Soon, the area’s first Wawa store will move from expectation to brick-and-mortar.
Wawa applied to the city Wednesday for permits to build its first Jacksonville gas station and convenience store at 4866 Town Center Parkway.
Applications show an almost $1.13 million construction cost for the 6,119-square-foot store, canopy and dumpster enclosure.
The store will be built in The Crossing at Town Center, a development by Preferred Growth Properties at Gate and Town Center parkways.
Wawa, based in Pennsylvania, said in June it would enter the Northeast Florida market by the end of 2017 with at least five stores. The other four identified sites, all in different stages of review, are in EastPark, East Arlington, West Jacksonville and Clay County.
In June, Wawa said it had six locations under contract and more under review. Another potential site is in the Oakleaf Corner shopping center, whose preliminary site plan showed space for a store like Wawa. Oakleaf Corner is in Southwest Jacksonville.
Wawa Inc. said it wanted to open 30-40 stores in Northeast Florida over time.
At a cost of at least $5 million in each location and 40 jobs per store, the company is looking at an investment of $150 million and a job base of 1,200 in Northeast Florida for the first 30.
Nero’s Café being demolished
The closed Nero’s Café restaurant in Arlington will be demolished.
The city issued a permit Wednesday for Realco Recycling Co. Inc. to take down the 5,600-square-foot, single-story building at 3607 University Blvd. N.
The property, built in 1977, is owned by Cono D’Alto of Ponte Vedra Beach.
The 0.86-acre site is at northeast University Boulevard North and Fort Caroline Road, Goldstein Commercial Properties Inc. has listed the property for sale.
The site is about a mile north of Jacksonville University.
Barry Goldstein, president of Goldstein Commercial Properties, said Monday the restaurant closed recently and the property owner decided to take down the building and market the site.
Goldstein said they were discussing a listing price. He said he was talking with a few prospects about the property.
“It’s a highly commercialized corner, so it could be most anything,” he said, explaining that office users and retailers like fast food restaurants and gas stations like corner locations.
Aldi clearing Normandy site
Aldi, the discount grocer with three area stores opened and another planned in Town Center Promenade, applied to the city to demolish a former Golden Corral restaurant in West Jacksonville to develop its fifth location.
Aldi Inc. wants to take down the building and parking lot at a construction cost of $22,000 and build a new food market at 7043 Normandy Blvd.
The location is near Interstate 295 and Memorial Park Road.
Site plans for Aldi were filed in April. They showed the no-frills discount chain proposes to redevelop the 2.78-acre site with a store of 18,850 square feet.
Upham Inc. of Ormond Beach is the civil engineer and the developer is Aldi (Florida) LLC based in Haines City.
Aldi’s Promenade store is expected to open in spring 2017. The grocer already operates along Southside Boulevard in Jacksonville, in St. Augustine and in Middleburg.
Aldi also has been identified as a possible anchor at Oakleaf Corner in Southwest Jacksonville.
Grabbagreen showing signs in Brooklyn
Grabbagreen’s signs are going up at its Brooklyn Station on Riverside location, one of the company’s three healthy-food restaurants planned in the area.
The Grabbagreen.com site shows it also will open in Jacksonville Beach at Third Street and Butler Boulevard and in the St. Johns Town Center area at Gate and Town Center parkways.
Grabbagreen, based in Scottsdale, Ariz., sells healthy fast food and juices. It was founded in 2013 and began franchising in 2015, including in Jacksonville.
The menu includes grain- and green-based bowls with hormone-free and antibiotic-free proteins provided by local farms, fresh-pressed juice, smoothies, breakfast and a children’s menu.
A menu example is the Gulf of Mexico bowl with avocado, cayenne, cucumber, egg, green onion, parsley, red onion, shrimp, spinach and creamy avocado sauce. Customers can build their own bowl.
Grabbagreen is leasing almost 2,000 square feet at 90 Riverside Ave. at Brooklyn Station. It will be next to Burrito Gallery.
Taylor Sign & Design will put up two signs at a combined project cost of $4,290.
Bold City Brewery on tap Downtown
The city approved tenant improvements for the Bold City Brewery tap room Downtown at 109 E. Bay St.
Bold City co-founder Susan Miller said in September once the permits were issued, build-out should take about eight weeks.
Dakenna Development Inc. will renovate the 1,745-square-foot space at a project cost of $122,855. Kasper Architect and Development Inc. is the architect.
