Drive east on Oakleaf Parkway Extension past District Drive and you will pass a stretch of cleared land that has sat mostly untouched for years, the kind of parcel long-time Eagle Landing residents learn to stop noticing. That is about to change, and the way it changes says more about how growth actually works here than the headline "new grocery store" ever will.
In July, Clay County received a preliminary site plan for a 47.5-acre commercial development at that exact intersection, just east of the First Coast Expressway. The filing describes a shopping center built around a 60,000-square-foot grocery anchor, two additional large-format retail buildings at 20,000 and 38,000 square feet, and 15 smaller outparcels meant for restaurants and other retail. Building height is capped at 45 feet. What the filing does not include is a name. The grocery tenant has not been disclosed.
That gap matters more than it might seem, and it is the reason this is not the same story as the Walmart that opened a mile and a half away in February.
Three grocery moves, not one
If you have lived in Eagle Landing or anywhere in Oakleaf Plantation for the past year, you have likely already noticed grocery options multiplying around you. The 175,000-square-foot Walmart Supercenter at 10000 Omni Drive, at the southwest corner of the First Coast Expressway and Oakleaf Plantation Parkway, cut the ribbon on February 4 and brought about 400 jobs with it. Publix at OakLeaf Commons, on Oakleaf Plantation Parkway roughly 2.5 miles from the new site, has anchored that side of the community for years.
It would be easy to read the July filing as a third version of the same story: another grocery store, another parking lot, another option a short drive away. But the geography argues against that reading. The new site sits closer to District Drive than to either existing option, on the eastern edge of the community rather than clustered with the Walmart and Publix on the parkway's western stretch. Instead of one grocery corridor getting a little more crowded, Oakleaf Plantation is ending up with three separate grocery nodes spread across the community's footprint. That is a different kind of growth than "more of the same," and it tells you something about where the county and developers think the next wave of daily errands will actually happen.
Why the grocery tenant still doesn't have a name
Here is the detail that separates a done deal from a hopeful sketch. The application filed July 13, with a site plan dated July 7 from Orlando-based Dwell Design Studio, went before the county's Development Review Committee on July 30. According to Blair Knighting of Kimley-Horn and Associates, the engineer representing the project, the point of that review was to gather county feedback on proposed access points along Oakleaf Parkway Extension and District Drive and on the conceptual layout of the commercial parcels.
That is early-stage language. Developers typically don't announce a grocery anchor's name until leases are signed, and leases usually follow, rather than precede, this kind of access and layout review. The two parcels involved are owned by VCP Oak Leaf LLC and Frank Spencer Ltd., according to county property records. VCP Oak Leaf shares a registered address with Varden Capital Properties, an Atlanta-based firm whose published portfolio leans toward multifamily housing, including a project called Lofts at Wildlight in Yulee, rather than retail development specifically. None of that tells us who the grocer will be. It does tell us this project is still moving through the part of the process where the county shapes the bones of a site before anyone commits to filling it.
If you drive past that corner in the next few months expecting steel and signage, you will be disappointed. What you are more likely to see first is grading, drainage work, and the kind of infrastructure nobody photographs for a ribbon cutting.
The coffee and drive-thru race filling in around it
While the grocery anchor works through county review, smaller projects nearby have been moving faster and quietly answering a related question: who is betting on foot traffic in this part of Oakleaf before the big anchor even opens.
Clay County has been reviewing a permit for a freestanding 1,380-square-foot Dunkin' location with a drive-thru and 12 parking spaces near Canaveral Trace and Resilience Way, south of Oakleaf Plantation Parkway. Separately, the county's Development Review Committee looked at plans back in November for a dual drive-thru Ellianos Coffee shop north of Ivory Crossing, near Clay County Fire Rescue Station 26. That location would be the chain's third in Clay County, joining existing shops in Orange Park and Middleburg.
Neither of these is large enough to make headlines on its own. Together, they suggest something worth noticing: the businesses moving fastest through the pipeline right now aren't the big anchors, they're the quick-service formats built to serve a commute, not a destination. That is usually a sign that population is arriving ahead of the retail built to serve it, not the other way around. Oakleaf Plantation's 2026 population estimate sits at roughly 33,000 residents, and the community has been adding people steadily enough that a coffee chain expanding its Clay County footprint from two locations to three, with one specifically sited here, isn't a coincidence.
What actually changes on the ground
None of this touches the amenities that make Eagle Landing feel like Eagle Landing day to day. The 18-hole Clyde Johnston course, the tennis and pickleball courts, the four pools, and The Landing Bar and Grill overlooking the fairway are all managed separately from anything happening at Oakleaf Parkway and District Drive, under the South Village Community Development District rather than the county's commercial review process. A new grocery store two miles away doesn't change tee times or pool hours.
What it may eventually change is the shape of an ordinary errand run. Right now, a resident on the eastern side of Eagle Landing heading for groceries is choosing between a 2.5-mile drive to Publix or something closer to the Walmart at Omni Drive. If a grocery-anchored center eventually opens at Parkway and District, that same resident could have a much shorter trip, assuming the anchor tenant turns out to be a full grocery store and not something else entirely. That assumption is doing a lot of work right now, and it's the reason patience is the right posture here rather than expectation.
How to actually watch this move from paper to pavement
For anyone who wants to track this without checking county planning portals every week, a few milestones tend to matter more than others:
- A named grocery tenant attached to a lease or a building permit, not just a site plan
- Site work permits for grading, utilities, or drainage, which typically precede vertical construction by several months
- Any updated site plan that specifies retailers for the two large-format parcels beyond the unnamed grocery anchor
- Movement on the Dunkin' and Ellianos permits, since quick-service buildouts often complete faster and can signal how quickly the larger anchor is likely to follow
A preliminary site plan review is the very first formal step in a process that, for developments this size, commonly runs a year or more from filing to opening. The corner at Oakleaf Parkway and District Drive is worth watching. It is not, yet, worth planning your grocery run around.
If you're curious about how growth like this tends to play out in this part of Clay County, or you're thinking ahead about what it might mean for your own street in Eagle Landing or elsewhere in Oakleaf Plantation, Laura Worrell follows projects like this one as part of how she stays useful to the people who already live here. Reach out to request a consultation whenever the timing is right for you.
