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.
Their vision appears to be on target. For example, Atlanta-based Home Depot is making initial application to build a 110,000-sf warehouse store nearby at State Road 50 and Hook Street.
The victory was especially satisfying to Maury L. Carter & Associates since a Target competitor, Wal-Mart Stores Inc., failed to sway the city two years ago to OK a planned 210,000-sf superstore at Clermont's busiest intersection, US 27 and State Road 50.
Carter is developing the store for Target, which plans to buy the property when it is completed in 2002. Ground-breaking is tentatively scheduled for spring. The store's estimated hard construction cost is $23 million. The Target store will anchor the developer's planned 202,500-sf Hancock Center at State Road 50 and Hancock Road scheduled to be built at an estimated cost of $30 million.
Meanwhile, 20 miles north of the Target project, Lake County commissioners rejected by a 4-1 vote the expansion effort by the Harbor Hills development. The vote came even after the county's planning and zoning commission had earlier voted 6-4 to approve the new work.
Strident opposition from resident activist groups convinced the commissioners the project would create uncontrollable traffic problems and disrupt the residents' rural lifestyle. Harbor Hills officials say they will continue to work up another proposal in the near future that will satisfy both residents and the county.
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