Jacksonville-based Gate Petroleum Co. is preparing to start development of its 13.27-acre site at southwest Normandy Boulevard and POW-MIA Memorial Parkway in AllianceFlorida at Cecil Commerce Center in West Jacksonville.
The city is reviewing a permit application for the horizontal development site work for a Gate convenience store and car wash at 5877 Sky Warrior Way and 13655 New Boy Road. The addresses are within the Gate property.
The project cost is shown at an estimated at $3 million.
Gate Petroleum’s founder wrote “Newboy: The Autobiography of Herbert Hill Peyton,” published in 1997. He started the company in 1960 with a single gas station on Moncrief Road in Northwest Jacksonville.
The Gate construction is one of first new retail developments at AllianceFlorida.
Permit applications are anticipated for vertical construction of the proposed 6,536-square-foot convenience store and gas station with 24 fueling positions, which is designed across Sky Warrior Way from the proposed 5,200-square-foot Gate Express Carwash.
The property also includes three future expansion parcels of 1 acre, 1.26 acres and 1.6 acres.
Prosser Prime AE of Jacksonville is the civil engineer.
Fisher Koppenhafer, also of Jacksonville, is the architect.
Dallas-based Hillwood, the city’s master developer at AllianceFlorida at Cecil Commerce Center, sold the land in July 2023 to Gate for $5.78 million. The city deeded the property to Hillwood the same day for about $365,000.
Hillwood paid the city almost $2.16 million from the proceeds of the sale.
Hillwood and the former Jacksonville Economic Development Commission made a 25-year Master Disposition and Development Agreement in 2010 to develop Cecil Commerce Center.
It calls for Hillwood to build-out AllianceFlorida on about 4,499 acres of city property, the former Naval Air Station Cecil Field, off Normandy Boulevard and 103rd Street,
The agreement is designed for the city to share in the profits. As the master developer, Hillwood typically secures the tenant, buys the land from the city, develops the project and then sells the property to an investor.
In this case Hillwood sold the undeveloped property to Gate.