If Walt Disney World is the most magical place on Earth, Evermore Orlando Resort must be in the conversation for its most multifaceted. A $1.5 billion endeavor that debuted in January 2024, Evermore is an industry-rattling project in Mickey Mouse’s backyard consisting of vacation rentals, the Conrad Orlando hotel, a dozen dining outlets, a golf course and the jaw-dropping Evermore Bay lagoon that’s larger than six football fields.
But where the average person sees a pristine 1,100-acre playground catering to every type of traveler, Chris Kelsey, president of the Dart Interests real estate firm behind Evermore, focuses on what needs improving. He’ll tell you that the versatile Central Florida property he conceived could use more pools and that its check-in process can be tinkered with. Sit down with Kelsey long enough, though, and he’ll also talk about his beginnings in the real estate industry and what the future for more Evermores looks like.
How did you start your real estate journey?
I was pretty much the luckiest kid in the universe. I graduated from architecture school in 1994, and that was a lousy time to go try to get a job as an architect. I was dumb in college, and I didn’t really think through what all those choices meant.
I did go find a job in a firm. But it was a slow time so I ended up, just through a friend, having the accidental opportunity to go work for Hines, the developer out of Houston. Not only did I get to go to work for Hines, but I got to go to work for Hines in Aspen, Colorado. So, here I am, like 27 years old, and I’ve got this amazing job that came with a ski pass and a company that was willing to take a knucklehead architect and teach him how to be a developer. It was just crazy good luck.
I’m assuming you learned a lot putting Evermore together.
We sure did. We were just really lucky to have an incredible piece of dirt. [We had] 1,100 acres across the street from Disney World with this incredible set of 50-year-old entitlements that basically allowed us to do anything.
I grew up working on a farm in Kansas, and my grandfather always used to say the expression, “a blind dog in a meat house.” That was what it was like. We could do [anything] because our entitlements were so flexible. Anything that we would have done on that piece of property would have worked because of its location and its characteristics. Trying to sort through what the optimum use for it was sometimes frustrating. But at the end of the day, it was a joyful, interesting journey. And for us, we decided ultimately the highest and best end for it would be in the form of a resort.
As we really started digging through that, we came up with this idea that we could generate a new type of accommodation, a new form of hospitality that blended the best of renting a private home with the right hotel services for a much better overall experience.
Our general goal when we go and develop properties is to create long-term cash flow-producing assets. We’re not a merchant builder. We’re not going to go build it, stabilize it and sell it to somebody else. We want to own it for a very, very long time.
That alone changes your perspective. You’re going to do things that have to do with longevity and quality. As an example, our houses are made out of CMU [concrete masonry unit] block for a full two stories because we’re going to own them forever. We want them to last. So, that’s one part of it.
But the other part of it is that the whole ownership model gave us a ton of flexibility. And it changed when we thought about what we wanted. We believe strongly that there was a big demand for multi-family, multi-generational travel going to the theme parks. We knew that because, at the time, we’d been talking to Disney for a bunch of other reasons, and they were giving us some intelligence. We wanted to do these larger-format four-bedroom flats all the way up to the 11-bedroom houses. Given our financial model and given that our entitlements allowed us to do short-term rentals in Orange County, where they’re generally prohibited, it created this opportunity to do something unique.
We were going to do something that nobody had done before at this kind of scale. That part was really exciting. If you say, “I’m going to go design a house that’s specifically for a week-long vacation as opposed to a house that I’m going to sell to the Jones family,” it’s a different house, right? That design process was super cool. And that’s how we ended up with multiple identical primary bedrooms. You wouldn’t do that when you’re selling to the Jones family because the Joneses are going to need a mack-daddy primary room. But in this case, we’re thinking, “Okay, we got three families staying together. We’re going to mitigate that problem of who gets the better bedroom. We’ll give everybody a great bedroom.”
Why was Conrad the perfect hotel partner for Evermore?
I think the decision we made to have Hilton and Conrad ultimately was a great one. While we have this really innovative residential component and we have this incredible resort oasis experience with Evermore Bay, we also have this really wonderful anchor [in Conrad Orlando], which is a good co-branding exercise. We’ve got a luxury product that lines up with the rest of the resort. We’ve got a hotel that’s going to generate a ton of flow with guests who are going to come for a meeting and are going to be like, “Hey, those [amenities] are pretty cool. Maybe I’ll bring my family back.”
Across the resort, we’ve got 12 food and beverage venues. It goes all the way from a food hall to the signature restaurant on top of the Conrad. It all kind of flows together.
Can families in the vacation rentals freely visit the hotel restaurants and use its amenities?
The only thing that is exclusive to a Conrad guest is a special beach for them, which is adjacent to the hotel. Conrad’s pool and gym [are also exclusive]. But there’s a really nice gym that’s part of the Landing at the other end of the lagoon. The restaurants, the spa and all that stuff are fully available to everyone at Evermore. The Conrad guests have access to everything, but Conrad guests are probably not going to schlep a third of a mile to the [Landing] gym; they’re probably going to go to their own gym.
Inthe luxury set of hotels, Conrad’s a good choice these days because they offer the same kind of quality of service that a Waldorf does, but they do it in a more contemporary environment. There’s a whole design and art aesthetic associated with it that’s quite a bit more modern. Our overall look and feel for the architecture at Evermore was tropical modern. Conrad was a very, very good fit.
The other thing that Hilton and Conrad are really good at is driving meeting business and generating an excellent conference experience. You’ll notice that the hotel has an absolutely awesome meeting facility. It’s got 45,000 square feet inside the ballrooms. It also has the part you probably won’t see — the best back of house in the world, in terms of kitchen facilities, tons of storage, great places for their employees. That’s another example of Dart spending a little bit of extra money on the front end because we’re going to be that long-term owner.
What are a few things that make a hotel stay memorable in your eyes?
I suppose the answers are different based upon whether you’re traveling by yourself for business or family. Let’s talk from a family standpoint. We do travel a lot. We only have one child, so she’s lucky. When we buy plane tickets, we buy three. That’s afforded us a little more flexibility. We’ve gotten to go to a lot of places. But our default [for accommodations] is to first try to rent a home. I do that, in part, because I can get my wife to pack in a carry-on. We have a washer and dryer.
But we found out, when you’re traveling and your kids are really little, having them in your hotel room is fine. But as they get older, it’s not as fine. Having the advantages of a separate place to sleep and a little bit of a common space to gather [is important]. Even if it’s not very big, [individual space] makes such a world of difference in the overall quality of your experience together.
Any other resorts on the horizon?
Yeah, but we are a company that does not announce new projects until we are capital committed. So many developers do that. You see the rendering and then the project never happens. But I will tell you that we are avidly working toward a second iteration of Evermore. We strongly believe that this resort-residential product we’ve created has legs and makes a lot of sense. We’re getting great feedback on it. We think the economics of it work.
What we want ultimately is to have multiple Evermores in diverse locations with different kinds of recreational activities and attractions. We’re focused right now on a mountain environment, which is comfortable to me because that’s where I started my career. I’d love to be actively working on a ski-in, ski-out location. That’s next. We’ll see. Knock on wood.
