After the people come the stores...
Palm Coast isn't just some little town somewhere any more. We've grown tremendously in the past 6 years and we just keep growing. People have been complaining there isn't much shopping here but we've been trying to tell them stores need people to survive. Now it's coming to be the time that the stores are coming in to catch up with the population. Once that starts, there's no turning back. And, PROPERTY VALUES WILL GO UP!
As posted in the Daytona News Journal......
By JANETTE NEUWAHL
Staff Writer
PALM COAST -- Palm Coast resident Rick Besaw can't wait to have a grocery store just a mile from his home. Neither can Rosemarie Miller.
Currently, both of the south Flagler County dwellers shop at the Winn-Dixie on State Road 100 for groceries or the county's only discount superstore, Wal-Mart, which is seven miles to the north along Interstate 95.
Both of those options carry the possibility of getting snarled in traffic.
So the two are thrilled that a new Publix is scheduled to open soon, closer to their driveways.
But the Florida-based grocery chain isn't the only retailer expanding in Flagler. The county's first free-standing Starbucks is slated to start serving up chilly Frappuccinos and frothy coffee drinks by early January, company developers said.
Planning experts predict these openings are just the beginning of a wave of new stores that are headed to Flagler County.
"We're becoming an emerging shopping mecca," said Palm Coast's special projects manager, Ira Corliss. "A lot of national companies are paying attention to us now."
In the next two years, development experts predict major retailers will break ground on new locations all over the county. While there are rumors of a SuperTarget and Bed, Bath & Beyond along S.R. 100, construction plans are more solid for "Cobblestone Village," a retail development planned for an area just behind the Palm Coast Wal-Mart. The shopping village should have a Lowe's home store and Belk clothing store, said Corliss and David Lusby, vice president of Palm Coast Holdings, a major developer in Flagler County.
Lusby's company designed Town Center, a massive mixed-use development just north of S.R. 100 and west of I-95 that they hope will become downtown Palm Coast.
The new Publix will mark the first opening for the development, but Lusby also said his company is working with DeLand-based Epic Theatres to start building a 12- to 14-screen movie theater that would open by the end of next year.
All the development talk is not just happening within Flagler County, though. Retail experts who track the industry agree the area is ripe for some new shopping outlets.
University of Florida Professor Barton Weitz, who directs the college's Miller Center for Retailing Education & Research, said the fact that so many people are moving to Palm Coast and there are few chains in the area is one attraction for national companies.
"They like to be the first in there and get a good location, so they can have a monopoly before their competitors get in," he said.
That's one advantage Wal-Mart has today, said Besaw, a 49-year-old Wisconsin transplant who lives in the Pine Grove neighborhood.
"I want anything that competes with Wal-Mart so they'll drive the prices down," he said. "And I'll definitely go to (the new) Publix because it will only be a mile away."
But another UF professor, Grant Thrall, who works as a location consultant for retail companies, said the spur of openings in Flagler also signals there is more to come.
"Whether it's a super Wal-Mart or smaller retailers, they make decisions on a nest of stores -- not just one at a time," Thrall said. "Starbucks won't just locate where they can put one. They want to have six."
And while Thrall said most retail experts are familiar with Flagler County, Palm Coast is not the only place he anticipates a surge of stores.
"You can count on more stores everywhere in coastal Florida," he said. "Florida's growth is just beginning -- the real estate lull is just temporary."