Looks like I-Drive will keep it's skate park after all. The Orlando Sentinel is reporting that the former Vans Skatepark at Festival Bay mall on International Drive has found a new owner and will be updating and opening in March. The Radbourne Property Group from New York have purchased the skate park that closed earlier this year. This will be the first of many Radbourne branded skateparks planned for throughout the country.
The skatepark will now be worked into the remodel plans for the property that Paragon Outlet Partners had earlier said would be easier to create if the skatepark was closed. The plans for the updated Festival Bay mall, which will change names to Paragon Outlets, that will break ground in late 2013 will include a Toby Keith’s I Love This Bar & Grill, along with keeping the current Ron Jon Surf Shop, Bass Pro Shop, and the movie theaters. The $100million remodel will transform the failed mall into an open air shopping center, similar to Paragon's previous project Orlando Premium Outlets-International Drive just across the street. That property previously included two smaller indoor malls that Paragon tranformed into one larger outdoor shopping center before selling it to Simon Property Group, Inc. Both of those previous malls and Festival Bay were all developed by Bealz Enterprises who no longer has stake in any shopping centers in Central Florida. Bealz sold Festival Bay to Paragon in 2011 for $25million, taking a massive lose and losing their last major presence within Central Florida.
The initial plans for the mall had called for a small amusement park to be included in the back section of the property. (I want to say there was a proposal for Mystery Fun House to move there and change their name to Mystery Fun Factory but I seem not be able to pull up a single source confirming this, anyone recall this or am I just confusing things? The timelines do line up but that's the only evidence of this I can find outside of my own memory) Once this idea failed to be realized Ron Jon looked into opening a surf park there but this also did not come to be causing a major section of the mall property to never be developed and one of the original 'magnets' for the mall to not be realized.
