"My son was young at the time, and so we would come if there was a kids event. He was in the Boy Scouts, and they'd have some scouting stuff." That's how one longtime shopper remembers the old Sarasota Square Mall, back when the parking lot off US-41 and Beneva Road actually filled up. The mall closed for good in December 2024 after more than 45 years in business, and for the better part of two years the site has been fenced construction and rumor. If you drive past it on your way to Costco or the AMC, you've probably wondered the same thing everyone in Palmer Ranch has been wondering: what is actually going in there, and when.
The short answer is that it stopped being a rumor months ago. What's less obvious, even to people who've been tracking the headlines, is that the developer isn't building one shopping center. It's building two different ones on the same ground, on two different timelines, aimed at two different kinds of trips. The first wave, opening in a matter of months, is built entirely around the errands you already run every week. The second wave, still two years out, is the one designed to make you linger. Knowing which is which changes what you should actually expect to see next year.
The Anchors That Aren't Going Anywhere
Before getting into what's new, it's worth being clear about what's staying put. Costco, the AMC Theatres, the freestanding JCPenney building, and a bank outparcel all sit on the roughly 93.5-acre Sarasota Square property, and none of them are part of the redevelopment. Torburn Partners, the Northbrook, Illinois firm that bought the mall structure itself for $19 million back in September 2021, is building around those existing anchors rather than replacing them. That matters for anyone who already treats the Costco gas station or the AMC as a regular stop: those trips don't change. What's changing is everything that used to be the enclosed mall in between them.
What Actually Opens First
Phase 1 is the part under construction right now, and it's already about 88 percent leased as of this past May. It's a compact wave, roughly 90,000 square feet, and the tenant list reads less like a shopping trip and more like a Tuesday errand run:
- Whole Foods Market, a 35,828-square-foot grocery anchor
- HomeSense, at 24,214 square feet
- Chipotle Mexican Grill
- CAVA Mediterranean
- Joe & the Juice
- Charles Schwab, opening a 5,163-square-foot bank branch
- Warby Parker, in a 2,040-square-foot storefront next to Whole Foods
Developers are targeting a first-quarter 2027 delivery for this group. That's the piece of the timeline worth actually circling. Everything else on the master plan is still two to three years out.
Why the First Wave Skips the Fashion Stores
Here's the part that doesn't match the mental image most people still have of "the new mall." There's no department store in Phase 1. No fashion anchor, no big cinema addition, nothing built around an afternoon of browsing. Every confirmed tenant sells something you'd normally put on a to-do list: groceries, prescriptions and home goods, a sandwich on a lunch break, a banking errand, a new pair of glasses. That's not an accident of leasing. It's the deliberate first move in a two-phase strategy, and it tells you Phase 1 was built to answer "where do I grab groceries and get lunch near home" rather than "where do I spend a Saturday."
The destination retail, the part actually meant to draw people in from outside a five-mile radius, is being saved for Phase 2. According to the development team's own statements, that second wave is aimed at premier fashion brands, chef-driven restaurants, and boutique fitness operators, arranged around a central lawn built for events and street-level dining. It's roughly 160,000 square feet, more than 1.5 times the size of Phase 1, and it's currently projected to land around the end of 2028.
| Phase 1 | Phase 2 | |
|---|---|---|
| Size | ~90,000 sq ft | ~160,000 sq ft |
| Focus | Daily-needs retail and quick-service dining | Fashion, chef-driven restaurants, boutique fitness |
| Anchor tenants | Whole Foods, HomeSense | Central lawn, street-level retail |
| Target delivery | Q1 2027 | End of 2028 |
| Leasing status (as of May 2026) | 88% pre-leased | Leasing negotiations underway |
That gap matters for anyone trying to picture the finished version of Sarasota Square based on Phase 1 alone. The grocery run gets easier first. The reason to come back on a Friday night arrives later.
The Apartments Breaking Ground Before the Storefronts
The other piece moving on its own schedule is residential. Torburn sold a 4.5-acre parcel along Sarasota Square Boulevard to Woodfield Development for $18.2 million this past March, and Woodfield broke ground on the apartment component this summer, ahead of Phase 1's storefronts opening. Public filings and developer materials place the project at somewhere between 355 and 360 rental units across five- and six-story buildings, designed by Charlan Brock Architects with Books & Freund as general contractor. At full build-out, the entire Sarasota Square property is planned to include roughly 530,000 square feet of retail, dining, wellness, and commercial space alongside up to 1,200 residential units across all three phases, a scale that's a meaningful step up from anything else along this stretch of South Tamiami Trail.
That sequencing, apartments before storefronts, is itself worth noting. Torburn's own attorney told Sarasota County's Planning Commission back in 2024 that the project's rental housing was designed to draw transplants and young professionals, some of whom would work in the retail coming online next door. Whether that plays out as planned, the practical effect for current Palmer Ranch residents is that new neighbors will likely be moving in before the first Whole Foods checkout line opens.
What This Actually Changes for a Palmer Ranch Errand Run
If you already live along this corridor, here's the version of the timeline that matters for planning your next year or two:
Late 2026 into early 2027: construction continues to be visible and loud along US-41 and Beneva, with Woodfield's apartment buildings and the Phase 1 retail shell both going vertical at the same time.
Q1 2027: the first wave opens. That's your grocery run at Whole Foods, a Chipotle or CAVA lunch, a Schwab appointment, or a new pair of glasses at Warby Parker, all without leaving the Beneva and US-41 corner. Costco, the AMC, and JCPenney keep operating exactly as they do now, just with new neighbors.
Through 2027 and 2028: Phase 2 leasing and construction ramp up, with the street-retail and central lawn concept aimed at becoming the kind of place people drive to on purpose rather than just pass through.
For residents near the Potter Park YMCA on Potter Park Drive, just behind the old mall site, or anyone who uses the Legacy Trail's nearby stretch, the practical change is proximity. A grocery store and a bank branch inside walking distance of a corridor that's historically required a car for almost every errand is a real shift in how a Tuesday afternoon around here works, even before the more ambitious second phase arrives.
Not every reaction to that shift has been enthusiastic. One nearby resident who works in real estate and drives past the construction daily has said what a lot of neighbors are thinking: the traffic and noise concerns are real, and nobody knows exactly how much worse the intersection gets once thousands of new daily trips are added to it. That's a fair unknown, and it's one the county and the developer will be answering with actual traffic counts once Phase 1 opens, not before.
The One Thing Worth Remembering
The version of this story that's easy to tell is "the old mall is becoming a new shopping center." The version that's actually true is more specific: the first thing to open won't be the exciting part. It'll be the useful part, a grocery store, a bank, a lunch spot, arriving quietly in early 2027 while the more ambitious, more social version of Sarasota Square, the one with the central lawn and the chef-driven restaurants, waits until closer to 2028 to show up. If you're timing your own sense of when this corner of Palmer Ranch finally feels finished, plan on that second date, not the first one.
Whether you're watching this corner of South Sarasota for the daily convenience or wondering what it might mean down the road for property values nearby, it helps to have someone tracking the details as they land. The Meyer Team keeps an eye on developments like this across Palmer Ranch and the rest of the Sarasota-Manatee area, and we're always happy to talk through what a project like Sarasota Square actually means for a specific street or subdivision.
