Baptist Health Care to build Dairy Queen on Heritage Harbour land

A nonprofit Pensacola health care system will build a Dairy Queen restaurant in Heritage Harbour as a money maker for its hospitals and clinics.

Through a subsidiary company, Baptist Health Care, a privately owned network of hospitals and medical and behavioral health care clinics, recently paid $2.09 million for 5 acres at the corner of State Road 64 and Heritage Green Way, according to Manatee County property records. The location is at the easternmost entrance to the growing Heritage Harbour master-planned community.

The May 12 purchase was made by a for-profit company related to the behavioral health care section of Baptist Health, its Lakeview Center division.

Tra Williams, the chief operating officer for that for-profit, Lakeview Associated Enterprises, said his company has submitted a development application to Manatee County for the Dairy Queen Grill and Chill. The restaurant will be the third his company has opened, joining others in Riverview and Land O’Lakes. Profits from those restaurants are donated back to the Baptist Health system as charitable contributions.

Williams said he expects the Heritage Harbour Dairy Queen will open by Halloween.

Heritage Harbour is just more than 50 percent built out to a planned total of 5,000 homes. It is the second-largest master-planned community in Manatee County behind Lakewood Ranch.

The seller in the transaction, the Starling Group of Sarasota, bought the acreage for $978,700 in 2003.

Commercial property owners in Heritage Harbour hold entitlements for about 1 million square feet of construction, according to county planning officials. Sarasota Memorial Hospital opened a 28,000-square-foot urgent care clinic there in 2008. It is about a block northwest of Baptist Health’s land acquisition.

Commercial development in the Heritage Harbour area has picked up in the past year, with a new mini storage facility and a RaceTrac gas station opening recently. Fast food restaurants remain sparse along that section of SR 64. The selection includes a Dunkin’ Donuts and a McDonalds located where the highway intersects with Lakewood Ranch Boulevard. A new Taco Bell is slated for construction near Haile Middle School.

Baptist Health’s health facilities are all in the western part of Florida’s Panhandle near the Alabama border. According to its website, it is planning to open two new medical parks in Pace and Pensacola in 2017.

This story was originally published May 27, 2016 at 5:28 PM with the headline "Baptist Health Care to build Dairy Queen on Heritage Harbour land."