International Drive: Tourism's main street
The colorful strip, featuring everything from high-end hotels to
bargain-basement T-shirt shops, is on the brink of major change.
By Jim Leusner
Sentinel Staff Writer
June 12, 2005
After a long day at Universal Studios, sun-burned Irish tourist Noel Kearney
walked from an International Drive hotel to a nearby Italian restaurant to fetch
dinner for his exhausted wife and three sons.
For Kearney, a 43-year-old construction-cost manager, this was his third trip to
Orlando and second stay along I-Drive -- a haven from Dublin's blustery winter
weather and a smorgasbord of entertainment and restaurant choices.
During two weeks in March, Kearney's family spent about $9,600, some of it on
tickets to Walt Disney World, Universal Studios and SeaWorld. But they also
spent a lot along I-Drive, on everything from admission to WonderWorks and Wet
'n Wild to shopping at the Belz outlets. To the Kearney family -- and the
estimated 5.3 million people who stayed there last year -- I-Drive is as much a
part of their Central Florida vacation as the theme parks.
"People who know Florida know International Drive," Kearney said. "It's the main
road."
For 35 years, it has been the Main Street of Central Florida's tourist economy,
mixing tacky T-shirt shops and 33,000 hotel rooms with restaurants at every
price point, the nation's second-largest convention center and an illuminated
skull attraction. Started in 1970 as a place to stay for families visiting
Disney World, it morphed into an outlet shopping, amusement and convention
Mecca.
International
Drive:
Where you can...
Catapult 365 feet into the air: There
are 16 attractions along I-Drive, including the Magical Midway's 'Sling
Shot', which for $25 will catapult you 365 feet into the air from inside a
mock volcano. Others include SeaWorld, Wet 'n Wild, WonderWorks and
SkyVenture Orlando, where 'skydivers' can ride atop a 150-mph column of air.
Stay in one of 33,000 hotel rooms:
You can get a room on North I-Drive for as little as $39 a night -- or pay
$1,775 for the Presidential Suite at The Peabody Orlando.
Eat at more than 150 restaurants:
Eateries range from top-of-the-line steak and fish houses to the world's
busiest Ponderosa Steakhouse and the first Bahama Breeze.
Shop at Armani or Bargain World:
There are more than 500 retail shops selling everything from $1.99 T-shirts
to haute couture and jewelry, much of it at outlet prices.
Raise your glass -- or see a show:
There are at least 16 dinner theaters and bars (not counting those in hotels
and restaurants), including a British theater featuring goldfish races.
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But International Drive today is on the brink of its most significant change
in two decades. The original, older strip north of Sand Lake Road is aging and
worn, its smaller shops and outlet centers suffering from vacancies, clogged
traffic and a questionable future. Meanwhile, to the south, new resorts, luxury
time-shares and upscale outlets are sprouting up around the convention center,
triggering predictions of a new wave of tourist growth in the coming years.
"Without question, International Drive has helped put the Orlando region on the
map," Orange County Mayor Rich Crotty said. But, he added, "It [North I-Drive]
is an area in transition. It could go the way of [the failed] Church Street
Station, or it could become an amenity bookended by exciting projects on the
north and south."
To continue to prosper and attract the high-end tourists it is now seeking,
I-Drive must renovate older hotels and shops, attract more conventioneers,
confront its growing traffic problems and, many say, find a way to attract local
residents who customarily shun the place.
"Like Dickens, you can write the tale of two cities -- the tourist Orlando and
the real Orlando," said Rollins College professor Richard Foglesong, who has
studied the local tourism industry. ". . . There's this overwhelming sense:
'It's for them, not us.' "
A 'slice of Americana'
I-Drive, proclaims a Virgin Atlantic Airways brochure, is "the most spectacular
tourist and convention destination in the world."
What can you do on I-Drive? Pretty much anything you want.
You can ride roller coasters, swim with dolphins, drive go-karts, "skydive" in a
vertical wind tunnel or be flung 365 feet into the air from the inside of a mock
volcano. You can play miniature or championship golf; tour a re-creation of the
Titanic; and shop at Armani, Fendi or Ralph Lauren designer outlets. You can eat
the $3.99 breakfast buffet at Ponderosa, the $85 porterhouse steak at Dux or
catch dinner and a show at Fiascos Circus & Magic Dinner Show, complete with its
intentionally klutzy performers, trained-dog act and goldfish races.
Your food might be prepared by a cook from Micronesia or served by a waitress
from Russia. You can buy a camera from a shop owned by an Israeli; sunglasses or
ice cream from a Pakistani; a pint from a pub owner from Britain or Ireland.
Your hotel may be owned by a Hong Kong conglomerate or the Illinois teachers'
pension fund.
"International Drive gives the tourist a very economical, colorful slice of
Americana because there are so many people with businesses from all over the
world," said Cathy Kerns, a longtime Orlando tourism-marketing executive. "It's
exciting for people from one country to come and say someone from my country
operates a business here. It's the American Dream."
Region's prime real estate
Today's International Drive is 14.5 miles long and stretches from Belz Factory
Outlet World along Oak Ridge Road near I-4 and Florida's Turnpike south to U.S.
