In the once quiet burg of Apopka, Florida, northwest of Orlando, roaring bulldozers are carving out a massive mixed-use center just off State Road 429, a boisterous accompaniment to the hammers resounding at the housing tracts rising a few blocks away.
The developers of the 215-acre Wyld Oaks promise to deliver an enviable mix of uses to give the growing Apopka population, reason not to venture onto clogged Orange County freeways.
Plans for Wyld Oaks call for about 280,000 square feet of retail, as much as 200,000 square feet of boutique office, a separate 25,000-square-foot grocery store site, over 4,000 residential units, a three- to four-acre health care village, a performance venue and green space. Retail space will include 70,000 square feet of full-service restaurants/pubs and quick-service eateries and 11 outparcels.
The 215-acre Wyld Oaks will feature streetside and parkside retail and restaurants, offices, apartments, a health care complex, a grocery store and acres of parks, among other features. Rendering credit for images above and at top: LRK
The Project
One of the few sizable undeveloped mixed-zone parcels left in the Orlando-Kissimmee-Sanford metropolitan statistical area, the property was tied up in litigation for nearly a decade until Wyld Oaks founder and master developer Joe Beninati’s group, an affiliate of Vero Beach-based Evans Properties, wrestled it out of bankruptcy court, taking full ownership of the 303 acres on Feb. 21, 2021. The group promptly entitled the property and sold off 88 acres to a Clarion Partners affiliate for industrial development, enabling the center developer to pay off its acquisition debt and own the remaining acreage free and clear.
Evans Properties took full ownership of the 303 acres of undeveloped land in 2021, sold 88 acres for industrial development and will turn the remaining 215 acres into Wyld Oaks.
The $1.2 billion development will create about 3,000 jobs in construction, including the industrial section; heath care; food-and-beverage; and retail, Beninati said. As of mid-September, the fully entitled project’s infrastructure is under budget and ahead of schedule, he said.
First out of the ground will be the 325-unit Madison at Wyld Oaks multifamily community developed by Madison Capital Group. It’s expected to break ground in the fourth quarter and to be occupied by 2026. Work on the yet-to-be named health care village is also underway, Beninati said. Also in the plans is lawn performance venue that with capacity to seat as many as 2,000 and standing-room areas. Leading to the venue will be a town center-style bank of ground-floor stores. A Main Street-style retail village, adjacent to Yonder, will feature traditional and incubator retail spaces. First on the retail-leasing agenda, though, will be necessity-based businesses close to the apartments, followed by conventional retailers.
Wyld Oaks’ 4,000 residential will encompass 1,500 garden-style apartments, 2,000 apartments in five- to 10-story buildings that wrap around parking, 400 condos and 100 single-family homes. The condos won’t start construction until the rental units fill, said Beninati.
A combination of surface and structured parking is still in planning. “The parking facades will be wrapped to enhance the center’s appearance, and they’ll be well lit and emphasize safety,” Beninati said, adding that Wyld Oaks will bring in additional partners as its user plans evolve.
Wyld Oaks’ two days at ICSC@FLORIDA in Orlando in August equated to “six to nine months of deliberate marketing and business development,” said Beninati. The back-to-back meetings with potential tenants and others keen on the project felt like speed dating, he added. “We came away from the meeting with the realization that there was so much demand for Wyld Oaks [that] we’d find ourselves wishing, in the next two or three years, that we had more land.”
The Dog Park
But what really has tongues — and tails — wagging is a canine playground component called Bark. The dog park’s elements were crowdsourced through dog lovers. They have coalesced into two designs between which the public is voting through the end of September.
Bark came along relatively late in the center’s planning. Though Beninati grew up in a dog-oriented family, he never envisioned a dog park for Wyld Oaks until attendees at an Apopka City Council meeting broached the subject. “I didn’t have prepared remarks on it,” recalled Beninati, “but I said: ‘Yeah, wouldn’t it be great if we could build one of America’s great dog parks here?’” Inspired, Beninati took the idea to team members, among whom the enthusiasm grew. “We felt it would not only be a great regional amenity, but it would also be a great way for people to meet their neighbors,” he said.
On its website, Wyld Oaks over the summer solicited ideas and designs for Bark from pet owners across the nation. Two design options emerged, and a team member suggested a public vote between those designs. Voting started on Aug. 26 in conjunction with ICSC@FLORIDA and will end Sept. 30. To Beninati’s knowledge, it’s the first time the public has directly voted on any element of a commercial mixed-use/retail project, he said.
Public voting between two dog park design concepts will end Sept. 30. The first is a daisy chain style across the project’s shopping, dining, plaza, green space and recreational elements. Click the image to watch more about this design concept.
The second, more traditional design concept consolidates the dog park elements in one large area. Click the image to watch more about this concept.
In both designs, the brunt of Bark would be part of the 10-acre Yonder preserve, which features trails and dozens of southern live oak trees that were tended to by arborists before any ground work on the center began. The oaks had occupied the parcel for at least 150 years and will provide a welcome canopy to Yonder. “Most developers would have just clear-cut them, but we took a different view,” said Beninati. “While it’s expensive to preserve 150-year-old trees, which require extensive trimming and pruning and other care, we wanted to keep them as beautiful natural assets.”
The Community
The Orlando area has experienced rapid commercial growth, including Disney’s planned $17 billion investment to add a fifth theme park in Orlando, and more than 1,000 residents are moving there per week, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. That’s causing the Orlando MSA’s population to branch out, catalyzing a boom in Apopka and other area communities, Beninati said. Apopka’s population rose from 54,922 in 2020 to 60,510 in 2024, according to World Population Review. And homebuilders like Toll Brothers, PulteGroup, Lennar and D.R. Horton are raising about 13,000 residential units valued at $1 billion in the town, said Beninati.
Wyld Oaks will serve as a commercial hub for those arriving with the housing boom to shop, dine and play, Beninati said. It will anchor the west end of Apopka’s swiftly growing Kelly Park corridor, a five mile east-to-west stretch of former agricultural land along Kelly Park Road that’s being widened and rezoned for residential and commercial development.
Wyld Oaks developer Joe Beninati briefed the Apopka, Florida, community, city officials and media at the project’s Jan. 19 groundbreaking.
Apopka Mayor Bryan Nelson, speaking at the Jan. 19 groundbreaking, described Wyld Oaks as an innovative project that “will support Apopka’s exponential growth with residential and commercial uses that will generate long-term economic impact and community benefits.”
As the financial markets loosen, nearby residential booms and the project’s roads and utilities near completion, the conditions do indeed seem right for a greenfield development. “I’ve been in the industry long enough to know that hard work and good fortune are a good combination,” said Beninati.
By Steve McLinden
Contributor, Commerce + Communities Today