Northern St. Johns County will gain three large shopping centers. Among the anchors, the new Walmart Supercenter will open Nov. 7, according to a store representative.
“This has a big potential of impacting The Avenues mall,” said Jacksonville City Council member Danny Becton, whose district includes the center and abuts St. Johns County.
The Pavilion at Durbin Park will be the first to open. Also within 2.4 million-square-foot space, Home Depot, restaurants like Keke’s Breakfast Cafe and entertainment options like Cinemark, and a 12-screen movie theater have been planned and ready to serve St. Johns County residents.
At least 4.5 million square feet of retail space, but that isn’t all that will be developed. The project also allocates 2.8 million square feet of office space.
Smaller neighborhood shopping centers are planning to open near Durbin Park, in Nocatee and in other areas of northern St. Johns County.
The other two shopping centers haven’t released any information about any stores interested in the 1.7-million-square-foot SilverLeaf and 450,000-million-square-foot Beachwalk.
“I think our residents are really excited to see Durbin Park come online,” said Melissa Glasgow, St. Johns County’s director of economic development.
She went on to say, “This gives them the ability to be able to shop in their own community [without traveling] into Duval County.”
If Durbin Park’s developers are successful in building out the allowable square footage, the retail space alone will be larger than St. Johns Town Center, which has 1.4 million square feet of retail space.
“What competition sometimes does is it actually helps everybody as it relieves some of that pressure on other stores,” Councilman Becton said. He added that this also helps relieve traffic in the southern end of Duval.