Highway 192 near Kissimmee. All but a mile is in Orange County. Nearly half of
its southern leg remains undeveloped.
Together with its side streets and enclaves of shops, restaurants, hotels,
time-shares, golf courses, vacant tracts and attractions such as SeaWorld, its
5,500 acres are assessed at more than $4 billion. Its real estate is some of the
most pricey in the region, bringing $1 million an acre or more near the
convention center.
The strip has created fabulous personal wealth. The likes of hotel baron Harris
Rosen, hotelier and outlet-mall developer Marty Belz, the late Wet 'n Wild
water-park landlord Al Slavik and his heirs, strip-shopping-center developer Ron
Dowdy, the late gift and sports-apparel-shop and buffet-restaurant king Jesse
Maali, and real-estate and restaurant developer Rashid Khatib have made millions
on their gambles and hunches.
And it's a cash cow for Orange County and the state.
Though it represents less than 1 percent of the county's land area, the corridor
accounts for 7 percent, or $4.2 billion, of its $60 billion in real property.
About 30 percent of the $111 million in tourist-development taxes collected last
year by Orange County hotels came from I-Drive.
"The city and county made so much money off of this area," said Eli Sfassie, who
opened one of the first gift shops on I-Drive in 1977. "They should paint a gold
stripe down the middle of the road."
International Drive fun facts
Number of hotel rooms: 33,000. An estimated 5.3 million people occupied 20
million-room-nights last year.
Biggest hotelier: Harris Rosen, 4,197 rooms
Number of time shares: 3,500
Number of McDonald's restaurants: Five, including one on the corner of Sand
Lake Road and I-Drive that was the country's top-selling restaurant in 1993,
1997 and 1998. It was No. 2 in 2004. The restaurant had $7.5 million in sales in
2003 and served about three million customers -- 4.5 times the average
McDonald's.
Number of Darden Restaurants: Four. The first Olive Garden and the first
Bahama Breeze restaurants were opened on International Drive. Red Lobster has
two others.
Number of gift shops: At least 21 T-shirt and gift shops between Sand Lake
and Kirkman roads. This doesn't count shops in hotels and attractions.
Number of tattoo shops: 7 -- and customers are not just twentysomethings or
British tourists. "When the Southern Baptist Convention is in town, teachers or
doctors, we're doing good," said Peter Kohler, 30, a tattoo artist at Inkredible
Ink. "You'd be surprised who gets tattooed."
Size: The I-Drive corridor is 14 1/2 miles long - 13 1/2 in Orange County.
It comprises 5,500 acres of land and buildings assessed at more than $4 billion.
Hotels: About 95 along the corridor
Restaurants: 150+
Shops: 500
In 2004, the Ponderosa Steakhouse on north International Drive owned by the
family of Jesse Maali was the No. 1-ranked worldwide in the chain, with $6
million in sales. The family's store on south International Drive was No. 4,
while its two stores on U.S. Highway 192 in Kissimmee were Nos. 2 and 3,
Ponderosa officials said.
The Quality Inn Plaza on South International Drive is the world's largest
Quality Inn. It opened Feb. 1, 1984 with 340 rooms. Three expansions tripled its
size to 1,020 rooms.
In May 1989, embattled evangelist Jim Bakker and wife Tammy moved their
ministry to Shoppers World, a failing shopping center off I-Drive. But within
six months, Bakker was convicted on federal fraud charges and Tammy left town.
The center was bulldozed for code violations in 1995.
In April 1985, a company owned by comedian Bob Hope bought 80 acres for $4.8
million on south I-Drive near Interstate 4. His agent said Hope planned to build
a museum to hold memorabilia from his show business career, but it was never
built. He sold the land in 1999 for $14 million. It's now the site of the
Premium Outlets.
In November 1975, about 10,000 followers of 17-year-old Indian holy man Guru
Maharaj Ji attended a four-day festival on inner peace. Maharaj Ji addressed the
crowd from a stage protected by bulletproof glass floating on Sandy Lake, near
the future site of Wet 'n Wild. Five men were arrested for marijuana possession
and three for disorderly conduct.
In June 1974, a 304-room Quality Inn, also known as the Hi-Q, was opened by
a subsidiary of north I-Drive developer Major Realty. The 21-story, 16-sided
hotel was said to be among the tallest buildings in the state.
The original name to market the anchor hotel across from the Convention
Center in the mid-1980s was the Hotel Plaza International, but bookings were
poor. They soared after the hotel name was changed to the Peabody Hotel.
Names of hotel side streets in Plaza International were selected for exotic
and noncontroversial locales such as Jamaican, Austrian, Samoan and Hawaiian
courts. 1979 drawings show Austrian was initially named Persian Court, but it
later was changed - perhaps because of Iran's seizing of the U.S. Embassy in
Tehran. Persia was the Western name for the state of Iran prior to 1935.
The tradition of the Peabody ducks began in the 1930s at The Peabody Hotel
in Memphis, Tenn. The hotel's general manager and a friend, after a few drinks,
thought it would be funny to put some of their live duck decoys in the fountain.
The reaction was enthusiastic, and thus the tradition was born.
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