Target Wins Big-Box Fight; Multifamily Developer Loses in Rural-Urban Sprawl Faceoff

ORLANDO-It was the classic textbook scenario of big-box development versus small-town ambience in one part of Lake County, and rural lifestyle clashing with urban sprawl in another.

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.”