LLC of Birmingham, AL will be building the movie house. Kuhn is also partnering with Thornton Park developer Phil Rampy to construct and operate a seafood restaurant at Premiere Trade Plaza.

To motivate Kuhn and his associates in building the four-block undertaking, the city of Orlando provided the development team a total $22.5 million in tax rebates, cash and loans--the largest economic incentives package of its kind in Orlando development history, local independent planners tell GlobeSt.com. At its peak construction period, the project is expected to have about 1,000 workers on site, local sources say.