AIC Hotel Group, which is associated with Nobu and other hotel brands, filed preliminary plans Monday in Orange County for a massive resort east of Disney Springs.
AIC Hotel Group — which also owns a number of Hard Rock Hotels —purchased roughly 50 acres of vacant property just north of the Orlando Marriott World Center Resort in 2018 for $32.75 million. Nobu Hotels announced plans in 2022 for an Orlando resort with a scheduled opening date in 2026.
Planning firm EDSA designed the conceptual master plan calling for four hotels with a combined 1,934 keys and a retail/dining/entertainment center comprising 16 restaurants with seating for 2,600 diners and an entertainment venue with a capacity of 1,625 guests. The master plan also includes 270 apartments designated as Club Membership Units and a 26,000-square-foot spa. David Taylor with Harris Civil Engineers requested a pre-application meeting with county planners to discuss the conceptual plan and entitlements for the prperty.
The Nobu Hotels website says Orlando resort will feature 300 rooms including eight villas, a Nobu restaurant, 50 branded residences, and meeting and event space. The new master plan doesn’t specify how the Nobu project would integrate into the larger resort.
Founded by chef Nobu Matsuhisa, Robert De Niro, and film producer Meir Teper, the first Nobu Hotel opened in 2013 as a boutique hotel within Caesar’s Palace Las Vegas. Since then the brand has opened properties in Miami Beach, Atlanta, Chicago, Malibu, London Shoreditch, Ibiza Bay, Palo Alto, Marbella, Los Cabos, Barcelona, Chicago, Warsaw, Riyadh, and London Portman Square.
The land is part of the Lake Vista Village PD, which had a substantial change approved in August 2016 by the Board of County Commissioners to reduce the maximum yield of hotel/timeshare units from 1,488 to 1,438. The property, accessible from Meadow Creek Drive, has frontage to the north on I-4, to the west on the World Marriott Resort’s golf course and to the east by Starwood’s Vistana Resort.
The plan shows multiple pools, waterslides and a lazy river associated with the hotels and a dining, retail and entertainment village in the center of the resort. In all, the plan calls for over 100,000 square feet of food and beverage space, nearly 35,000 square feet of retail space and 73,225 square feet for events.
The prime real estate in Orlando’s tourism district, east of Disney Springs, was previously held by Great Wolf Resorts, the company known for its large, Great Wolf Lodge-branded indoor water parks.
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