Target Going Head-to-Head With Wal-Mart in Mount Dora

In this Lake County town, about 30 miles northwest of Downtown Orlando, Target has assembled 22 acres on US 441 North for a planned $20-million, 125,735-sf store tentatively scheduled to open in December 2005, area retail brokers in a position to know tell GlobeSt.com. The Target store will be adjacent to Wal-Mart's 10-year-old, 250,000-sf location but will not compete with Wal-Mart in the grocery line.

Target is expected to pay local landowner Charles Vaughn at least $80,000 per acre, or a premium $40 per sf, for the development site, according to industrial brokers familiar with land prices in Mount Dora and neighboring Eustis and Tavares.

That estimated total $1.8-million price would still be less than the nearly $1.6 million per acre, or $36 per-sf, Wal-Mart paid ($3.1 million) for a choice two-acre parcel in September 2002 to build its first 40,000-sf Neighborhood Watch brand convenience store near the University of Central Florida campus in Oviedo.

In Mount Dora, however, Target still has to pass a crucial zoning hurdle. The retailer is negotiating with a private landowner to extend Spring Harbor Boulevard from Eudora Road to US 441 at the entrance of the planned Target store. Without the Spring Harbour Boulevard extension, the store couldn't be built, city officials have previously stated. The reason: Mount Dora doesn't want US 441 to become another retail-clogged Semoran Boulevard site (State Road 436) as it has in the Orlando suburb of Altamonte Springs.

Target has existing Lake County stores in Clermont; the Villages in Lady Lake; and at Lake Square Mall in Leesburg.