After spending a quarter century building, managing and acquiring Publix-anchored shopping centers, Maury L. Carter & Associates has sold its portfolio to the Lakeland-based grocer for over $130 million.
The deal closed Thursday and involved six properties, including four in Central Florida.
The Orlando-based real estate development and brokerage firm, led by Daryl Carter, has been involved with this group of properties from raw land acquisition through conceptual planning, entitlement, permitting, construction management, tenant identification, and ongoing asset management, helping guide the assets from initial vision to stabilized, institutional-quality retail centers.
Built in 2002, Cornerstone at Lake Mary is one of the more seasoned assets. It has 69,234 square feet and is fully leased. (Courtesy of Maury L. Carter & Associates)
The transaction was co-brokered with CBRE, with both firms representing the seller. Carter told GrowthSpotter that the deal was offered to Publix as a portfolio before the assets were listed publicly.
“So we just have a long, deep, and abiding relationship, admiration, and so we weren’t going to take the properties to anybody before we took them to Publix,” Carter said. “Publix was our first stop before we went to market, and as it turned out, our only stop because they wanted all six of them.”
The shopping centers developed and built by Maury L. Carter & Associates include:
Cornerstone at Lake Mary – Lake Mary, FL (built in 2002, 63,924 square feet)
Cornerstone at Lake Hart – Orlando, FL (built in 2003, 74,241 square feet)
Cornerstone at Summerport – Windermere, FL (built in 2017, 79,374 square feet)
Cornerstone at Narcoossee – St. Cloud, FL (built in 2024, 60,357 square feet)
Additional Publix-anchored shopping centers included in the sale are:
Southpointe Commons – Fort Myers, FL (built in 1999, 58,670 square feet)
Stillwood Pavilion – Newnan, GA (built in 2007, 75,414 square feet)
Carter said that divesting of the Publix centers was bittersweet. “It’s the end of a chapter for those properties, but it’s certainly not the end of our relationship with Publix. Our hope is that we’ll continue to be able to serve them when possible and build other stores for them in the future,” he said. “And we do have other sites we’d like to convince them to consider.”
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