Homart Development Company announced the project that became West Oaks Mall in April 1995 under the working name Lake Lotta Mall, buying 130 acres in Ocoee, Florida, at the intersection of Colonial Drive (SR 50) and Clarke Road near Florida’s Turnpike. Atlanta-based Thompson, Ventulett, Stainback & Associates designed the property, which opened October 2, 1996, at a planned 950,000 sqft with Dillard’s, Gayfers, Sears and JCPenney as original anchors alongside 125 specialty stores.
At roughly 1,077,481 sqft, the mall’s anchor lineup has substantially thinned: Dillard’s Clearance Center and JCPenney remain as retail anchors, alongside a 14-screen AMC theater, with a fifth anchor building standing vacant. A SunPass customer-service center, Florida’s electronic highway-toll program, now occupies space at the property, an unusual anchor tenant for a shopping mall.
Of the mall’s 125 store spaces, only around 61 currently operate, though the property retains direct public transit access via the West Oaks Mall SuperStop, served by five separate bus routes. Moonbeam Capital Investments currently owns and manages the property.
That anchor-and-occupancy erosion, from a 950,000 sqft, four-department-store super-regional mall at opening to roughly half its store spaces occupied three decades later, with a government toll-service office among its current anchor tenants, reflects a redevelopment trajectory common among mid-1990s Florida super-regional malls once newer competing centers opened elsewhere in the same metro area.
