A new Aldi Food Market is under construction now on U.S. 192 in the heart of the Four Corners submarket, and it’s drawing more retail to the area.
Lally Development Inc., founded by Orlando auto dealer Jaz Lally and his son, Nick, will break ground in May on Shoppes of Sunset Cove, a 21,456-square-foot shadow center to the new Aldi at the corner of W192 and Town Center Boulevard, in Clermont.
The site is directly across W192 from the Publix at Summer Bay in Lake County and has 600 feet of frontage on W192. This is the first ground-up retail construction project for the newly formed company.
“We bought (the property) in 2014, and we’ve been engaged for the last three years to get it to this stage,” Jaz Lally told GrowthSpotter. He said the Aldi next door “nudged us” to move the project forward.
Aldi purchased the adjacent 2.46 acres at 9550 US Hwy. 192 last September for $2 million and received a building permit in the fall for the 23,000-square-foot grocery store. Matt Thon, vice president of Aldi’s Haines City Division, confirmed that the store is scheduled to open in June.
The Lallys engaged Eleven 18 Architecture to design the complex with Class A finishes, including stacked stone accents and a color palette of earth tones with pops of orange and spa-green. RLH Construction is the GC.
“The quality of the center is very nice, architecturally speaking,” Lally said. “It will be the nicest-looking center on our area of 192.”
Nick Lally said the company is investing $125,000 in the monument sign with a 5-foot Samsung LED videoboard for all of the tenants to use. “It’s a colossal sign, and it’s going to be a huge amenity for our tenants,” he said.
LandQwest‘s Galvin Oakes and Eva Grace Royal are heading up the leasing for Shoppes at Sunset Cove, which has 14 tenant spaces ranging in size from a 1,200 to 4,600 square feet. LandQwest is targeting a restaurant user for the 3,000-square-foot end cap space.
“We’re making it a priority to get a breakfast restaurant for the end cap,” Jaz Lally said. “The reason is we have a vacation resort community we’re developing behind it, and we feel it would make a good complement.”
The Lallys have secured site plan approval for the 100-unit townhome complex, dubbed Sunset Cove at Four Corners. The units would be sold to individual owners and managed by a firm specializing in vacation rental properties.
The first phase would include 10 units, plus a resort clubhouse with pool and fitness center. All but 18 of the townhomes also will have a private, screened-in plunge pool.
“We wanted to offer two-tier unit pricing, so we have some smaller floorplans without pools,” Jaz Lally said. They also tried to design in energy deficiencies, such as natural gas water heaters and pool heaters, to keep utility costs down.
The Lallys are banking on the success of this project to propel their new development business forward in other tourist-centric locations. “This is definitely an avenue we want to pursue,” Jaz Lally said.
Aldi, too, has been in aggressive expansion mode. The Town Center Boulevard location marks the company’s second new store in the red hot Four Corners area. Aldi paid $2.3 million last year for 2.32 acres in the new County Line Commons shopping center near ChampionsGate and Reunion. That store is also under construction.
The popular German grocer is also opening a new store in Lake Wales and adding 200,000 square feet to its Haines City distribution center to accommodate the company’s Central Florida expansion.
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