When he first saw the 77 acres of vacant land in the heart of Orlando’s International Drive corridor, Brock Nicholas knew he had found a unicorn.

As president of Lennar’s Orlando Division, Nicholas had built and sold thousands of vacation homes in Osceola County, but he had never found a location suitable for a resort community so close to the Orange County Convention Center and Universal theme parks.

Everyone from Lennar, to Pulte to Park Square Homes, to Encore Homes, was building resort communities in Kissimmee or the Four Corners area.

“So everything you build out there has to be better than the last thing that got built, and so there’s a little bit of an arms race in the way those communities get developed,” he told GrowthSpotter. “So it just gets more and more expensive.”

Nicholas wanted to find a site that could be developed as a residential-style resort community in a commercial hub to serve groups and family travelers.

The property, at 5120 Del Verde Way just south of Dezerland Park, checked all the boxes. The city of Orlando approved the zoning to allow 70 of the same large-scale vacation homes being built at ChampionsGate, along with 200 attached four- and five-bedroom townhouse-style units and 256 apartment-style units with two and three bedrooms. A massive amenity lies in the middle that’s walkable from every unit.

Lennar bought the property in December 2019 for $26.25 million but put the project on a shelf for over a year because of the COVID pandemic. In 2021, Nicholas retired from Lennar to start a new company, Baseline Property Group, with partner Stephen Lobell, a longtime vacation home property investor.

Together they set about to reinvent the vacation home industry in Orlando, the nation’s number one tourist destination and top vacation home market.

“We’re right in the middle of Epic Universe and Universal Orlando. Locationally, you won’t find a better location or this type of product,” Nicholas said.

Baseline negotiated a deal with Lennar to buy the entire resort and has already closed on 197 units for a combined $170 million, according to public records. Baseline rebranded the project Villatel Orlando Resort and is already leasing the completed units. The resort was sold out for the MEGACON Orlando/Pro-Bowl weekend.

The entire resort is scheduled to be completed by the third quarter of 2025. Nicholas said the investment will exceed $500 million at buildout.

The centerpiece of the resort is the $25 million water and sports park, which includes two pools with cabanas, water slides, a splash park, shaded pickleball courts, basketball courts and bocce ball. There’s also a huge clubhouse with a bar and grill, fitness center and Top Golf Swing Suites.

Nicholas said the amenity, scheduled to open in late 2024, is about three times the size of the ones he built when he was with Lennar.

“This is a completely boosted program from the one that would have been here if was a for-sale project,” Nicholas said.

Baseline buys the vacation homes in a “white box” state and then takes over the interior design work, fully furnishing each unit to its unique standard. Here’s where the project departs from a typical vacation home resort.

Baseline created a wholly owned subsidiary, Immersive Scenic Studios, with its own factory nearby to design and mass produce its own theming and furniture.

The factory has designated spaces for foam molded designs, 3D printing, carpentry and painting. The company has 43 full-time employees working to create murals, build bunkbeds and arcade games. The themed rooms are so unique they earned Villatel Orlando a feature in Forbes.

Each townhouse and vacation home has a theater room, an arcade and bedrooms built to resemble jungles, caves, space, even grilled cheese sandwiches. Artwork is hand painted on a canvas and then digitized and printed on vinyl so it can be applied directly to the wall or furniture.

“Each piece is an original work of art that can be reproduced 1,000 times,” Nicholas said. “So our plan is that after we do our project here, we will have a catalog of many, many backgrounds that we can sell at retail to families who want to design their own room for their family.”

The Immersive Scenic Studios team is also designing and building themed furniture and murals for Baseline’s resort properties in Colorado and at the Harbour Island Beach Club in Melbourne. The company is in the permitting process for another vacation home resort in the Smokey Mountains of Sevierville, Tennessee.

The advantages of using vinyl is the speed, scalability and longevity. In a commercial setting, it’s important to have furniture and walls that can be easily wiped down and cleaned.

“Selling the home once is a completely different business model than selling the home let’s say 40 times in a year for one-week stays,” Nicholas said. “And when you’re selling it over and over and over again for one- week stays, then you have a lot of incentive to pay attention to the way that interior is set up, the way it’s managed, the cost of upkeep, how long it lasts — you know, all of the above.”

Since most hotel properties renovate and refurnish their rooms every five years, there will be enough work to keep the business going at a steady clip. The company keeps a separate warehouse in Orlando to store furniture, soft goods, and themed products so it’s ready to install as soon as the building is complete.

“This business will eventually be so good at what we do that we will market our products to the outside world,” he said. “But we’re perfecting our craft on our own projects.”

Have a tip about Central Florida development? Contact me at lkinsler@GrowthSpotter.com or (407) 420-6261. Follow GrowthSpotter on Facebook and LinkedIn.