Drive down Federal Highway from Coral Heights toward the Publix at 3400 North Federal Highway and you will find exactly what you found last year, and the year before that. Same one-story building. Same parking lot layout. Same produce section by the entrance. If you shop there weekly, as a lot of Coral Heights households do, nothing about the trip has changed in three years.
That is strange, because on paper, this store was supposed to be gone by now.
In September 2023, a developer called Pasadena Capital Inc. filed plans with the City of Fort Lauderdale to tear down the existing Publix, a 48,497-square-foot building, and replace it with a two-story structure spanning 67,043 square feet. That is an increase of 18,546 square feet, roughly the size of adding another mid-size retail box on top of what already exists. The submitted plans also called for a 2,100-square-foot liquor store on the ground floor, along with new sidewalks and landscaping along NE 33rd Street. None of that is rumor. It is documented in the filing, first reported by Florida YIMBY, which covers development applications across the state.
So the plan is real. The building is not. That gap between what was approved and what has actually happened is the part worth understanding if you live nearby.
Who is actually behind this
The application was not filed by a faceless national chain. The property owner and applicant listed is Stanley R. Gumberg, acting as Trustee of The Coral Ridge Shopping Center Trust. That distinction matters. A shopping center held in a family trust moves at a different pace than one owned by a publicly traded REIT with quarterly earnings pressure to break ground. There is no shareholder call demanding a construction timeline. The architect on record is Fisher & Associates, and the landscape architect and civil engineer is GRAEF-USA. Those are working professional firms attached to a real site plan, not a concept sketch someone floated at a city meeting.
What that combination tells a longtime observer of South Florida retail: this is a legitimate, permitted-track project sitting inside a private ownership structure that has no external clock forcing it forward. Projects like this can sit in the pre-construction phase for years while financing, tenant negotiations, and permitting details get sorted out, especially when the existing store is still profitable and doesn't need to close.
The mall this Publix sits inside
Coral Ridge Mall itself is one of the shopping destinations Coral Heights residents already treat as an extension of the neighborhood, sitting within about a mile along Federal Highway. It is a 58-acre, roughly 437,000-square-foot center anchored by Target, T.J. Maxx, Marshalls, and HomeGoods in addition to Publix. It holds a specific piece of Florida retail history too: it opened as one of the state's first enclosed shopping centers before later renovations opened parts of it back up. The old food court was swapped out in 2014 for an AMC Dine-In theater, which is still there today.
None of that has changed either. The Publix redevelopment is the one piece of this shopping center that got a real filing, real drawings, and real square footage numbers, and then went quiet.
What the skepticism actually was
When the plan surfaced in 2023, some regular shoppers pushed back on the two-story concept specifically, worried about needing an elevator or escalator to reach groceries on an upper level. That reaction is understandable if you are used to wheeling a cart straight from your car to the aisle. But the format has local precedent. Fort Lauderdale already operates a two-story Publix downtown, near Las Olas and Andrews Avenue, and by most accounts it functions the way any grocery store should. The vertical layout is not an experiment being tried for the first time in this market.
What's actually still there, as of now
Store listings and hours pages checked as recently as this year show the Publix at 3400 North Federal Highway operating on its normal schedule, seven days a week, no closure notices, no construction fencing, no signs pointing shoppers to a temporary location. Almost three years after the filing, the site looks exactly like it did before anyone submitted a drawing.
That is not evidence the project is dead. Grocery-anchor redevelopments on ground-leased pads inside larger retail trusts routinely sit in this exact limbo, approved on paper, unbuilt on the ground, while ownership works through financing, tenant coordination inside the rest of the center, and construction sequencing that avoids disrupting Target, T.J. Maxx, Marshalls, and HomeGoods next door. A filing from 2023 being unbuilt in 2026 says more about how these projects typically move than it does about whether this one will happen.
What would actually signal it's starting
If you shop at this Publix regularly, here is what to watch for instead of guessing from the parking lot:
- A posted notice inside the store announcing a temporary closure date or a relocation plan for pharmacy and deli services
- Visible permits posted at the site, which the City of Fort Lauderdale's development portal tracks for any project that moves from approved plan to active construction
- Construction fencing or a staged parking lot closure around the current building's footprint
- A "coming soon" banner or signage referencing the new store size or opening timeline, which Publix typically posts once a project has a firm construction schedule
None of those signs exist yet. When they do, it usually means the store has weeks, not years, before it closes for the rebuild.
Why this is worth tracking if you live in Coral Heights
For a lot of households in Coral Heights, this Publix is the closest full-size grocery store, which makes it part of the weekly rhythm rather than a once-in-a-while errand. Right now there is nothing to plan around. The store operates exactly as it always has. But a project like this eventually does move, and when it does, it typically means a stretch of months where the nearest full-size grocery option shifts elsewhere while the new building goes up. Knowing the actual filing details now, the players involved, and the real signs of groundbreaking means you won't be caught off guard when the fencing finally appears. You'll already know what's inside it.
If you're weighing a move into Coral Heights, or you're already here and curious how projects like this one tend to affect daily life and property values nearby, Trent Sells Fort Lauderdale tracks these kinds of local changes as part of knowing the neighborhood, not just the listings in it. Schedule a free consultation and home valuation to talk through what's actually happening on your block, not just what a filing from three years ago says should be happening.
