More dining, retail choices

A restaurant, cafe and CVS are being built in the Wesley Chapel-Land O'Lakes area.

By CHUIN-WEI YAP, Times Staff Writer
Published August 11, 2007

WESLEY CHAPEL - Stacey Russo lives in the Lexington Oaks development, and was intrigued by the recent appearance of a big building that's under construction at County Road 54 and Old Pasco Road.

"I am dying to know what the large aluminum building - with windows - is going to be," she wrote to a reporter.

Turns out that Wesley Chapel is going to get another new restaurant, and it's going to join a pharmacy in the same plaza, and a cafe farther south in Land O'Lakes.

The silvery building on Old Pasco Road that Russo saw is the beginning stages of a Buffalo Southwest restaurant, said Bill Knight, vice president with the Hogan Group.

The real estate brokerage group behind the 30-acre Lexington Oaks Plaza is the same company that developed the 688-acre Suncoast Crossings at State Road 54 and the Suncoast Parkway.

The concrete building alongside the silvery one at Lexington Oaks Plaza is a soon-to-be 13,000-square-foot CVS store, Knight said.

The small mall is also expected to be home to Commonwealth Development of Florida, which deals in retail, office space and townhomes, and possibly a Discovery Pointe day care center.

Farther south, at Oak Grove Boulevard and SR 54, the peach and orange oddity called Eagle Plaza is also getting a restaurant.

A Barnie's Coffee and Tea Company cafe is slated to fill the 2,234-square-foot corner of the plaza, which includes patio seating, according to zoning papers filed with the county by Eagle Creek Property Management.

Barnie's Web site touts the company as "America's largest privately owned gourmet coffee and tea purveyor," founded more than 20 years ago.

Its closest existing outlets are found in Bradenton and Kissimmee.

It'll take the place of Video Barn, which is currently operating there.

The cafe will serve beer and wine as well as the beverages that make up its name, according to the filing.

Chuin-Wei Yap can be reached at 813 909-4613 or cyap@sptimes.com.

[Last modified August 10, 2007, 21:21:48]