Veteran retail developer planning grocery and apartments at key Narcoossee intersection

For the second time in six months, a local developer is pitching a mixed-use project at a key intersection in the Narcoossee overlay.

Winter Park-based Retail Development Properties has a purchase contract on the 27.6-acre assemblage at the southwest corner of Narcoossee and Jack Brack roads. The developer has filed a pre-application meeting request with Osceola County’s Development Review Committee to discuss the conceptual plan that includes a grocery-anchored retail center and 250+ unit apartment complex on a 12-acre lot.

RDP would locate a fuel station/convenience store at the corner and three retail outparcels fronting directly on Narcoossee. The grocery store would have over 20,000 square feet of attached inline retail. AVID Group’s Peter Pensa is the civil engineer.

“This is 100-percent conceptual,” RDP Principal Bobby Gierke told GrowthSpotter. “We just got it under contract, and we’ve tailored a concept plan to what we think is the highest and best use.”

Whether the density and intensity fits in with the Narcoossee Overlay’s stringent design guidelines remains to be seen. That’s why Gierke’s looking for feedback from the planning staff.

“We are meeting with county to get their input on design and uses,” he said. “We tend to try to develop our projects as proposed, but we may have to make some changes to fit in with the neighborhood. We’re anxious to see how the multifamily piece we’ve proposed works out.”

The site should be familiar to the DRC members. Last September InVenture Group Principal Mike Bagdonas held a pre-app meeting for the same site. His concept called for 122 residential units – primarily townhouses with a handful of detached homes on larger lots – with roughly 40,000 square feet of commercial uses, including a self-storage facility.

The site is less than eight miles from Medical City. All three of the parcels are under the same ownership and are listed for $8.4 million. Cheree Fairley, a broker for AFR Commercial Real Estate in Fort Lauderdale, has the exclusive listing.

Narcoossee Road is one of Osceola County’s fastest-growing corridor but it has a notable lack of grocery retail north of U.S. 192. Daryl Carter, president of Maurey L. Carter and Associates, has proposed a 10-acre grocery-anchored retail project at the Cyrils Drive intersection, about 2.2 miles north of Jack Brack Road. Both are major east-west corridors linking Narcoossee to the future Sunbridge development, and both are seeing extensive residential development now.

Tavistock-owned Century Homes currently has three residential communities in development on Jack Brack. KB Home and D.R. Horton are also actively building on Jack Brack.

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