Benderson buys Clearwater center with Whole Foods, Nordstrom Rack, Target

Benderson Development, the east Manatee County based real estate company, has bought a unique Clearwater shopping center that is attached to Countryside Mall.

The property purchased includes a Nordstrom Rack, Whole Foods Market and a Target store under development.

Benderson did not disclose a sale price and Pinellas County records had not been updated as of Wednesday afternoon. Other details of the transaction were not immediately available.

The center, Clearwater Shoppes, is 219,692 square feet and partially attached to the 1.3 million-square-foot mall, one of the oldest and still most popular in the county.

Both the Whole Foods and Target have access to the mall while the Nordstrom Racks in on an outparcel.

A Benderson spokesperson says that the Whole Foods and Target are in the former Sears anchor location, with the grocer taking up a portion of the lower level. Target is taking up the remaining space on the ground floor and all the second floor, where the Minnesota retailer is developing a 140,000-square-foot store.

(The Sears closed in 2018.)

As for the shopping center being within a shopping center, the spokesperson wrote in an email that, “As far as I know, Clearwater Shoppes has always been separate — we did not rename it.”

Countryside Mall — and by extension the Clearwater Shoppes — is on U.S. Highway 19 North just off of Florida State Road 580 in Countryside, a neighborhood in northern Clearwater.

It first opened in 1975 with Maas Brothers and Sears as the anchors, according to its website. JCPenny and J.W. Robinson’s soon followed.

In the 1980s it was one of three malls in Clearwater, sharing U.S. 19 with Clearwater Mall about five miles south. If you were a Clearwater teenager in those days, shopping at — or strolling around — Countryside was how you earned your social bona fides.

Today, with Clearwater and Sunshine Malls long gone, Countryside remains a popular shopping destination that’s done well adapting to changing customer demands — see adding Whole Foods and Target. Along with the usual retailers, the mall counts P.F. Chang’s and Cheesecake Factory as tenants as well as a well-known indoor ice-skating rink.

Benderson was founded in 1949 and has a portfolio that includes more than 1,000 properties in 40 states totaling more than 55 million square feet.