The Pad Goes Before the Anchor Opens

REBusiness Online reported two Publix-anchored deals in our states this week. On September 28 it reported that Connolly unveiled the first wave of tenants at Woodstock Mill District in downtown Woodstock, Georgia — 118,000 square feet on 11 acres, anchored by a freestanding 46,791-square-foot Publix, 79 percent leased, with tenants taking occupancy in fall 2026 and the center opening in early 2027. On September 29 it reported that TSCG brokered the $8.4 million sale of the Shoppes at Paradise Pointe in Fort Walton Beach, Florida — 73,416 square feet built in 1987, 82.5 percent leased, with Publix an anchor there since 2001, sold by SITE Centers Corp. to an undisclosed private investor.

Our position: in the Southeast the grocery anchor is the pad-supply event, and the space is committed while the center is still under construction. A pad you find on a listing at a finished center is what nobody else took.

Seventy-nine percent, a year before the doors open

Per the September 28 report, Woodstock Mill District is 79 percent leased with occupancy beginning this fall and the opening in early 2027. Thirteen tenants are named. Nine spaces remain, one of them a freestanding restaurant building.

That is the timeline in a single number. Every one of those leases was signed against a building that is not open and a co-tenancy nobody has seen operate. The counterparty was the developer, and the deal that mattered was the anchor.

The anchor's own filings are the supply schedule

Per Publix's Form 10-K filed March 2, 2026, the company opened 52 supermarkets in 2025 including 13 replacements, remodeled 89 and closed 10, finishing the year at 1,432 stores across eight states including Florida, Georgia and the Carolinas. Per its Form 10-Q filed August 3, 2026, it opened 16 in the first half of this year including four replacements, remodeled 56 and closed eight, finishing the half at 1,440.

Sixteen openings in six months against 52 for all of last year. Development calendars are back-loaded, so that is a pace to watch rather than a conclusion. Eight closures in six months against ten for all of 2025 is the figure we would watch harder. And both counts include replacements, which produce a second-generation box and no new center.

Capital is not the constraint. Per the 10-K, 2026 capital expenditures were expected to be approximately $2.4 billion, "primarily related to new supermarkets, remodeling existing supermarkets, construction or expansion of warehouses, new or enhanced information technology hardware and software and the acquisition or development of shopping centers in which the Company operates." Per the 10-Q, about $1.1 billion of that remained for the back half of the year. The grocer develops and acquires the centers it anchors. That belongs in the file before anyone assumes the outparcel at a new store is a third party's to sell.

What the resale channel is actually priced at

The Fort Walton Beach sale works out to about $114 a square foot. Cushman & Wakefield's 2026 U.S. Retail Fit Out Cost Guide puts Southeast in-line retail fit-out at $126 a square foot against a $157 national average — tenant improvement alone, no land, no shell. A 39-year-old grocery-anchored center in Florida traded for less per foot than finishing the inside of a new one.

That asset is an income stream, not a development. The anchor has held the space since 2001. Whatever pad ground that corner had was sold or built a generation ago.

What we watch for

We track anchor land closings, construction starts and anchor lease announcements. That is the window. By the time a leasing sign is up, most of the center is spoken for and the remaining spaces are the ones with the compromise.

We read the grocer's quarterly filings as a development calendar. Openings, closures and replacements by period tell you how much new anchored retail is coming to eight states.

We separate the two channels before pricing anything. A new anchored center is pad supply. A 1987-vintage anchored center is yield, and treating one like the other buys a 25-year-old anchor lease and no dirt.

We ask who owns the outparcel before we ask what it costs.