Two side-by-side big box retail stores are set to feature as anchor locations within the Hills of Minneola’s planned town center, Minneola Marketplace.
With over 340,000 combined square feet of retail space, the two stores — northeast of the intersection of North Hancock Road and Citrus Grove Road, southwest of Minneola’s turnpike interchange — will command over 38 acres and parking spaces for over 1,400 cars. The site plan and building footprints are nearly identical to the side-by-side Walmart Supercenter and Sam’s Club announced last month in Davenport.
The 74-acre mixed-use Minneola Marketplace site will be developed by SunTerra Communities, based out of Oviedo.
“We’re pretty excited about it at this point,” SunTerra Principal Richard Jerman said. “We know getting through the process and approvals will be a challenge, because it’s not maybe what a lot of people visualized, but it’s the best thing for the residents of Minneola.”
A future addition to the growing Hills of Minneola area straddling the Florida’s Turnpike, the mixed-use development is set to include four out-parcel lots, a convenience store, a gas station, luxury multifamily apartments, and big-box stores.
“Once we get past the approval hurdles and people understand what we’re trying to do, I think they’ll ultimately be excited and it’ll provide a great shopping experience and a very convenient shopping experience,” Jerman said.
The Bentonville, Arkansas, retail giant announced plans in 2023 to open 30 new Sam’s Club membership stores across the nation and introduced a new larger 160,000-square-foot prototype store.
The initial development agreement for the town center was approved back in 2006, long before the project had a conceptual site plan approved in 2023.
Early site plans indicated the development would include 10 restaurants, a 90,000-square-foot retail lifestyle center, a four-story hotel, a 70,000-square-foot mixed-use office building, a gas station, a convenience store and bike-accessible trails.
The plan was ultimately scrapped in favor of the current arrangement due to “market factors” related to attracting users for the site as originally designed, according to Jerman.
“There was not a market for what we had,” he said. “There was always a market for the outparcels, but there was not a market for some of the interior stuff that we had developed and so we needed an anchor. We needed an anchor or two, which we didn’t have in that deal.”
Under contract with Bainbridge Companies, the luxury apartment complex will contain 300 multifamily units spread across five four-story buildings on just over 11 acres within the mixed-use development.
The apartment complex within Minneola Marketplace will be the first for Bainbridge in Lake County, with their other luxury apartment offerings available near Lake Nona and along the area’s tourist corridor.
Bob Thollander, president of development with Bainbridge, said the Minneola project is in its due diligence period and will contain amenities such as a resort-style swimming pool, large clubhouse, dog park and pickleball courts.
“It’s immediately adjacent to the new Turnpike interchange, and we’re pretty happy with the site,” he said. “It’s a high-growth area of Lake County, and we think it has a lot of potential.”
Sun Terra sold nearly 4,000 single-family lots in Hills of Minneola to homebuilders, such as Meritage, Dream Finders, Starlight and Pulte for a Del Webb active adult community.
The town center is one of two planned commercial hubs within the 1,883-acre master-planned Hills of Minneola community, along with the Hills City Center.
Sun Terra Communities sold about 300 acres of undeveloped non-residential property to Skorman Development in 2021 for $29 million, with Skorman using the land for 1,039 mixed-use multifamily units in the city center. Winter Garden brewery Crooked Can, in conjunction with Skorman, has broken ground a new 42,000-square-foot mixed-use brewery, taproom, and food hall set to debut next year within the Hills City Center.
The master-planned community also includes a new AdventHealth hospital, medical offices, retail, dining and an industrial park on about 170 acres. Skorman is working with Strategic Real Estate Partners on development of the industrial park, selling 83 acres to the Atlanta-based industrial real estate agency for $21.1 million last month.
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