Home Depot is also completing an $8 million, 129,000-sf, 30-acre transfer distribution center near a newly planned Super Target site at Hancock Road and State Road 50.

Home Depot also operates a five-year-old, 140,000-sf home improvement center in Ocoee, 15 miles from Clermont which is 25 miles west of Downtown Orlando.

The Don Casto Organization of Orlando is developing the new retail center for Home Depot. The project is expected to break ground before yearend and be completed within 12 months, local subcontractors familiar with comparable construction projects tell GlobeSt.com on condition of anonymity.

"We're seeing a whole new retail submarket being developed on the outskirts of Orlando," Dean Fritchen, senior associate, Arvida Realty Services Commercial Division, Winter Park, FL, tells GlobeSt.com.

Elected Clermont officials faced a potential court challenge from Home Depot and the Orlando developer if they had not approved the project, area brokers intimate with the transaction tell GlobeSt.com on condition of anonymity.

The city council set a precedent in February of this year when it bent its own rules on the 100,000-sf cap for big-box ventures.

The city approved a $15 million, 187,000-sf SuperTarget store for the Minneapolis-based retailer near a site formerly proposed for a 200,000-sf Super Wal-Mart store at the southeast corner of U.S. 27 and State Road 50, the busiest intersection in south Lake County. Suzanne Pinel Hayes of CB Richard Ellis Inc., Orlando, represents Target in that deal.

Wal-Mart sold its 32-acre site to Atlanta-based Candler Development Corp. for an estimated $2.5 million or $78,125 per acre ($1.80 per sf) after Clermont rejected is planned 125,000-sf, $10 million store proposal.

Candler Development, headed by Dick Candler, plans to construct up to seven restaurants and at least a 100-room hotel on the site in two 14-acre stages, as GlobeSt.com reported Nov. 6.