For shoppers, this city of 860,000 smack in the middle of a swing state, can feel like an alternate reality, a place where up is down and down is up. Frumpy department stores feature personal shopping services and boutique wellness amenities. Workaday grocery stores like Kroger offer exotic fruits and freshly baked artisan breads.

Easton Town Center will get another first-in-Ohio store when Legoland Discovery Center opens at the lifestyle center in fall 2018.

The 36,000-square-foot, $10 million educational play center will be the 11th such store in North America and the 22nd in the world.

By Jayne Gest, Published in Smart Business Yaromir Steiner, founder and CEO of Steiner + Associates, knows about innovation. He came to Columbus and created Easton nearly 20 years ago. People were unsure of a guy from Miami who proposed an open-air project in Columbus, which gets 20 inches of snow every year, Steiner says….

Tavistock Development Company, a diversified real estate firm owned by Tavistock Group, announced today that Hoar Construction has been selected as the Preconstruction Program Manager and Master General Contractor for the next phase of development of the Lake Nona Town Center which will include a thoughtful collection of more than one million square feet of retail, restaurant, entertainment, office and hospitality uses.

The days of the traditional shopping mall are behind us, making way for lifestyle and entertainment options where traditional big-box anchor tenants once stood.

In a city known worldwide for bringing immersive and engaging environments to life and where more than 66 million visitors converge annually for leisure time activities, an innovative, next generation master-planned community is well underway.

When owners start taking equity stakes in their food tenants, the traditional roles can blur in some interesting ways, notes Spencer Bomar, an Atlanta-based principal of the national retail group at Avison Young. “In some cases [landlords] are partnering with chefs, and it is going as far as them sharing in the percentage rent,” he said. “They are becoming true business partners.”

Regarded as one of the brightest and most creative thinkers and planners in the country, Yaromir Steiner recently presented an ICSC continuing education workshop titled Reinvention: Property Redevelopment and Repositioning.

Lake Nona–an 8,000-acre, 11-square-mile master-planned community that has already completed more than $3 billion in construction encompassing 7.1 million square feet of world-class residential and commercial facilities over the last 8 years–is moving forward with the next phase of what will ultimately be a 3.8 million-square-foot central commercial district: Lake Nona Town Center.

Tavistock Development Co. has named Columbus, Ohio-based Steiner + Associates as its retail planning, leasing and development partner for Lake Nona Town Center in Orlando.