by Randall Shearin
Celebration Pointe will bring retail, hotels, restaurants, entertainment and gathering space to a population spurred by thriving education and job growth.
Gainesville, Florida, is seeing a new day for retail. With job growth in tech, biotech and manufacturing along with continued job growth in education and medicine at the University of Florida, the city is seeing its population demand the better things in life, such as fine dining and brands they would normally have to travel to Orlando, Jacksonville or Atlanta to obtain.
Enter Celebration Pointe, a 1 million square-foot mixed-use development located in the center of Gainesville retail critical mass at Interstate 75 and Archer Road. The project is poised to serve as the hub for the entertainment, dining and retail needs of a growing Gainesville market. Celebration Pointe is the idea of local developer Svein Dyrkolbotn, principal of Gainesville-based Viking Companies. Dyrkolbotn (pronounced Deer-kilbotan), a former high school exchange student from Norway, never returned home. Rather, he was recruited to play basketball at the University of Florida. Later, after several years with a major Southeast residential developer — his original host family — he founded Viking Companies to develop, manage and own student housing primarily in Gainesville. After he expanded into market-rate multifamily housing, he identified the 160-acre site where Celebration Pointe is now being developed. At the time, the early 2000s, Dyrkolboton felt the property would make an ideal residential community. However Alachua County had other ideas for the property, so after several years of working with the county, the vision for Celebration Pointe was born.
Since the early 2000s, Celebration Pointe and Gainesville have changed. Many students want to stay in the market after graduation, and many companies want to locate in the area. The city, while often viewed as simply a college town, has a much broader reach than most might think. The University of Florida, founded in 1853, has been ranked one of the best colleges in the nation by U.S. News & World Report. In addition, Gainesville’s Santa Fe College, previously one of the highest-ranked community colleges in the country, is now a four-year school.
The area around the city is sprawling with residential growth largely due to its very strong academic and medical base, which gives the city economic stability. There are more than 280,000 people living in the Gainesville metro area, and a population of nearly 1 million within the 11 counties surrounding Gainesville. Gainesville has had steady population growth at nearly 2 percent per year since 2000.
As an example of the change occurring in the Gainesville area, the University of Florida’s Sid Martin Biotechnology Incubator, one of the leading biotech incubators in the world, has been spawning a number of companies each year. These companies need office space, which is lacking in Gainesville, particularly space in a setting such as Celebration Pointe.
Gainesville is not overrun with experiential, mixed-use campuses where everything is located in one well-planned location. Seeing this, Dyrkolbotn realized the site would be a fit for a mixed-use project, which he named Celebration Pointe. In late 2012, Dyrkolboton partnered with Ralph Conti, principal of Atlanta-based RaCo Real Estate Advisors, to assist with the development. Conti and Dyrkolboton formed Celebration Pointe Development Partners to act as the exclusive development manager for Celebration Pointe Holdings (CPH), the project’s sponsor. Dyrkolboton is the manager of CPH.
Conti and Dyrkolbotn immediately began assembling a team of professionals to develop the new mixed-use development project, beginning with the construction of a new five-lane, multi-modal bridge over Interstate 75, creating a second major access point into Celebration Pointe. This significant piece of public infrastructure, named Celebration Pointe Avenue, is a key piece of the project puzzle.
The roadway solves many broader traffic concerns in the area, provides a second major means of ingress and egress into the project and decreases commute times to serve as a more direct link between west Gainesville and key city landmarks. The new bridge also serves to complete a missing portion of the Archer-Braid Trail System, a multi-path trail running between the city of Archer and Gainesville. The path runs through Celebration Pointe and over the bridge.
In 2011, the developers and Alachua County signed an agreement that allowed for the creation of Celebration Pointe Community Development District, which allowed for the sale of district bonds to help pay for the unusually large investment in public infrastructure. The initial bond issuance in 2014 enabled the developers to begin installing major public infrastructure ahead of the development.
In 2017, the second tranche of bonds was issued. “I really consider this project to very much be a public-private partnership with Alachua County,” says Dyrkolbotn. “They had a vision of what they wanted to see on this property and have been excellent public partners throughout the development.” Conti adds, “By adhering as closely to the original vision for the project as possible, we have earned a tremendous amount of goodwill with the county. In this business, it is not unusual for everyone to start out with one vision in mind and end up building something entirely different. We have been very fortunate in that the retail community in particular has embraced the plan and the vision for this project, therefore allowing us to remain consistent with the project’s original intent.”
