About 45 acres west of St. Johns Town Center is under contract for potential development into mixed uses, including retail stores, multifamily residential, office space and a hotel.
A.C. “Chip” Skinner III, one of the Skinner family members that own the property, said Friday the property is under contract. He referred questions to Cantrell & Morgan Inc., who he said is representing the buyer.
The Cantrell & Morgan website shows the “new mixed use development at St. Johns Town Center” and says it is a development by Preferred Growth Properties.
Preferred Growth Properties is a subsidiary of Birmingham, Ala.-based Books-A-Million and already owns the Mandarin South Shopping Center in Jacksonville. Books-A-Million Real Estate Vice President Jay Turner did not return an email late Friday afternoon or respond to a message left on his cellphone. His work voicemail was not accepting messages.
A map on the Cantrell & Morgan site shows the property among three parcels.
A 15.7-acre site sits across Town Center Parkway from Mimi’s Café, Ameris Bank and a traffic light. An adjacent 20.58-acre site is across Town Center Parkway from Best Buy and Toys R Us, also at a traffic light. Both of those sites border the lake.
The third parcel, 9.29 acres, is just across Gate Parkway where Town Center Parkway connects at a traffic signal. That site is across Gate Parkway from CVS and Pollo Tropical. Details for that property show three retail buildings, a bank and a hotel, according to a preliminary site plan by England-Thims & Miller Inc.
Jacksonville-based Cantrell & Morgan is a full-service commercial real estate brokerage firm that offers tenant representation, leasing, acquisition and disposition, property management, REO, consulting and development services.
CEO Chris Morgan did not return a phone call or email late Friday afternoon.
Preferred Growth Properties is one of the three business unit of Books-A-Million, along with traditional book retailing and online retailing. The real estate business owns, develops and leases commercial retail estate.
Preferred Growth Properties focuses on generating revenue through developing and leasing commercial retail real estate for the purpose of earning rental income.
It owns and operates four shopping centers in Florence and Gardendale, Ala.; Fayetteville, N.C.; and Jacksonville, totaling 316,000 square feet. It bought Mandarin South in July for $5.3 million.
Skinner said he is one of nine family members that own the property. He said Friday the property was in due diligence and would not identify the buyer nor say how many acres were involved because he was under a confidentiality agreement.
The site sparked speculation last fall when the Skinner family cleared trees on some of the property. Skinner said then that as part of an ongoing forest and timber management plan, mature trees were being harvested at southeast and southwest Gate Parkway and Butler Boulevard and that work would soon begin at the northwest area near the Town Center. He said Friday the family has been thinning the timber holdings.
The Skinner family also was the dealmaker that resulted in development of the Town Center, which opened its first phase in March 2005. The family owned that property and sold it to the developers.
Now a retail and even tourist attraction, the Town Center features exclusive retailers in the market such as Nordstrom, Tiffany & Co., the Apple Store, Louis Vuitton and others. The Town Center area also features luxury apartments and a suites hotel.
Cantrell & Morgan’s property details refer to the St. Johns Town Center and adjacent The Markets at Town Center, with more than 2 million square feet of retail development.
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