JLL has arranged a $386 million construction loan for InterContinental Orlando, a 700-room hotel that Flag Luxury Group and Unicorp National Developments Inc. will build at 8001 International Drive in Orlando, Florida. The deal puts roughly $551,000 of debt behind each of the project's 700 rooms, a scale that ranks it among the largest single-asset hotel financings now underway in the Orlando market.

The four-year, floating-rate loan came through Civitas and carries two one-year extension options, giving the borrowers a potential six-year runway from closing to stabilization. A six-member JLL capital markets team — Kevin Davis, Mark Fisher, Jillian Mariutti, Wyatt Krapf, Henry Winchester and Martha Duff — arranged the facility on behalf of the developers. The hotel is scheduled to open in 2029.

What will the project deliver?

The development calls for a 12-story building spanning more than 900,000 square feet — an average of nearly 1,300 square feet of gross floor area per guest room, a ratio that reflects the heavy emphasis on group and convention business rather than pure transient lodging.

The property will operate under the InterContinental Hotels & Resorts brand. Planned components include:

• 105,000 square feet of meeting and pre-function space
• Multiple food-and-beverage venues
• A conservatory
• Spa and wellness facilities
• A fitness center
• A lounge and pool
• Structured parking

The meeting-space allocation works out to 150 square feet per guest room, a configuration aimed squarely at the conference and convention segment.

Why this location for a convention-scale hotel?

The site sits near four of Central Florida's largest demand generators: Universal Epic Universe, Universal Orlando Resort, Walt Disney World Resort and the Orange County Convention Center. That cluster underpins the borrowers' bet that a 700-room, meeting-heavy flagship can absorb demand from both theme-park visitors and convention attendees.

Universal Epic Universe, the newest of the area's major attractions, extends the pipeline of leisure demand around the International Drive corridor, while the Orange County Convention Center anchors group business within minutes of the site. The developers' choice of the InterContinental flag positions the asset in the upper-upscale tier that convention planners typically book for headquarters-hotel use.

Who is behind the deal?

Flag Luxury Group and Unicorp National Developments Inc. are the borrowers. JLL, which acted as arranger, deployed a six-broker team to structure and place the construction facility, with Civitas providing the debt. The loan's floating-rate structure with two one-year extensions matches the risk profile of ground-up hospitality development, where lease-up and stabilization timelines routinely run past the initial term.

For Civitas, the financing represents a commitment to a project whose full build-out exceeds 900,000 square feet. For the developers, the $386 million facility converts a planned 2029 opening from blueprint to construction-stage reality.

The loan closes the capital stack for a hotel that will add 700 rooms — and 105,000 square feet of meeting space — to a market anchored by two Universal resorts, Walt Disney World and one of the country's largest convention centers.