Wiregrass To Add More Shops & Luxury Apartments

The developer of The Shops at Wiregrass is moving forward with plans for a second phase just east of the mall that would include more retail and luxury apartments.

County planners already have met with officials from Forest City Enterprises to discuss the expansion. Preliminary plans call for another 200,000 square feet of retail fronting on State Road 56 with a 248-unit apartment complex behind the shopping center.

Abbas Hasan, planning director for Forest City, said the shopping center would likely be smaller because of the amount of wetlands on the property. It could include a specialty grocery store or movie theater, in addition to the shops and cafes already on the drawing board.

“It’s not going to be a second mall, but it will be complementary to Shops at Wiregrass,” he said.

NRP Group, a Cleveland firm specializing in apartment home construction, has teamed up with Forest City to design and develop the multifamily portion of the project. The firm has been active in the luxury rental market in downtown St. Petersburg, but this would be its first venture into Pasco County.

“We feel like it’s some of the best real estate in the (Wesley Chapel) submarket — because of the proximity to the shopping center,” said Kurt Kehoe, vice president of NRP Group.

Kehoe said even with the delay of the future Raymond James Financial campus, there is enough building activity in and around Wiregrass to make the site highly desirable.

Wiregrass Ranch is booming, especially with the successful launch last year of Standard Pacific’s Estancia community and the planned $78 million expansion at Florida Hospital Wesley Chapel. This month Florida Medical Clinic started construction on a $24 million clinic just north of the mall, and Tampa orthodontist Mark Farino applied for a permit to build a three-story medical office building next door.

Cleveland-based Forest City was the original developer of The Shops at Wiregrass, the 642,000-square-foot open air shopping center that opened in 2008. The firm acquired the adjacent 34-acre parcel when it closed on the mall property in January of that year, although plans to develop the second phase were shelved a few years ago because of the slow economy.

“There’s phenomenal growth happening around Wiregrass now,” Hasan said. “We see so much activity there, we just thought this was the right time.”