Developer Creating $150M Mixed-Use Project on Old Sand Mine Site

ORLANDO-Clermont, FL-based Arlington LLC and Carlson Commercial Builders Inc. have started clearing the former E.R. Jahna sand mine on State Road 50 on Groveland, FL’s city limits where Bella Fonte, a planned $150 million, 466-unit single-family and townhome community is planned, along with 250,000 sf of commercial.

Bella Fonte will look like a typical French village with apartments and offices located over shops. The project also may copy several of the features at Celebration, FL and Winter Park Village, eight miles north of Downtown Orlando. Those projects are generally regarded as textbook examples of the new urban village look.

The project will take Clermont developer Dan Hessburg seven years to complete. But even if he doesn’t have the so-called critical mass of population that all comparable projects demand, he isn’t overly worried on where the residents and tenants will come from in an area where Groveland, a pioneer citrus town, has only 3,100 permanent residents.