Kissimmee rejects—but wants to revisit— downtown hotel, Civic Center renovation plan

The Kissimmee City Commission has rejected a proposal—the only one it received—from a hotel developer to buy the city’s Civic Center, renovate it and build an adjacent mid-service hotel.

Interessant Hotels and Resort Management (IHRMC) estimated it would cost $8 million to renovate the Civic Center, $24 million to build a 101-room limited service hotel that would connect to the Civic Center with a covered walkway. The renovations pitched included raising the ceiling height of the lobby with a new exterior facade, updating all furnishings and equipment throughout the facility, expanding food and beverage capabilities, and modifying the existing arena area to create a larger convention floor with air walls.

But part of its proposal was a request for a two-year tax abatement and $4 million towards the renovation of the Civic Center.

City officials like Economic Development Director Tom Tomerlin recommended commissioners not proceed with the proposal, saying the incentives asked for were excessive, and since only one submission was received, it eliminated the city’s ability to evaluate alternatives and weigh them against each another.

“We could address the Civic Center separately, which would generate more interest and more proposals,” he said, hoping that some of those proposals would then lead to a proposal for a hotel.

City Manager Mike Steigerwald said the best deal for the city might be a public-private partnership.

“The Civic Center project might be too different for a hotel developer, but if we re-do the Civic Center without a hotel, I feel like we’d be missing out on an opportunity,” he said.

Commissioner Angela Eady said the Civic Center is still an asset even if it currently doesn’t make the best use of its space.

“I do not want to get rid of it,” she said. “I want to deny this proposal and revisit it, to put out a better proposal.”

Her hope was to include a higher-end hotel—“Four stars”—and that sentiment was echoed by Ella Wood, the research and political director for Unite Here Local 737, the local union for hospitality industry workers.

“Building a city-owned, high-end hotel would benefit the community,” she said, noting there are hundreds of union members who live close to downtown Kissimmee but work at Disney-area hotels many miles away.

Currently, travelers who have business in Kissimmee often stay in Orange County, Steigerwald said, or the Gaylord Palms or Embassy Suites that are many miles west of downtown Kissimmee. The Mosaic development near Kissimmee’s lakefront, which currently consists of condominiums, also included plans for a boutique hotel that didn’t pan out either.

Osceola Heritage Park has plans to build multiple hotels on its property—and has also had trouble getting the bids it’s looking for— and plans are in the works for one in NeoCity once the intended microchip manufacturing and research operations get rolling there. Steigerwald said there would be demand for all of them, along with the Hampton Inn that just opened east of The Loop.

“A hotel here would encourage people to come downtown,” he said. “As for the Civic Center, we could ask for TDT (Tourist Development Tax) dollars to build a smaller center for a certain market, for which the goal would be to attract smaller events that don’t have a place in larger spaces.”

The city initially put out an RFP (Request for Proposals) to developers, with the idea of reworking the space in and around the 30-year-old Civic Center. City leaders in June 2023 said it would let the responses it received determine whether the center would be demolished and rebuilt, or renovated with building the hotel.