Drive south on ChampionsGate Boulevard past the Omni entrance this month and you'll pass two active construction sites within a few minutes of each other. One is an addition to the resort's conference center. The other is a shopping center still being framed out. Both are moving forward in 2026. Both will be finished within about two years of each other. And according to the people building them, they exist for almost opposite reasons.
The conference center expansion is funded in large part by a tax that only visitors pay. The retail project down the road is being justified, in the developer's own words, by the number of school-age kids who already live here. If you've been wondering what all the fencing and dirt work along the corridor actually means for your day-to-day, that split is the answer worth understanding before the next round of "coming soon" signage goes up.
A convention ballroom and a bagel shop, both breaking ground this year
The bigger of the two projects is happening at the Omni Orlando Resort at ChampionsGate itself. In July 2026, the Osceola County Board of County Commissioners approved Ordinance 2026-45, extending a special assessment tied to the resort's conference center and clearing financing for its third major expansion since the center opened in 2012. The county is putting $20 million in Tourist Development Tax revenue into the project, and RIDA Development, the Houston-based firm that built and still owns most of ChampionsGate, is adding another $25 million. The addition will give the Omni its first 40,000-square-foot ballroom and is expected to open in 2028, pushing total conference space at the resort to roughly 188,000 square feet, which developer estimates put it among the three largest convention-hotel complexes in the region.
That money comes almost entirely from a tax collected on hotel stays and rental homes, not from residents. It's an investment in getting more group business to book rooms, which is a fair thing for a resort town to chase, but it isn't really about the people who live inside the gates.
The second project is. A few minutes south of the Omni, RIDA has started construction on ChampionsGate Crossing, a 56,000-square-foot retail, dining, and office building on 10.3 acres west of ChampionsGate Boulevard. It's the first phase of an 80-acre parcel that RIDA eventually plans to fill with 2,136 apartments and another 150,000 square feet of commercial space. The retail piece alone is set up for up to eight restaurants, a two-story building with ground-floor shops and office space above, plus three outparcel buildings for additional restaurants and a bank.
Here's how the two projects compare on paper:
| ChampionsGate Crossing | Omni Conference Center, Phase 3 | |
|---|---|---|
| Size | 56,000 sq ft retail, dining, and office on 10.3 acres | 40,000-sq-ft ballroom, part of a roughly 60,000 to 62,000-sq-ft addition |
| Who's paying | RIDA Development, private capital | $20M Osceola County Tourist Development Tax plus $25M from RIDA |
| Stated audience | Residents, families, existing vacation-home owners | Convention and group travel guests |
| Target completion | Mid-2027 for tenant buildouts | 2028 |
The line the developer keeps repeating
Marc Reicher, RIDA's executive vice president, gave an interview around the ChampionsGate Crossing announcement that's worth reading closely if you live here. Asked why a resort community would need more neighborhood-style retail, he pushed back on the assumption that ChampionsGate is purely a tourist stop.
"Many people believe ChampionsGate is only for tourists; however, over 20,000 K-12 students live in the area. This quadrant of Osceola and Polk counties has the highest concentration of vacation homes, which create incredible opportunities for retailers."
That's not marketing language you'd expect from a company that also just helped fund a ballroom aimed at group travel. It's an admission that the retail math for this project doesn't work if it's built for guests passing through. It only works if there's a real, year-round population large enough to keep a bagel shop and a dental office in business between tourist seasons. Twenty thousand K-12 students is not a small number for an area that a lot of outsiders still picture as short-term rental houses and not much else.
What's actually signed versus what's still a maybe
Construction crews are already on site, but the tenant list is only partly locked in. It's worth separating what's confirmed from what's still being negotiated, because leasing lists change:
- Signed leases: Jeff's Bagel Run and Sage Dental
- Leases under review, not yet finalized: Sizzlin' Greens, Deeply Coffee Company, a Mexican restaurant concept, a breakfast-focused restaurant, an Italian restaurant, a cell phone retailer, and a full-service salon
Reicher has said RIDA wants "concepts that are a vibe" rather than a straight strip-mall lineup, and that the goal is regional and local operators mixed with a handful of national names. If you're the kind of resident who already treats a new restaurant opening as neighborhood news, this is the list to watch rather than repeat as settled fact. Half of it could still shift before ribbon-cuttings happen.
Where this fits next to what's already here
None of this is happening in a vacuum. ChampionsGate already has thousands of vacation homes, restaurants, and shops built up over more than two decades of development along this corridor, plus 36 holes of championship golf anchoring the resort side. What Crossing adds isn't a first wave of dining options, it's a second one built specifically for a walk-or-short-drive routine instead of a destination trip.
That's also the intent behind the design. Reicher has said the goal is for the center to read "more village-like and less like a strip center," with big patios built into the plan rather than added as an afterthought. Whether that holds up once construction is finished is something only time will tell, but it's a different design brief than most of what's gone up along this stretch of road so far.
The timeline, if you're tracking one
For residents wondering when any of this actually changes their weekly routine, here's where things stand as of August 2026:
- Site work and vertical construction on ChampionsGate Crossing are already underway as of this spring.
- RIDA's own projection has tenant buildouts finished and businesses open by mid-2027, roughly a year from now.
- The Omni's ballroom and conference center addition is targeting a 2028 opening, with the county's financing structure formally approved this past July.
- The larger 80-acre parcel, including the future apartments and additional commercial space, doesn't yet have a public timeline attached.
If you've been driving past the fencing and wondering how long the disruption lasts, mid-2027 is the number to hold onto for the retail side. The ballroom work will likely run longer and closer to the hotel entrance itself, since it's a bigger structural addition on a tighter footprint.
Reading the corridor going forward
The useful takeaway here isn't really about bagels or ballrooms. It's that ChampionsGate is now big enough, and settled enough, that developers are building two distinct products on the same road at the same time, one funded by visitors for visitors, one justified by the school enrollment and vacation-home density of the people who already live here. As more of these mixed projects come through the pipeline, that split is worth checking for. It tells you a lot faster than a press release does about whether something new on the corridor is meant for you or for the guest renting the house three doors down.
If you're weighing what a home in ChampionsGate is worth given how fast this corridor keeps changing, or you're trying to figure out how development like this affects a vacation-rental property you already own here, Pristine International Realty works this market and these numbers every day. Reach out for a free consultation in English or Português over WhatsApp, and we'll walk through what it actually means for your situation.
