Minneapolis-based Target Stores Inc. won the big-box fight in Clermont, an Orlando bedroom community of 8,234 residents, while locally-based Harbor Hills, a mixed-use development, lost an expansion effort to build an additional 1,400 homes, 50,000 sf of retail and two golf courses outside of Lady Lake, FL, 45 miles northwest of Downtown Orlando.

For Orlando-based Maury L. Carter & Associates Inc., the Target store victory culminated a three-year lobbying and permit-application effort. "We did everything the city and the residents asked us to do," the firm's president, Daryl M. Carter, tells GlobeSt.com. "We wanted to be good neighbors and we are good neighbors."

Daryl Carter and his father, Maury L. Carter, have donated land and other real estate services to Clermont area civic, medical and educational institutions for the past 15 years. Still, residents' opposition to the planned 186,500-sf superstore was fierce. Activist groups see the store as another outgrowth of Orlando's expanding 45 million-sf metro retail market.