Publix development to break ground next month

Published 2:14 pm Tuesday, December 13, 2022

It is now official.

National grocery chain Publix is coming to Milledgeville with a target open date set for summer 2024. 

That information is courtesy of Josh Beyer, senior vice president of The Sembler Company, which is the Florida-based firm behind the retail development. Referred to as “Lakeside Commons” by Sembler, the Publix-anchored shopping center will be located just south of the North Columbia Street intersection with Log Cabin Road only about quarter mile from Kroger. Included in the development is a 12,000-square foot strip that can house multiple businesses. Also in the plans are two outparcels coming in at over an acre apiece on the southern end of the development. 

Beyer shared that site work is scheduled to begin toward the end of January 2023.

“We’ve got a good bit of earthwork that has to happen on the property before we get going vertical with the buildings,” he said in a Tuesday phone interview. 

Tom Hareas, Sembler’s vice president of development, spoke to Milledgeville City Council about the project last January before Publix was named as the shopping center anchor. The Sembler Company is tied to a lot of Publix retail developments, so that was long considered to be the shopping center’s focal point. 

“We were waiting to make an announcement until there was a fully-executed lease agreement, which we now have,” Beyer said.

The Sembler VP said the lease was finalized this month on what will be a 48,000-square foot Publix grocery space. Plans include two traffic access points along North Columbia Street, one right-turn-only entrance access on the south end of the development and a full access (entrance and exit) approximately in the middle of where Publix will stand. Any accesses along the North Columbia side will need permits from the Georgia Department of Transportation since North Columbia doubles as state Route 24. Another full access point is proposed on Log Cabin to allow drivers to enter and exit the shopping center on that side. That access point will be shared with Zips Car Wash, according to Beyer. 

“We’ve made an agreement with the car wash owner to shift that access point a little farther east away from the lighted intersection,” he said.

The 12,000-square foot retail strip is divided up into 10, 1,200-square foot bays. A nail salon, identified as Nail Dior by Sembler, has leased two of those bays, and the development firm is currently seeking other tenants. 

“We’re working on three others,” said Beyer. “We may be able to make the announcements for who those tenants are going to be in January.”

When Sembler’s Hareas spoke to the local city council about the project earlier this year, some residents of the nearby Quail Place subdivision raised concerns about potential noise level and buffers to their neighborhood. Beyer was asked to address those concerns during Tuesday’s interview.

“We’re excited to bring another quality grocery option as well as, what we envision, additional retail, service and restaurant options to the market for that community,” he replied. “I think our site plan was created in an effort to respect some boundaries and distances between the proposed development and the existing community to the east. We’ve got significant buffers from our development to those adjacent property lines. We’re pretty confident and feel good about the buffering that’s being created to mitigate any concerns relating to proximity to the existing residences in the area.”

Until the new Milledgeville location is built, the closest existing Publix is near Lake Oconee in Greensboro with two more in Macon.