Clearwater developer plans mixed-use project in South Hillsborough
By Ashley Gurbal Kritzer
Tampa Bay Business Journal
Published: Sep 21, 2021

A Clearwater developer is planning a project that will add a grocer-anchored shopping center, apartments and townhouses at the entrance of a master-planned community in South Hillsborough County.

Boos Development paid $21.5 million for 72 acres at Big Bend Road and Waterset Boulevard in a deal that closed in mid-September, according to Hillsborough County property records. The site, which sits at the entrance to master-planned community Waterset, has been divided up and sold off to two other developers: Arlington Properties, which paid $10.9 million for 21 acres, and Paragon Property Group, which paid $9.49 million for 29 acres. Boos will build the grocery-anchored Shops at Big Bend and two outparcel tenants on the remaining acreage.

Paragon will develop its acreage into 293 townhouse lots for homebuilder D.R. Horton, which is planning 100 units for rent and 193 units for sale. Birmingham, Alabama-based Arlington is planning a 343-unit apartment building on its portion and secured a $53.6 million construction loan from SouthState Bank, according to county property records.

Horizontal construction for the townhouses will begin in six to seven months, said Rob Boos, co-founder, president and COO of Boos Development. Site work for the apartments could begin by the end of the year, and he expects the shopping center to receive site plan approval by the first quarter of 2022.

"We looked at the entire 72 acres and said, how are we going to eat this elephant?" Boos said.

Tom Kersting and Ryan Derriman of Franklin Street represented Boos in its acquisition of the 72 acres; Eshenbaugh Land Co. represented the seller, Bayview Properties.

Kersting, a managing director with Franklin Street, said in a statement that the project will be "a tremendous asset to the South Hillsborough market.”

For the Shops at Big Bend, Boos said the company is in negotiations with a "national grocer" for the 45,000-square-foot anchor box, though he declined to identify the potential tenant.

At that size, the grocer Boos is courting is likely Publix Super Markets Inc. While Sprouts Farmers Market Inc. is actively expanding in the Tampa area, its stores are between 20,000 and 30,000 square feet.

The shopping center will also include 15,000 square feet of inline space, which Franklin Street is marketing for lease.

"With grocery-anchored centers — if you do more than 15,000 square feet, I think you get into a lot of redundancy among the users," Boos said. "They are all service and convenience-based [concepts]. They need the brick and mortar space."