Communication Builds Our Community
Communication Builds Our Community
New Stores Indicative of the Economic Expansion Underway in Lake Wales
As the economy continues to improve in the Lake Wales area, the Orange Grove, a large and long-underused shopping center on SR 60 east at 11th Street, is showing multiple signs of new life as tenants snap up space in the sprawling plaza, once left behind by outward growth.
Work is underway both inside and outside of the future location of Ollie's department store in the Orange Grove shopping center in Lake Wales. The center is seeing an economic rebirth with the opening of several new businesses. The Ollie's store will occupy the last "big-box" space at the plaza.
New businesses planned for the center include a Stone Cabin Coffee and Cheesecake restaurant, the fourth location for that family-owned chain, offering elaborately-decorated cheesecakes in a wide variety of flavors. The company touts "lemon meringue, apple pie, Oreo, piña colada, coconut cream, red velvet, and strawberry shortcake" among their offerings. The chain includes a location on Cypress Gardens Boulevard, but this will be the first location to offer a dine-in option.
The Villa Acacia Coffee Shop, located nearby, will feature custom coffees along with a retail store offering candles and handmade gifts. Owner Jessica Torres calls it a "European-Mediterranean style" coffee shop. Torres, a Lake Wales resident, named the shop after her grandmother's home in Spain. She expects to open in September.
Those shops will be joined by Ollie's department store. Ollie's is a discount department store chain with hundreds of locations across the United States. The 30,000 square-foot Lake Wales location will be the chain's second in Polk County, following the opening of a store adjacent to Lakeland Square Mall. No opening date has been given by company officials.
Decorative desserts will among the offerings at Stone Cabin Coffee and Cheesecake when their newest location opens in the Orange Grove shopping center in Lake Wales.
Also planned is a Kids Therapy Tower, a business with multiple central Florida locations. Various opening dates will have the new stores opening during the course of the next three months. Those new businesses will bring the space to about 80% occupancy, based on calculations from aerial photographs.
The Orange Grove Shopping Center was constructed in the mid-1980's and was once the premier shopping destination for area shoppers, anchored by a Kash'n'Karry supermarket, Bealls department store, and the town's original Wal-Mart store.
After Wal-Mart constructed a new "superstore" only two blocks east and the Kash'n'Karry chain ceased operations after being purchased by Food Lion, the center was less than 50% occupied and rapidly declined. A McDonald's restaurant on an outparcel followed Wal-Mart east, and that building has remained vacant as well.
The Orange Grove center is home to a number of national chains and some locally-owned businesses.
Luli Cannon of RMC Property Group is managing the center and told Lake Wales News that current plans include removing certain aging planters near storefronts, new handicap-accessible ramps, and upgrades to landscaping. A portion of the former 35,000 Kash'n'Karry store is being carved out to create a new retail space, joining several other smaller spaces already available in the center.
Current tenants in the Orange Grove and outparcels include Harbor Freight, AnyTime Fitness, Family Dollar, Tractor Supply, LaundroMart, Pizzano's Pizza and Grinderz, Subway, Quest Diagnostics, and other small businesses. There are several vacant outparcels adjacent to the center, some under separate ownership.
The Orange Grove Shopping Center is at the epicenter of a large swath of new residential development on the city's southeast side, with more than 4,000 residential units planned in that area. Retailers typically count "rooftops" when planning new business locations.
Work is underway on interior renovations on the future Ollie's department store. Contractors are installing new walls, ceilings and other facilities to house the store in a 30,000 s.f. space.
The recent planning effort of Lake Wales Envisioned proposed that the more than three acres of parking lot at the center could become the core of a new "health district" associated with the AdventHealth Lake Wales hospital and other significant Medical facilities in the area. That plan also included construction of a "health village" on a portion of that land.
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