In Osceola County, Margaritaville will soon be more than just a state of Jimmy Buffett's mind — it will be a real place.
Construction is already underway for the Margaritaville Resort, which will be off of U.S. 192, just east of State Road 429 in the Four Corners area. That's the former home of the Splendid China theme park.
The whole complex will actually be called Margarita Village.
“We have a large water park coming in here, we have 170,000 square feet of retail, we have a large apartment complex coming in here for permanent residents," said Jim Bagley, managing director for Encore Funds. "We have 500 or 600 vacation rental homes, we have a time share component coming here of a couple hundred units. We have 200 or 300 condominiums coming in here. So we’ve got six or seven major elements that are all drivers of traffic and jobs.”
The Jimmy Buffett Margaritaville-branded resort community will cost about $300 million to $400 million to build, and in turn, will hopefully draw millions of people to Osceola County.
The Margaritaville Resort is scheduled to open in early 2017.