Home Depot Begins Site Work on SR 56, Set to Become Wesley Chapel Area's First Big-Box Home Improvement Store

Crews have started clearing an 11.47-acre site on State Road 56 near Pondside Drive for a new Home Depot, the first physical construction activity on a project that will bring Wesley Chapel's first big-box home improvement store to the area. The work is happening on the north side of SR 56, directly across from Tampa Premium Outlets, inside the Cypress Creek Town Center retail corridor.

For homeowners who have made the drive to Zephyrhills or across the county line into New Tampa every time they needed lumber, mulch, an appliance or a last-minute plumbing fitting, this is the project to watch. Several attempts over the years to bring a Lowe's to the area never got past the planning stage. This one has.

What's going in

Site plans filed by Bohler Engineering call for a store of roughly 107,000 to 107,600 square feet, with 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 moving through the county's permitting process. The site shows up on Pasco County's own "Coming Soon" development map, and it appeared as an item on the Pasco County Commission's August 25 agenda.

What's happening on the ground right now is groundwork, not building construction. Crews are clearing vegetation, grading the lot and running sewer lines, work that has to be finished before any structure can go up. Neither Home Depot nor Pasco County has released a construction timeline or said when the store might open.

Another stop on a crowded stretch of SR 56

The lot sits wedged among some of the busiest retail additions this part of the corridor has seen. Academy Sports + Outdoors and the PopStroke mini-golf and entertainment venue are both neighbors along the same stretch of road. Anyone driving to Tampa Premium Outlets already passes within a few hundred feet of the cleared site.

The timing is not a coincidence. Pasco commissioners voted earlier this month to approve a major expansion of the Two Rivers development farther down SR 56, adding thousands more homes and a planned surf park to the same corridor that will eventually carry Home Depot's delivery trucks and weekend shoppers. Whether the roads and intersections along SR 56 can keep up with that pace of growth is the question county planners will have to answer next, and it is one that tends to come up at commission meetings well before a single parking space gets painted.

Residents can track the project's progress through Pasco County's development review portal, where it is filed under the Cypress Creek Town Center applications. The next milestone to watch for is completion of site plan and permitting review, the step that has to happen before crews can start pouring foundations.

Want more on what's changing along SR 56? Keep up with our business development coverage for the latest on projects moving through Pasco County's pipeline, and find us on the Pasco County Community Website and on Facebook. Have thoughts on what a new Home Depot means for traffic or convenience in your neighborhood? Join the conversation in our Community Forum.