Coming to a neighborhood near you – maybe – is a $625 million 49-story condo project which will sit near Universal and Sandlake on Lakehurst Drive. It is slated to accommodate over, wait for it… 1,188 condos (no, you read that right). Convention space and retail are expected to swallow up another couple of hundred thousand square feet.

Planned at 500 feet tall, it would stand sixty feet above the SunTrust building – Orlando’s tallest building at present (featured atop of each CondoMetropolis.com web page) and sixty-four feet higher than the Federal Aviation Authority will likely allow. Ooops.

Miami-based architects say that Atlantis could break ground by mid 2008 (okaaay) and is described as a mix of condos, timeshares and a condo hotel.

Amid a collapsing real estate market with condo construction on hold left and right, buyers failing to close on contracts they wrote two years ago and condo hotel mortgages as dead as Monty Python’s Norwegian Parrot, it’s hard to imagine this thing will ever see the first spade of dirt moved. Pre-sale requirements are likely to top 300 and I can’t see the developers asking for less than 20% down. There are pre-construction condos around at the moment that don’t have a single presale – and with 2008 predicted to be as thrilling 2007, one has to wonder what these guys have been smoking.

Are they crazy? Or am I? Chime in!