Drive past Legends Landing on International Golf Parkway right now and you'll see a construction fence longer than a football field, cleared dirt, and no sign telling you what's coming. That's unusual for this corridor. Every other big box that's landed here in the last five years announced itself early and loudly. This one filed its paperwork with the county and then went quiet.
On August 26, 2026, a Master Development Plan landed on St. Johns County's desk for a 40-acre parcel inside World Commerce Center, the roughly 1,000-acre commercial district that already holds Buc-ee's, Costco, Bass Pro Shops and Home Depot along the I-95 frontage. The plan shows a single building, listed only as "Building 1," at 140,500 square feet, ringed by ten outparcels and about 375 parking spaces. The developer, Stiles Retail Group, put out a short statement confirming the anchor tenant has been picked. They also confirmed they're not saying who it is yet, only that the plan has changed since an earlier round of concepts back in February 2026.
That February date matters. Stiles, along with partners Cantrell & Morgan and FCA Partners, closed on more than 93 developable acres at World Commerce Center for $45 million that same month, part of a larger 487-acre acquisition. Whatever gets built on this particular 40 acres has had six months to firm up, and the county now has the shape of the plan even without the name attached to it.
You don't need the tenant's name to start narrowing the field. The filing itself does some of that work, because national retail chains build to fairly predictable dimensions, and 140,500 square feet is a specific enough number to eliminate a few obvious guesses.
A Walmart Supercenter is already off the table by simple geography. One is under construction right now, about two miles away on the same road, after the county issued an $18.65 million building permit in January 2026 for a store just north of 180,000 square feet. Nobody builds two Supercenters two miles apart, and this new footprint is smaller anyway. Small-format grocery concepts like Aldi, Trader Joe's or Sprouts Farmers Market are ruled out from the other direction. Those chains typically cap out around 30,000 square feet, less than a quarter of what's proposed here.
That leaves a narrower set of national retailers whose standard formats actually land in the 140,500-square-foot range.
| Candidate | Typical footprint | Nearest existing St. Johns County location |
|---|---|---|
| Target (large-format prototype) | 130,000–150,000 sq ft | About 13.5 miles south, 1440 U.S. 1 South, St. Augustine |
| Dick's Sporting Goods (House of Sport) | 120,000–150,000 sq ft | Not addressed in the county filing |
| Lowe's (standard format) | 112,000–170,000 sq ft | About 9 miles north, 480 County Road 210 West |
None of this confirms an answer. It just tells you the guessing game has boundaries, and that whoever it is will be filling a gap none of the other three retailers currently cover inside a short drive of the site.
Here's the part that actually explains why anyone would build something this size along International Golf Parkway in the first place. The site's own marketing materials, filed with the county alongside the development plan, state that St. Johns County's population has grown 26 percent since 2019, and that more than 13,000 housing units are already planned or under construction within a five-mile radius of Legends Landing.
The marketing materials also point to a planned extension of St. Johns Parkway that would connect the site to 17,000 additional residential units at full build-out.
That's the real story hiding behind the silt fence. A 140,500-square-foot store isn't a bet on the rooftops that exist along this corridor today. It's a bet on the rooftops that are already permitted or platted within a few miles of it, most of which haven't been built yet.
It also puts the last five years in order. Buc-ee's opened here in February 2021, the first location in Florida. Costco followed in August 2022, the county's first membership warehouse club. Bass Pro Shops opened in 2024. Home Depot opened in April 2025. A White Castle, the chain's first Northeast Florida location, filed plans in April 2026 for an outparcel at the new Walmart site two miles away. Each addition has arrived faster than the last, and the unnamed anchor at Legends Landing is simply the next link in a chain that's been building for half a decade.
None of that retail math touches the part of the neighborhood that actually gives it its rhythm on a Saturday morning. A few miles from the construction fences, the St. Augustine North corridor still runs on a slower clock, and none of it is competing with Costco for square footage.
None of these places are being displaced by the retail boom happening a few minutes away. They're just running on a different timeline, and that timeline is the one that gives the area something to point to besides parking lots.
There's one event every fall that pulls people away from the highway frontage entirely. On October 10, 2026, the St. Johns County Cattlemen's Association hosts the 67th Annual Cracker Day Festival at the St. Johns County Fairgrounds in Elkton, a short drive west past I-95. The festival runs from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. and centers on Cracker horses, the descendants of cattle stock the Spanish brought to Florida centuries before the phrase "big box" meant anything. A farmers market runs alongside it from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., with datil pepper sauces, local honey, and handmade wood furniture from vendors who show up year after year. Parking is five dollars a car, cash only.
Sixty-seven years of the same festival, in the same spot, is a useful contrast to a construction filing that's six months old. Both are part of what living near this corridor looks like right now. One changes on a five-year retail cycle. The other hasn't changed its format in longer than most of the big boxes on International Golf Parkway have existed.
The honest answer to "who's moving into Legends Landing" is that nobody outside Stiles Retail Group and its partners knows yet, and the public filing was built specifically to avoid answering that question. What the filing does confirm is that the site's own growth math, 26 percent population growth since 2019 and 13,000-plus housing units already in the pipeline within five miles, is real enough that a developer is willing to build a 140,500-square-foot building on the strength of it before the name goes public.
If you're the kind of resident who already checks the county's development review calendar, that's where this will surface first, likely in the next round of site plan reviews. For everyone else, the fence will probably just come down with a sign attached to it one morning, the same way Bass Pro Shops and Home Depot did before it.
Whichever version you'd rather have, keeping an eye on how fast this corridor keeps adding square footage is a decent way to understand how fast the rest of the area around it is changing too. If you ever want a second set of eyes on what that pace of growth means for a specific street or a specific property near World Golf Village, Tara Belanger knows this stretch of St. Johns County closely. Let's Connect.
Choosing Tara means partnering with a knowledgeable advocate who understands both the local market and the relocation process firsthand. Her certifications in luxury marketing and listing strategy ensure your property receives elevated exposure and precise positioning. With strong relationships among builders and industry professionals, she provides access and insight beyond the public market. Every transaction is handled with clarity, discretion, and a commitment to exceptional results.
