ISC Details Plans For First Phase Of Construction For $800M One Daytona Project

Construction is scheduled to start this spring on One Daytona, an entertainment-retail-residential complex across from Daytona International Speedway with a theater complex, hotels, stores and apartments opening in 2017. Rendering provided by ISC

Now that its 2½-year, $400 million Daytona Rising makeover of the Daytona International Speedway is complete, the One Daytona project across the street has the green flag for this spring starting with theaters, hotels, stores and apartments.

The first phase of the $800 million project will include 300,000 square feet of retail, dining and entertainment including a Bass Pro Shops outdoor gear store and a 12-screen Cobb Theaters movie complex, two hotels and 300 apartment units, International Speedway Corp. officials announced during the company's 2015 earnings report on Tuesday.

All are expected to open in 2017, said ISC spokeswoman Gentry Baumline-Robinson in a telephone interview after the earnings report.

ISC's efforts to develop a mixed-use complex on the 190 acres it owns across the street from the Speedway date back to 2006. After attempting to develop the site as a 50-50 joint venture with other developers, the Daytona Beach-based company, whose primary business is running the Speedway and the dozen other motorsports tracks it owns across the country, last year decided to go it alone, at least in terms of the retail, dining and entertainment portion of the project.

To date, the only announced tenants for One Daytona are Bass Pro Shops, Cobb Theaters and hotel developers Shaner Hotels and Prime Hospitality Group, which have agreed to jointly develop both a 145-room Marriott Autograph Collection hotel and a separate "limited service" hotel. Prime also plans to develop the apartment units, which will be in two separate locations within the One Daytona development: one with apartments around a courtyard garden-like setting, the other a multi-story complex, Baumline-Robinson said.

"We are in active discussions with other potential tenants for One Daytona and anticipate announcement of additional leases in the near future," ISC stated in its earnings report news release.

ISC is contributing the land for the two planned hotels and will share in the profits from the joint venture, the company said.

Shaner and Prime have yet to announce what the name of their planned Marriott hotel will be, but it is expected to include a full-service restaurant and meeting space, Baumline-Robinson said. The separate limited-service hotel "won't necessarily have a full-service restaurant," she said.

Initial planning is already underway for the 300-unit "rental apartment community," ISC announced.

ISC said it expects to spend between $120 million and $150 million between now and the end of 2017 to build the retail/dining/entertainment portion of One Daytona's initial phase, which will surround the company's eight-story International Motorsports Center office that is headquarters for ISC and NASCAR.

The company will get some funding assistance from a Community Development District that Volusia County and Daytona Beach created, including $40 million in incentives to offset the projected $53 million in infrastructure costs for the project.

"We are currently proceeding with the leasing phase of the project while simultaneously completing the various necessary requirements for the CDD to access the incentives to start infrastructure work," ISC stated in its earnings report.

Baumline-Robinson said at least 50 percent of the retailers and restaurants that will be included in One Daytona's initial phase are expected to be new to the county, one of the conditions stipulated in the incentive agreement with the Community Development District. "We're well within our agreements," she said.

ISC has hired Legacy Development, a national developer, to serve as a consultant on the One Daytona project.

"It sounds pretty certain they're going forward with this project," said Jaime Katz, a Chicago, Illinois-based equity analyst with Morningstar, of the planned One Daytona project. "I think One Daytona is part of a way for them (ISC) to find revenues outside the racetrack."

Katz said she expects ISC to announce more details regarding One Daytona when it holds its Investor Day event Feb. 17, the Wednesday before the Daytona 500, at the International Motorsports Center. Clayton Park/Daytona Beach News Journal