The Home Depot has filed construction plans for the site of the long-closed Kmart in the Mandarin area.
The St. Johns River Water Management District is reviewing an environmental resource permit application filed Jan. 18 for the store at 9600 San Jose Blvd. at northwest San Jose Boulevard and Old St. Augustine Road.
Home Depot intends to demolish the existing structure and build a 133,123-square-foot home improvement center that includes a 25,225-square-foot garden center on the 11.5-acre site, according to construction plans filed with the application.
The project comprises 106,208 square feet for the building along with the garden center and vestibules and other space.
There also is site and parking lot work, including an 8,575-square-foot outdoor seasonal sales area outside the garden center.
The environmental resource permit application shows Home Depot U.S.A. Inc. as the applicant and the operation and maintenance entity; Kimley-Horn and Associates Inc. of Vero Beach as the civil engineer and the registered professional consultant; WD Partners of Dublin, Ohio, as the architect; and Jacksonville-based Ash Properties as the owner through its affiliated Onoudidnt Inc.
The site of the closed Kmart was identified last year for redevelopment as a Home Depot, but the company has not commented about it.
The city issued a mobility fee calculation certificate March 21, 2023, for a 134,592-square-foot Home Depot at the property.
Mobility fees are calculated to mitigate a development’s traffic impact. No fee was shown. The location was previously a Kmart, a similar use.
The application explains the closed 105,737-square-foot Kmart would be demolished.
Ash Properties has not responded to questions about The Home Depot.
The 11.5-acre site does not include the separately owned Zaxby’s restaurant along San Jose Boulevard in front of the building.
There are a dozen Home Depot stores in Northeast Florida. Home Depot has not commented.
Property records show the building was developed in 1979.
Through Atlantic Mini-Storage of America Inc., Ash Properties paid almost $4.39 million for the property Dec. 1, 2015.
Kmart closed there in 2016 but continued to lease the property until parent company Sears Holdings Corp. filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in October 2018.
Ash Properties said in October 2019 that it intended to renovate the building for several large and possibly a few smaller tenants.
That plan comprised interior demolition, storefront work, roofing and more to convert the building into an empty shell in preparation for tenant build-out.
Sun-Ray Cinema, an independent two-screen theater in Five Points, announced Sept. 28, 2019, on its Facebook page it would expand with a five-screen theater in the Mandarin building, but those plans didn’t play out, especially as the 2020 pandemic shut down entertainment venues.
Ash Properties said then that the theater would take less than 30,000 square feet, leaving about 85,000 square feet for more tenants.
“We’re going to be beautifying that corner,” Ash Properties principal Elaine Ashourian said at the time.