Construction industry estimators at area general contracting firms tell GlobeSt.com the project, Winter Garden Mall at Fowler Groves, will probably be built at about $75 per sf or a total $98 million. Sembler is targeting a fall 2006 opening date, county officials tell GlobeSt.com, but a ground-breaking date hasn't been set because all of the needed local and state approvals are still pending.

The project would be the largest of its kind in Central Florida in the last 10 years, retail brokers following the market tell GlobeSt.com. Winter Garden and neighboring Ocoee, both largely citrus-industry oriented 20 years ago, are considered the next big retail hot spots in the region, area consultants and planners tell GlobeSt.com

Construction of 10 other smaller open-air shopping centers is under way in metro Orlando. The combined four million sf of new space at these projects would bring Central Florida's total retail real estate inventory in a four-county market to about 54 million sf, according to previously published studies by local brokerages.