City council members hope Galleria will turn out to be a mini-version of Walt Disney World's Downtown Celebration community in neighboring Osceola County.

Developer Dale Ladd's Highland Realty Co. is demolishing the former South Lake Hospital building and plans to break ground by year end on 45,600 sf of office, 24,600 sf of retail, 14,000 sf of restaurant and 9,000 sf of residential. The project is expected to take three years to complete, area brokers following the venture tell GlobeSt.com.

"Lake County isn't exactly the fastest place in the hemisphere to issue building permits, even though the county generally is considered pro-development," an industrial real estate broker tells GlobeSt.com on condition of anonymity.

Ladd couldn't be reached at GlobeSt.com's publication deadline to learn the project's hard construction cost. But area construction industry estimators tell GlobeSt.com the project can't be done for less than $100 per sf or a total $10 million.

"It will transform Downtown and be a real incentive for new business" startups and relocations, Howard Stockton, executive director, South Lake Chamber of Commerce, tells GlobeSt.com. The chamber estimates there are 1,500 existing businesses within an eight-mile radius of Downtown Clermont.

Tied in with Galleria is the expected July 1 ground-breaking of a $4.5 million, 30,000-sf City Hall building Downtown. "The whole Downtown area is changing quickly, along with outlying areas," Stockton says.

National retailers and grocers such as Home Depot, Lowe's, Target, Publix and Wal-Mart spotted the Clermont population surge at least five years ago.

Stockton says his 2001 numbers show a permanent population of 147,178 in a 15-mile radius; 62,561 in a 10-mile radius; and 32,773 within a five-mile radius from Clermont city limits to State Road 50 and U.S. 27. Clermont proper, 25 miles west of Downtown Orlando, has a permanent population of 10,000.