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New shopping plaza finds anchor store in JCPenney

"Mid boxes" will surround the retailer at Nature Coast Commons.

By DAN DEWITT
Published February 11, 2007

SPRING HILL - The developer of a large shopping center planned for the southern stretch of U.S. 19 in Hernando County has revealed the name of its anchor tenant: JCPenney.

The retailer, which was founded in 1902 and is in the midst of an aggressive expansion, will occupy a 105,000-square-foot store in Nature Coast Commons, a shopping center planned for a 50 acres south of the Wal-Mart Supercenter at U.S. 19 and Osowaw Boulevard.

The store will be surrounded by several other "mid boxes," which are stores with between 30,000 and 60,000 square feet of floor space, said Pete Pensa, a planner with Avid Group, an engineering firm designing the project.

Altogether, the complex will include 305,000 square feet, according to plans submitted to the county.

The County Commission originally approved the project in August, said Pensa, whose company is working for the shopping center's developer, Nature Coast Commons LLC of Tampa.

The plan will return to the Planning and Zoning Commission on Monday because Nature Coast is requesting a slight change. Because of wetlands, the developer is seeking to change the location of a fence at the southwest corner of the property.

Construction will begin, Pensa said, as soon as the developer receives all of the required permits, probably in two or three months.

The J.C. Penney Co., one of the largest retailers in the nation, with more than 1,000 outlets, once built most of its stores in malls. In recent years, it has concentrated on building stores as part of open-air shopping centers, according to its Web site.

It says the Plano, Texas, company plans to open about 50 stores annually through 2009, most patterned on what the company calls its "off-mall format."

These outlets "cover approximately 100,000 square feet on a single level and feature wider aisles, new lighting designs and concentrated customer service centers," the Web site says.

Dan DeWitt can be reached at (352)754-6116 or dewitt@sptimes.com.

[Last modified February 10, 2007, 23:49:35]