The developers say they never had in mind that they would compete with the local regional mall or the dominant power center in the market. Rather, Celebration Pointe would be complementary to the more traditional mall environment and the commodity shopping typical of a big box power center.
“The market does not need nor does the consumer want another power center, and it certainly doesn’t need another regional mall,” says Conti. “What it needs, based on our extensive research and feedback, is exactly what we are delivering — a mix of many first-to-market retail tenants, entertainment and dining options. Add to that, Class A office space, boutique hotels and luxury residential space all situated in a well planned, highly interactive and sustainable environment.”
The team behind Celebration Pointe says this project is atypical because there aren’t major institutional players behind it. Rather, the project is being sponsored by a local group that is committed to providing Gainesville and the region with an upscale mixed use environment.
Two major retail tenants have signed leases to help launch the project, Bass Pro Shops and Regal Cinemas.
Bass Pro was seeking a home in north central Florida, and Celebration Pointe was able to provide a highly visible location with access to Interstate 75. The closest Bass Pro locations are Savannah, Georgia, and Orlando. The developers were intent on introducing a luxury theater to the market — something that they say has been missing in Gainesville.
Regal, which has two older and more traditional theater locations in the market, was the prime candidate to place its newest upscale theater in the project. After some consideration, Regal committed to a 10-screen luxury theater that will have the latest technology and include a lounge and bar in addition to two RPX screens.
“With two very experiential tenants in Regal and Bass Pro, the stage was set to build an incredible project,” says Conti. “It has taken longer that we would have liked, but patience, discipline and persistence is paying off.”
With Regal and Bass Pro anchoring each end of the main-street type project, the leasing team is hard at work filling space with restaurants, various retailers, office users and a 140-room Hotel Indigo. The centerpiece of the retail/mixed use is a pedestrian-only promenade that will contain many amenities and serve as a venue for regular events.
“I really don’t want to tip our hand, but I feel very confident that The Promenade at City Walk will undoubtedly become Gainesville’s place to be, and I will just leave it at that until it’s unveiled to the public very soon,” Conti says. “I believe that to be successful in the new paradigm, you simply have to create a superior mouse trap, and that means creating an environment that is not just purely shopping and not just purely dining. Our goal is to create a real wow factor, a place where you want to be, a place for everyone, and I feel quite confident that we indeed are creating such an environment.”
Avison Young and The Outlet Resource Group are leading retail leasing efforts. Celebration Pointe is a phased development. Bass Pro Shops opened in November 2016, Regal is set to open in February 2018, followed by the initial phase of the main street retail by April 2018.
“We have made several announcements earlier this year and are preparing to make another major announcement at the appropriate time,” Conti said of upcoming retailers. “With nearly 300,000 square feet of Class A office space programmed at Celebration Pointe; almost half is either open or soon to open. In May 2017, Gainesville-based Info Tech, a management software company opened its headquarters. In February 2018, a signature 75,000-square-foot, five-level office building will open its first tenant.”
“We are creating a unique Class A office environment that simply does not exist in the market,” Conti says. “Most of Gainesville’s office space is older and a bit dated. Class A space is very limited, especially in an environment such as Celebration Pointe.”
When the project is completely built out, there will be close to 1,000 residential units between the multifamily and for sale components. The developers are also considering an active adult community.
At least two hotels will be in the project — a new 140-room Hotel Indigo and a 114-room existing limited service hotel that the developers purchased and are in the process of rebranding as part of Celebration Pointe. Celebration Pointe is an infill project. The area to the west of the project has grown with residential development. To the east sits the area’s regional mall, large power center and the University of Florida campus along with UF Health. In all, the project will contain more than a 1 million square feet.
Read the article in Shopping Center Business.
Back to posts ►Stay in the loop about the latest and greatest at Celebration Pointe when you sign up to be a CP Insider. From grand opening celebrations and exclusive promotions to exciting announcements and festive events, CP Insiders are the first to know!
