Central Park Station would bring grocery, more commercial to Ranch

Developer Pat Neal is proposing to build Central Park Station, a 119,650-square-foot commercial development on 16.8 acres south of 44th Avenue East and east of Lakewood Ranch Boulevard.

Central Park Station would be anchored by a 43,613-square-foot grocery store, 9,000 square feet of in-line retail, a gas station and convenience store, and five outparcels totaling 65,637 square feet.

Plans for the proposed shopping center, located next to Neal’s Central Park neighborhood and near Lake Erie College of Osteopathic Medicine, are working their way through the county permitting process.

“I have definite prospects for the stores, but I can’t reveal who they are,” Neal said. “We want a high-quality grocer and we will be working with them all.”

Start of construction on the shopping center is dependent on the county awarding the contracts for completing the final links in 44th Avenue East, probably about 2020, Neal said.

Completion of 44th Avenue would open a new east-west corridor, via Cortez Road, between Lakewood Ranch and Anna Maria Island.

“All I am doing is planning for the future,” Neal said.

Neal, best known as a home builder, has built shopping centers in the past, but they were smaller and completed about 20 years ago.

Neal Communities announced in September that all 825 home sites in the Central Park neighborhood had sold out.

Neal broke ground on Central Park seven years ago, when most developers were holding off on starting new projects because of the Great Recession.

The pace of construction at Lakewood Ranch north of State Road 70 has picked up in recent years.

Tavistock Development Company is developing The Green at Lakewood Ranch, a 525,000-square-foot mixed-use development on the northeast corner of State Road 70 and Lakewood Ranch Boulevard. Anchors at The Green would be an Earth Fare supermarket and an L.A. Fitness.

Recently, Panera Bread filed an application to build a 4,369-square-foot restaurant in The Green shopping center. It would be the first Panera Bread located at Lakewood Ranch.

This story was originally published November 10, 2017 at 2:54 PM with the headline "Central Park Station would bring grocery, more commercial to Ranch."