Gainesville’s growing live-work-play project opens retail leasing for Phase 2
Celebration Pointe, the 1.5-million-sq.-ft. food-and-entertainment-driven center that opened in Gainesville in 2016, is emerging healthy from the COVID-19 crisis and recruiting new tenants to inhabit its Phase 2.
“We essentially are coming out of the pandemic with only two small tenants who have closed, and we have already re-leased one of those spaces. Phase 1 remains some 93% leased,” said Ralph Conti, managing principal of RaCo Real Estate, a development partner in Celebration Pointe. “Now we’re full speed ahead and preparing to break ground on The Promenade, which will 80,000 sq. ft. of in-line retail as well as a large sports entertainment anchor.”
Handling leasing for Phase 2 is the Denver-based Zall Company, which previously introduced REI, Cheesecake Factory, and Anthropologie to the Gainesville market. President Stuart Zall is eager to begin the tenant curation process at Celebration Pointe, whose tenants currently include a Luxury Seating Regal Cinemas, Bass Prop Shops, Dave & Busters, Nike Factory Store, and Hotel Indigo.
New restaurants set to open this year include the high-end steakhouse and oyster bar Prime and Pearl and Spurrier’s Gridiron Grille, a concept from legendary University of Florida football coach Steve Spurrier.
“In the past, a lot of Gainesville’s retail dollars have leaked to Orlando and Jacksonville, but Gainesville is now a million-person market and growing,” Zall said. “The great opportunity for Celebration Pointe is that Gainesville is still missing a lot of categories and we intend to add some new players. We figure that the new County sports center will host over a hundred events a year and bring even more new people into the market.”
Celebration Pointe also contains some 300,000 sq. ft. of Class A office space, of which approximately 150,000 sq. ft. is open, plus luxury apartments and townhomes, single-family homes, and condominiums.
“We very much look forward to starting construction on Phase 2 later this summer,” Conti said. “We have a diverse tenant mix whose draw is akin to a super-regional center. We’re neither a hard nor soft goods driven project. We’re truly the epitome of live-work-play on a grand scale.”