Crews have started clearing an 11.47-acre site on State Road 56 near Pondside Drive for a Home Depot, marking the first physical construction activity on a project that will give Wesley Chapel its first big-box home improvement store. The land prep and sewer work are happening on the north side of SR 56, directly across from Tampa Premium Outlets, in the Cypress Creek Town Center retail corridor.
For a community that has watched national retailers open one after another along the SR 56 corridor, this one lands differently. Wesley Chapel has never had a Home Depot or a Lowe’s of its own. Homeowners needing lumber, mulch, appliances or a last-minute plumbing fix have had to drive to Zephyrhills or across the county line into New Tampa. Several attempts to bring a Lowe’s to the area over the years never got off the ground.
Site plans filed by Bohler Engineering call for a store of roughly 107,000 to 107,600 square feet, plus a 28,000-square-foot outdoor garden center and about 350 parking spaces. The plans cleared an initial review by Pasco County in July, and the project is now working its way through the county’s permitting process. Pasco County’s own “Coming Soon” development map and an August 25 County Commission agenda item both list the project by name: “The Home Depot Wesley Chapel.”
Where it fits on the map
The site sits inside the Cypress Creek Town Center corridor, wedged among some of the busiest retail additions the area has seen recently. Academy Sports + Outdoors and the PopStroke mini-golf and entertainment venue are both neighbors along the same stretch of SR 56. Shoppers heading to Tampa Premium Outlets already pass within a few hundred feet of the cleared lot…