UPDATE: Buyer Converting 290-Room Downtown Marriott to Student Housing

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ORLANDO-Downtown Orlando is adding a new checkmark to its redevelopment calendar–the planned conversion of the 47-year-old, 290-room Marriott Orlando Downtown hotel into a 250-bed dormitory for University of Central Florida students attending the school’s one-year-old Florida Interactive Entertainment Academy. The academy is next door in the 100,000-sf Expo Centre, Orlando’s first convention-styled and cultural arts structure when it opened in 1936.

Sources close to the deal tell Globest.com UCF officials and a private company are partnering in the purchase of the hotel which has served business travelers at 400 W. Livingston St. since 1957. The City of Orlando is considering developing an office building on the hotel’s one-acre parking lot, the same sources tell GlobeSt.com.