$100M Condo-Hotel Venture Breaks Ground

WINTER PARK-Langford Development LLC, a local partnership headed by James Heistand, president of Orlando-based Capital Partners, has struck a gold mine on a four-acre site at 300 E. New England Ave. in this affluent Orlando suburb.

Langford Development is redeveloping the former 48-year-old, 213-room Langford Resort Hotel where several Presidents and international diplomatic figures stayed during its almost five decades of operation. Renamed and reconfigured as the Regent Winter Park Hotel, Spa and Residence, the $100-million venture is drawing statewide attention because it is the first hotel development in 30 years in Winter Park and one of the few blended hotel-condo undertakings attempted in Florida.

Construction has started on 23 condominium units. Ground-breaking on the first 37 rooms of the planned 158-room hotel component of the project is set for September. But buyers, sensing an opportunity to own and rent out their own properties within the Regent venture, already are snapping up units, months before the space will be ready for living purposes, area brokers intimate with the project tell GlobeSt.com.