Bold City said in December it signed a lease for the storefront next to the Cowford Chophouse in space formerly occupied by Forge 3D Printing.
Bold City’s Downtown storefront is owned by Jacques Klempf, who purchased three units in the building next to the Chophouse to design a larger kitchen. Klempf is developing the restaurant in the historic building at Bay and Ocean streets.
The brewery said it was planning a shotgun-style layout, with a three-barrel brewery in the back and a taproom in the front.
Its main brewery and tap room are at 2670 Rosselle St. Hours are 3-11 p.m. Thursday-Friday and 1-11 p.m. Saturday, according to its website.
Ash Properties buys CEVA Building
Triumph Properties Group of California sold the CEVA Building in Deerwood Park last month to a company led by Jacksonville-based Ash Properties
Triumph, through TNT Investment Co. LLC, sold the structure Sept. 26 for $13.25 million to Dewdat LLC.
Dewdat, led by manager Elaine Ashourian, took out a mortgage of $8.5 million from Lincoln National Life Insurance Co. on Sept. 30.
The building, at 10751 Deerwood Park Blvd., was built in 2002.
The three-story, 103,592-square-foot structure sits on 8.7 acres.
TNT Deerwood Investment Co. bought the property in 2004. The company is led by managers Steven and Donald Feder, managing partners of Triumph Properties Group of Beverly Hills.
Triumph Properties Group is a real estate investment, development and management company based in Beverly Hills.
Steven Feder is president of the company, whose portfolio includes 1,600 apartment units and commercial and development sites valued at more than $500 million in California, Arizona, New York and Florida.
Cousins completes Parkway merger
As expected, Cousins Properties Inc. of Atlanta completed its merger Thursday with Orlando-based Parkway Properties Inc.
The common stock is traded under the symbol CUZ on the New York Stock Exchange. The merger agreement was signed April 28 and stockholders approved it as of Aug. 23.
Cousins spun off the Houston assets of the combined company into a new publicly traded REIT called Parkway Inc. on Friday. The common stock of “New Parkway” will trade under the symbol PKY on the NYSE.
Parkway Inc. will be a self-managed real estate investment trust to own, buy, develop and lease Class A office assets in Houston submarkets.
In advance of the merger, Parkway sold its Jacksonville assets. It first sold the Stein Mart Building on the Southbank in July for $23.7 million to Lingerfelt CommonWealth Realty Partners.
In September it sold the Deerwood North, Deerwood South and JTB Center office parks to TPG for $195 million. The properties comprised about 1.3 million square feet of space.
That wasn’t TPG’s first local purchase. In May 2015, a TPG Real Estate company paid almost $37.2 million for warehouse properties at Jacksonville International Tradeport.
The sale comprised eight buildings, totaling more than 903,000 square feet of space, sold by Flagler Development.
At the time, TPG’s Evergreen Industrial Properties company said it was actively seeking to grow its portfolio in select U.S. markets, with Jacksonville a high-priority.
A spokeswoman for TPG, based in Fort Worth, Texas, declined comment on the September acquisition and on Evergreen’s comments last year.
Baptist Med of S.C. buys Regency building
Property owner Dennis Doyle Jr. sold a Regency area building Sept. 28 to Baptist Med LLC of South Carolina.
Doyle sold the Baptist Primary Care building at 9090 Regency Square Blvd. N. for $4.285 million to a partnership with Realty Trust Inc. in Bluffton, S.C.
Capital Bank Corp. of Columbia, S.C., issued a $3.1 million mortgage to Baptist Med on Sept. 26.
The deed lists Baptist Med’s address in Bluffton, S.C., while the mortgage shows it on Hilton Head Island, although both have the same street address.
Baptist Med LLC managers are David M. Strong, president of Realty Trust; Nicholas Dzendzel, a commercial real estate broker with Realty Trust; and Med Management LCC. Strong and Dzendzel are managers of Med Management.
Doyle sold the structure through Dennis M. Doyle Jr., individually, and as the trustee of the Dennis M. Doyle Jr. Revocable Living Trust. He bought the building in January 2015.
Strong said Tuesday his group buys medical buildings, primarily in the Southeast, and already owns the Beaches Medical Pavilion in Jacksonville Beach.
He said the group always is in the market for quality buildings and tenants and it buys for the long-term. The group wants to buy more assets in the Southeast, including Jacksonville.
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