Seminole County Eyes 172,000-Square-Foot Indoor Sports Complex Near Boombah

Seminole County commissioners reviewed three concept plans during a March 10 retreat for a proposed indoor sports complex near the Boombah Sports Complex on Lake Mary Boulevard, with the largest option stretching to nearly 172,000 square feet and carrying a price tag of up to $100 million.

The site under consideration sits less than a mile from Boombah, on land near the Sanford airport in the Moores Station Fields area. Concept plans range from roughly 70,000 square feet on the low end to 172,000 square feet for the full-scale option, which would include a parking deck. A second plan without the deck would cost around $66 million.

To fund the project without drawing on general tax revenue, the county created a Tourism Improvement District earlier this year and approved a $1.75 nightly per-room fee for hotels with 60 or more rooms. That fee is projected to generate $3.2 million annually, according to county estimates. Guilherme "Gui" Cunha, director of the Office of Economic Development and Tourism, said the county intends to rely primarily on that tourist revenue stream. "We are very confident," Cunha said.

However, the $3.2 million annual yield falls well short of what would be needed to finance a $100 million construction cost, and county officials acknowledged they would need to identify additional funding sources if they pursue the larger option.

Boombah, which opened in 2016 as an outdoor venue off East Lake Mary Boulevard, handled 46 events in the last fiscal year, drawing 99,136 visitors and producing 14,197 hotel bookings, according to county data. Tourism division manager Danny Trosset said the outdoor model has plateaued. "As you can see, the [tourism] forecast is flat. We have to find creative ways to right the plateau. And the indoor sports complex is going to allow us to bring in new visitors and new events," Trosset said. The average daily hotel rate in Seminole County dropped 2.4 percent in 2025 to $103.97, down from $106.55 in 2024.

Skye Buckner, director of sales at the Orlando Marriott Lake Mary, said the timing problem is structural: "A new indoor facility will bring visitors and fill hotels throughout the year instead of just in the late winter and early spring, the peak time for visitors to Central Florida."

Parks and Recreation Director Rick Durr stressed that the facility needs to serve multiple functions beyond tournaments. "We do need to make this a multi-purpose site," Durr said, listing high school graduations, banquets, and post-hurricane sheltering among the intended uses. Seminole County currently lacks an indoor venue large enough to host a countywide graduation ceremony.

District 5 Commissioner Andria Herr framed the gap as an urgent community need. "Think about all the nonprofits that can now host larger events right here in this county that right now we don't have that ability," she said. "Graduation, in our county, we can't do that right now either. There's a great impact to our community for this. I do support it."

Not all commissioners were ready to commit without tighter financial clarity. Lee Constantine said he backs the project conditionally: "I'm willing to do anything as long as we've got the numbers to do it because I see this as a winner, but I want to make sure it's a winner and not just a 70,000 square-foot building that's just sitting there." Commissioner Amy Lockhart called for sustained public communication: "I think continuing the communication on what this is and how it's paid for is critically important as we continue to roll this out."

Robert Agrusa, CEO of the Central Florida Hotel & Lodging Association, backed the investment from the hospitality side. "There is big business in sports tourism, especially amateur sports business. So we want to keep driving that to our destination," Agrusa said. Jason Siegel of the Greater Orlando Sports Commission added that Central Florida already commands attention from event organizers: "It's not an accident we're as busy as we are."

Local hotels have agreed to tax themselves through the Tourism Improvement District, with county officials expressing hopes to begin construction in 2027. No construction contracts or procurement timelines have been confirmed.