Expansion Planned for Disney's Grand Floridian Resort

[WRWDisney]

Hadn't seen it on the boards yet this morning, but from two other reliable sites:

Environmental Resource permits filed with the South Florida Water Management District on March 7 & March 16, 2011 have revealed plans to expand the Grand Floridian Resort.

According the site plans, a new 3-wing building is planned to be built on a plot of land bounded by the existing resort grounds to the north, the Seven Seas Lagoon to the east, the Wedding Pavilion to the south, and the monorail track to the west. The new building is planned to be connected to the Grand Floridian Main Building/Monorail station by a covered walkway.

In addition to the new building, two new parking lots are planned to be built between the existing Grand Floridian health club and Floridan Way. The larger 125 space parking lot is presumably for the new resort building; however, the smaller 111 space parking lot is marked as "Proposed Gated Wedding Pavilion Parking Lot".

The site plans can be found per the links below:

110307-4_site plan86186.pdf

110307-4_plans_2011022286188.pdf



The use for the planned expansion has yet to be announced, but it is speculated to be for the long rumoured Honeymoon Suites mini-resort or the Disney Vacation Club.

 

[bookwormde]

Thanks

 

[beachclub]

ongoing discussion already here:

http://www.disboards.com/showthread.php?t=2680692

 

[dbs1228]

Someone posted pictures yesterday they found of the grounds that were filed! Thanks for the confirmation that this is now a possibility! Yup 180.00 pp and a studio for 7 nights = 220 points

 

[LouisianaDisneyFan]

VERY interesting! I wonder if this will in any way play into the "tiered" system. That would be a plum DVC location, if in fact it is part of DVC. Since no contracts have been sold yet, DVD can set whatever rules they want. I could see this being a "restricted trade" location. One possibility might be to restrict booking to only owners for that resort for the 7-11 month window, and booking for owners of other resorts assigned to a tiered system based on the number of direct-purchase points after the 7-month mark. With a clean slate, I suppose DVD could even set this resort up for booking only by owners at that resort, and then allow trades through a separate DVD-managed program similar to the current Disney Collection booking opportunities.

Anyone have thoughts on this?

Evey

 

[Samaya]

Does it look too big to be just Honeymoon Suites, also there's an extra 125 parking spaces which seems over the top for just Honeymooners?

Has anyone found out the size of the proposed new building, the ground floor area seems to be slightly larger than VWL, but I suppose it depends an how many floors there are?

Great news if it's the next DVC Resort.........

 

[WRWDisney]

First off, sorry for starting a duplicate thread. Moderators, feel free to mege it with the other.

To Samaya; not sure about the square footagenper level, but I read somewhere in there that the new building is to be between 6and 7 Flores Hightower (this would match up with the existing GF buildings and thus make sense.

 

[im4disney]

WRWDisney,

Thanks for posting the actual links to the PDF's. I did not see the other thread anyway.

...and hey, we live about 15 minutes from you!!

 

[Greysword]

What other sites were showing this? I wonder if TSMIII's info was ported