ORLANDO-The developer of master-planned community here in the southeast part of the city is planning a 1.5-million-sf retail center to be developed in the style of a town center. Lake Nona Town Center will be part of the 7,000-acre master-planned community called Lake Nona being developed by the locally based Tavistock Group.

The open-air Lake Nona Town Center is being planned for a hybrid of yet-to-be-named lifestyle, big box and department stores. Tavistock management is planning a fall 2008 opening for the first phase of the center, which will consist of the big box-tenants, Jeff Mason, the firm's director of commercial development, tell GSR.

Lake Nona Town Center will by far be Tavistock's largest retail development. The firm could take on a joint-venture partner to assist on the project, but that might not be necessary Mason says. "The team we've assembled has plenty of retail and commercial-development experience." The firm has also developed the Publix-anchored Cascades at Isleworth center, also in Orlando.

Mason compares the vision of Lake Nona Town Center to Plaza Collina, a 1.2-million-sf project the Sembler Co. is working on in the Orlando suburb of Clermont. But "we'll push the fashion envelope a little big more," he says.

Tavistock has not yet worked out a total cost for Lake Nona Town Center, but the company plans to spend about $100 million by the end of the year on infrastructure costs to the entire master-planned site. Directly south of the retail center will be a campus for the University of Central Florida College of Medicine.

Other uses near the center will include an aquatic center and a 300-acre community park. All of Lake Nona will take about eight years to build out, and Tavistock is adding about 1,000 homes a year to the site, which is slated for about 9,000 residential units. The firm also developed the Lake Nona Golf & Country Club in the mid-1980s, which is currently on the property.

Lake Nona Town Center will not be the only shopping arena being developed at Lake Nona. The Burke, VA-based Van Metre Cos. is breaking ground in the fall on Lake Nona Village, a mixed-use plan in the northern part of Lake Nona that will have more service-oriented retail.