Kissimmee shopping center developer confirms tenant line-up, including possible hospital

The developer behind Kissimmee’s largest mixed-use project will bring a new grocery store, a fitness chain, home improvement store, restaurants, hotels and a possible medical campus to the 85-acre site.

Ocean Bleu Group paid $21.77 million in December for the site that sits directly across from The LOOP. CEO Bryan Schultz revealed to GrowthSpotter the tenant lineup that would comprise about 85 percent of the net usable space in the shopping center he’s calling The Square at Osceola Parkway.

Floor & Decor will take the largest retail box with roughly 80,000 square feet. Other confirmed tenants have signed ground leases for retail pads fronting on Osceola Parkway: Buffalo Wild Wings, Arby’s, Del Taco and Panera Bread.

Schultz said he has Letters of Intent from Aldi Food Market, Texas Roadhouse, Another Broken Egg Cafe, Sleep Number, Pacific Dental and a gas station/convenience store. EOS Fitness, an Arizona-based chain that recently entered the Florida market with three locations on the Gulf Coast, would open its first Orlando-area store.

Schultz said he’s also had interest from a financial institution and car wash groups, and he’s in early discussions with a medical user to take the entire southeast quadrant of the shopping center. “It could be MOB, medical office building, and maybe a hospital attached,” he said.

The Planned Unit Development is entitled for 320,000 square feet of office, 521,000 square feet of retail, 300 hotel rooms and 400 multifamily units.

“We’ve had an offer from a hotel,” he told GrowthSpotter.

The 35-acre multifamily portion of the site has garnered significant interest, and Schultz expects to close a deal by the end of the month. “We probably had over 15 LOIs for the multifamily – serious offers,” he said.

Berkshire Realty’s Jared Ettinger and John Park represented Ocean Bleu on the purchase and are heading the leasing and sales for the shopping center.

“I believe six other developers have tried to develop this piece, historically, so obviously the demand was there from the retailers, but the developers really couldn’t figure out solution," Ettinger said. “So I was very impressed with Bryan’s ability to kind of crack this nut."

The timing was fortuitous, too. Ocean Bleu came into the picture after Epoch Residential had bought the 74 acres immediately south of the property and entitled it for up to 788 multifamily units. Under the terms of the Flora Ridge PUD, Epoch was solely responsible for extending Ball Park Road from Thacker Avenue to Dyer Boulevard.

“That was the delta that really made this thing come together, because of the cost savings,” Ettinger said. “It made a huge difference.”

The project goes back to Kissimmee’s DRC in February for a final site plan approval, at which time Schultz will submit construction plans.

“Hopefully by late April or May, we can start construction,” he said. “We’re going to mass grade the whole site and put in the infrastructure and utilities. Then we’ll start pulling permits for the individual pads. We should be able to deliver the finished sites to the end users in December."

Ettinger said he and Park targeted tenants, like Aldi and EOS, that would be less impacted by e-commerce. “Obviously in today’s world big boxes are not as aggressively expanding, so that was a challenge,” he said. “But we were really surprised on this site by the amount of demand that we had from various retailers.”

In fact, demand has been so high Ocean Bleu just signed a purchase contract for another 10-plus acres just west of the site, at the southeast corner of Osceola Parkway and Ball Park Road. The land is also part of the Flora Ridge PUD.

“I can do hotel, retail – pretty much everything I can do on this site, I can do here,” Schultz said.

Have a tip about Central Florida development? Contact me at lkinsler@GrowthSpotter.com or (407) 420-6261, or tweet me at @LKinslerOGrowth. Follow GrowthSpotter on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.