Weingarten Realty Investors developing new Whole Foods Market

BUYER: Weingarten Realty Investors (principals: Stanford and Andrew Alexander, James Crownover, Robert Cruikshank, Melvin Dow and Stephen Lasher), Houston

SELLER: North Dale Associates Ltd.

PROPERTY: 3802 Northdale Blvd., Tampa

PRICE: $2.75 million

PREVIOUS PRICE: $385,200, April 1982

PLANS, DESCRIPTION: Weingarten Realty Investors purchased the former JCPenney Credit Processing building on 6.35 acres just west of Dale Mabry Highway for $2.75 million.

The price equated to $433,071 per acre.

Weingarten Realty Investors acquired the property so it could demolish the existing 32,523-square-foot building and develop a 37,144-square-foot freestanding Whole Foods Market. The new store will be the grocer's 17th location in Florida and second in Tampa.

Weingarten Realty Investors is scheduled to have the new Whole Foods Market store completed and open by late 2012.

Whole Foods Market will lease the new building.

“I located the closed down JCPenney building and identified the location as a great opportunity to shift the site from an office to a grocer to fill a missing void in the strong Carrollwood and North Tampa market communities,” Terry Marks, regional development director for Weingarten Realty, says in a press release.

Weingarten Realty already owns two Whole Foods Market Shopping Centers in the Orlando market.

As of June, Weingarten Realty Investors has an ownership interested in a total of 386 developed properties and 11 properties under various stages of construction and development.