GlobeSt.com UPDATE: Pizzuti Opens Local Office After Exiting in 2002

Pizzuti chairman and CEO Ronald A. Pizzuti has named Scott C. Hall senior vice president-Orlando to oversee the company's Southeast operations. Gretchen Schneider is manager of marketing and communications. Katie Harris is office manager. Joel Pizzuti, the developer's son, is also expected to stay in close touch with the revived Orlando operation, sources in a position to know tell GlobeSt.com.

Pizzuti's decision to return to Orlando was prompted by the company's development plate which is growing again in Central Florida. One of the firm's biggest projects is the ongoing construction of a 500,000-sf, estimated $38-million high-tech warehouse at State Road 417 (Greenway) and Orange Avenue for Whirlpool Corp. of Benton Harbor, MI, as GlobeSt.com reported Oct. 17, 2005. Pizzuti is also a partner with locally based Keewin Real Property Co. and Paul Bryan of Grover Bryan Inc. in a planned multimillion-dollar City Hall redevelopment plaza for the city of Winter Park, an suburb five miles north of Downtown Orlando.

"Orlando has always been a great market for us and a second home to our family," Pizzuti says. "We look forward to expanding our Southeast presence." Pizzuti Cos. also owns an industrial park in Jacksonville and undeveloped land in Port St. Lucie, on the state's southeast coast. Nationally, Pizzuti's strongest market in recent years has been Chicago where the developer is focusing on industrial ventures, area brokers familiar with Pizzuti Cos. projects tell GlobeSt.com.

Pizzuti left the Orlando scene four years ago after seven years of unsuccessful attempts to launch a $100-million hotel-office complex across Orange Avenue from the Orange County Courthouse campus Downtown, as GlobeSt.com reported in 2002. At that time, Pizzuti's 12 staff professionals found new jobs with the Orlando office of Colonial Properties Trust Inc. Colonial was reported to be in line to buy the much sought-after 5.6-acre site where Pizzuti had envisioned his 300-room hotel and one million-sf office venture.

Instead, Pizzuti sold the land in January 2005 to South Florida developer David Ortiz's Global Group Investment Inc. of Miami and the Falcone Group of Fort Lauderdale. Palm Beach Land Trust LLC, headed by David Barley, is representing Ortiz and Falcone in developing the site as a $387-million mixed-use enterprise, as GlobeSt.com reported this week. The project, tentatively known as 400 North Orange Ave. and known one time also as Downtown City Center, is expected to break ground by the end of this year, Barley tells GlobeSt.com. The corporate owner of record of the land is Downtown Plaza LLC.

Global-Falcone paid $17.1 million or $3 million per acre (70 cents per sf) for the 5.6-acre tract. Orange County real estate records show Pizzuti bought the 5.6-acre tract and an adjoining 5.2-acre tract in 1995 for $14.2 million or $1.31 million per acre ($30.10 per sf). The seller at that time was William M. duPont. Like Pizzuti, duPont and his associates in the early 1990s also were unable to develop the tract for a mixed-use venture, according to GlobeSt.com research.

Pizzuti sold the adjoining 5.2-acre tract to the city of Orlando for $7.23 million or $1.39 million per acre ($32 per sf), just about what he had initially paid for the dirt. The city's Lynx transportation system has developed a central Downtown transportation hub on the land.