Ground Owner of Orlando Mall Scoffs at Building Listing

The owner of the ground beneath Orlando’s Fashion Square mall is throwing shade at a listing for the retail ghost town.

Dallas-based brokerage Edge listed the mall, at 3201 East Colonial Drive, last week, touting it as an opportunity “to create a $500 million mixed-use development,” but the ground owner scoffed at that idea, the Orlando Business Journal reported.

Local developer Chuck Whittall and his firm Unicorp National Developments own the ground and have long expressed interest in redeveloping the mall as a mixed-use hub, the outlet said.

A subsidiary of The Bancorp owns the building.

Bancorp had been working with a New York developer on a possible redevelopment, but that deal fell through because of the obstructive ground lease terms, Whittall said.

“Nobody can get a loan to build on top of a ground lease,” Whittall told the outlet. “And even if somebody did build something, part of the old lease is that we get a percentage of sales. If they demolish it and build an apartment complex, we would get a percentage of the rent and the money generated.”

And that’s not all. The mall was built in 1972. When the 99-year ground lease matures in 2071, Unicorp will also own the building, Whittall said.

“If they get somebody to build a billion-dollar development, when the lease matures, my grandkids are going to love them,” Whittall said.

Bancorp is spending about $200,000 a month on the ground lease, Whittall said. And his firm is unwilling to budge on its offer of $0 for the building.

“We aren’t willing to pay anything for it at this point. Who wants to pay for something that’s losing $200,000 a month?” he said. “They should really just hand over the keys and call it a day.”

Neither the brokers nor executives with Bancorp responded to the outlet’s requests for comment.

Whittall butted heads with Bancorp back in 2021, when the leaseholder proposed redeveloping the site, but they were reportedly back at the negotiating table the following year.

—Rachel Stone