WESLEY CHAPEL \u2014 Weeks after Target drew large crowds to The Grove at Wesley Chapel, another major retailer is on the way: Belk.<\/p>\n
The longtime department store chain, located primarily in the Southeast, has signed a lease to take over the 30,000-square-foot space previously occupied by HobbyTown.<\/p>\n
HobbyTown was Wesley Chapel\u2019s first full-scale hobby shop when it opened at the Grove in February 2024, but had a short existence after taking over what had been a Bed Bath & Beyond.<\/p>\n
Belk has more than 20 Florida locations, but the nearest ones are in Spring Hill and Lakeland. There is a Belk Outlet on Collier Parkway in Land O\u2019Lakes.<\/p>\n
Overall, there are nearly 300 locations in 16 states.<\/p>\n
The new Belk is something of a comeback for the brand in the Tampa area.<\/p>\n
The chain had a history of forming local partnerships with businessmen, whose names became part of the store\u2019s name in those regions.<\/p>\n
Longtime locals may remember Belk Lindsey, a chain of Florida department stores. It was the most successful of those partnerships and was founded in Ocala in 1935. It opened 35 stores across the state and Puerto Rico, and was later headquartered in Tampa, where it had three stores.<\/p>\n
The headquarters moved to Orlando in 1990, and a few years later after the death of founder Colin Lindsey, his surname was dropped after his partners were bought out by Belk, leading to the eventual phasing out of the longtime Florida chain.<\/p>\n
In the Tampa area, the Belk Lindseys at the old Eastlake Square Mall and Port Richey\u2019s Gulfview Square Mall were sold to Dillard\u2019s in 1992. The following year, the last remaining Tampa store at Britton Plaza was shuttered.<\/p>\n
In 1998, Belk \u2014 founded in Monroe, North Carolina in 1888 \u2014merged all 112 of its stores into one company, Belk, Inc., which according to website made it the largest privately owned mainline department store company in the country.<\/p>\n
Since leaving the Tampa area as Belk Lindsey, Belk has changed its logo and modernized its stores. It can best be compared to stores like Dillard\u2019s or Macys, with a large selection of name brand men\u2019s and women\u2019s clothing, shoes, purses and jewelry and an assortment of beauty supplies and home goods.<\/p>\n
The new store, which is between the Cost Plus World Market and Ross, is expected to open in three to six months.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WESLEY CHAPEL \u2014 Weeks after Target drew large crowds to The Grove at Wesley Chapel, another major retailer…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1076,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[15526,17553,1338,3047,135,1526,137,136,3088,8619],"class_list":["post-22656","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tampa","tag-belk","tag-dillard","tag-pasco-county","tag-retail","tag-tampa","tag-tampa-bay","tag-tampa-headlines","tag-tampa-news","tag-the-grove","tag-wesley-chapel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22656","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22656"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22656\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1076"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22656"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22656"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22656"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}