{"id":391933,"date":"2026-09-06T05:38:23","date_gmt":"2026-09-06T05:38:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/391933\/"},"modified":"2026-09-06T05:38:23","modified_gmt":"2026-09-06T05:38:23","slug":"town-center-west-proposed-for-old-neptune-beach-kmart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/391933\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Town Center West’ proposed for old Neptune Beach Kmart"},"content":{"rendered":"

The plan calls for a hotel and shopping plaza to replace the store that has sat vacant for a decade.<\/p>\n

NEPTUNE BEACH, Fla. \u2014 A developer is looking for the okay to revitalize the old Kmart in Neptune Beach.<\/p>\n

Neptune Beach city leaders reviewed a plan for “Town Center West” – a new hotel and shopping plaza at 500 Atlantic Boulevard.<\/p>\n

“It’s time,” said Belmarmi Owner Carmi Canipe Soares. “It’s time. We need something.”<\/p>\n

Canipe Soares remembers plenty of shopping trips to the old Kmart in Neptune Beach.<\/p>\n


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However, it’s been a decade since anyone shopped at the Kmart, and as a business owner next door, Canipe Soares would like to see something new take its place.<\/p>\n

“Something classy, obviously, not anything industrial,” said Canipe Soares. “Something coastal, something nice, friendly, family-oriented.”<\/p>\n

Canipe Soares hopes a new proposal for the property could check most of, if not all of those boxes.<\/p>\n

“I don’t think we can overtalk this issue,” said Neptune Beach Mayor Cori Bylund during a workshop Monday. “It’s all anyone’s ever wanted to talk about for the last 10 years.”<\/p>\n

The Neptune Beach City Council heard a plan for a new hotel and two-story shopping plaza to replace the old Kmart and parking lot.<\/p>\n

“It’s a 150 room, three story hotel, 90,000 square feet of shopping plaza, broken-up into two pieces,” said Neptune Beach Community Development Director Heather Whitmore.<\/p>\n

One of the first concerns Whitmore brought up was parking.<\/p>\n

“They have 140 parking spaces on the North, 138 on the South side, which is basically 300, and they get 100 parking spaces from Publix, so that puts them around 400,” said Whitmore. “The site technically needs 463.”<\/p>\n

Whitmore says off-site parking, double counting some spaces with off-peak parking times and valet could help resolve the issue, but she said there’s still a lot to talk through before the plan comes to fruition.<\/p>\n

Bylund emphasized community input will be key, too.<\/p>\n

“This is everybody’s wake up call,” said Bylund. “If you come after this is all done, you’re too late, so people need to wake up and pay attention now.”<\/p>\n

Whitmore said developers plan to go before the community development board in October, then it could hit city council in November.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The plan calls for a hotel and shopping plaza to replace the store that has sat vacant for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":391934,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[116,118,117],"class_list":["post-391933","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-jacksonville","tag-jacksonville","tag-jacksonville-headlines","tag-jacksonville-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/391933","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=391933"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/391933\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/391934"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=391933"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=391933"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=391933"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}