A new Aldi grocery store will replace a commercial building at Crossroads Shopping Center in Deerfield Beach, amid redevelopment of the retail property.
Following demolition of the 25,000-square-foot commercial building that has office and retail tenants, construction of the 19,432-square-foot Aldi store should be completed by June 2024, said Clifford Stein, who runs Pathway Ventures, Ltd., the owner of the shopping center at Sample and Powerline roads.
“We have slowly been redeveloping the property, from what used to be an office park, then slowly became an office-retail park,” Stein told The Real Deal on Thursday. “It was flourishing for many years. But markets change. You’ve just got to roll with the punches.”
About seven years ago, Pathway Ventures demolished two commercial buildings at the shopping center that totaled 32,725 square feet and replaced them with a 3,400-square-foot Wendy’s restaurant and a 6,119-square-foot Wawa gas station and convenience store. Pathway subsequently sold both out-parcel properties, Stein said.
In 1998, Pathway Ventures paid $11 million to acquire the Crossroads Shopping Center from Mutual Life Insurance Company of New York, according to Broward County property records. Two years later, Deerfield Beach annexed the property at 2301 West Sample Road.
“We bought it out of foreclosure,” Stein said. “Mutual of New York had the mortgage on it, and it went into foreclosure. We ended up being the receiver, and we ended up buying the property.”
The new Aldi store will be built on a 1.7-acre site fronting Sample Road just west of the Wawa. The Deerfield Beach City Commission last week approved a site plan for the grocery store development. The city is processing a building permit application for the project, Stein said.
Aldi has 213 stores in Florida, far more than in any of the other 49 states, according to its website. Its Florida operations include two existing grocery stores in Deerfield Beach at 3825 West Hillsboro Boulevard and at 747 South Federal Highway.
Crossroads Shopping Center spans about 25 acres at a transit-oriented location and could encompass various types of future developments, including industrial buildings and workforce housing, Stein said.
“We have plans for different phases for the rest of the site. We’ve got quite a bit of land,” he said. The partial redevelopment of the property so far “wasn’t like a grand scheme plan. It was more like the market was telling me what was needed there, as vacancies started to increase, and tenants started to move elsewhere.”