Hibbett Sports is more than doubling in size in the Brentwood area as it relocates into an 11,610-square-foot store at Gateway Town Center.
The city issued a permit July 8 for C&R Design Build Inc. of Lehigh Acres to build-out the store at 5238 Norwood Ave., Unit 20, at a project cost of $420,000.
EBI Engineering Inc. of Burlington, Massachusetts, is the civil engineer.
Gator Investments in Miami Lakes owns the shopping center through Gateway Retail Center LLC.
The Hibbett Sports expansion is one of several investments in the shopping center. It had occupied about 5,000 square feet since 2012.
Planet Fitness, Burlington Stores, Five Below and Roses Discount Stores are among the latest tenants that have joined the center.
Hibbett, based in Birmingham, Alabama, retails athletic apparel and gear with 1,189 Hibbett, City Gear and Sports Additions specialty in 36 states.
There are 76 in Florida, including 12 in Northeast Florida comprising 10 Hibbett Sports and two City Gear stores.
On April 23, Hibbett entered into a definitive agreement to be acquired by a subsidiary of global retailer JD Sports Fashion PLC, a British sports-fashion retailer.
The 300,000-square-foot Gateway Town Center opened more than 60 years ago at the Golfair Boulevard and Norwood Avenue exits east along Interstate 95 and north of Martin Luther King Jr. Parkway.
It is north of Springfield and Downtown.
Gateway had struggled to attract retailers and faced the loss of a grocery store when Publix Super Markets Inc. announced in October 2019 it wouldn’t renew its lease after being there for 20 years.
In November 2019, Jacksonville-based Winn-Dixie announced it would lease the 28,120-square-foot space, filling what the city feared would become a food desert.
Jacksonville City Council earmarked $3 million in 2018 to address food deserts in the city’s northwest area. From that, it unanimously approved an $850,000 taxpayer-backed grant in December 2019 to assist Winn-Dixie.
Publix closed Dec. 28, 2019, and Winn-Dixie opened in the spot in February 2020.
Winn-Dixie’s parent company, Southeastern Grocers, has been sold to Aldi, which has not said which stores it will convert to its format and which will remain operating as Winn-Dixie.