Hills of Minneola Town Center
Hills of Minneola Town Center is the $300 million mixed-use program anchoring Minneola's Turnpike Interchange district — the project that converts the city's identity from bedroom community to genuine town center. The development is anchored by the 42,000 sq ft Crooked Can Brewing destination brewery, a 12-tenant food hall, farmer's market, two acres of outdoor event space, and a live entertainment stage; the 80-bed Advent Health Minneola hospital with 24-hour ER (opened late 2025) sits within the broader district. The town center subdivision plat was tabled six consecutive months (March through September 2024) waiting for a confirmed commercial tenant. It moved in January 2025 — four approvals in one meeting — only after Crooked Can was secured as the anchor. Crooked Can opens April 2026; the Hills of Minneola vision becomes real tenant-occupancy this quarter. Tara Tedrow, Esq. (Lowndes Drosdick) is counsel of record across the project's corpus appearances.
What sits within
- Crooked Can Brewing Company — 42,000 sq ft destination brewery building; food hall with 11-12 vendors; farmer's market; two acres of outdoor event space; live entertainment stage; opening targeted April 2026
- Advent Health Minneola — 80-bed hospital with 24-hour ER, opened late 2025
- Town Center subdivision plat — phased mixed-use program around Keystone Pass Boulevard
The six-month tabling and the January 2025 release
The town center subdivision plat was tabled at six consecutive Minneola P&Z meetings — March, April, June, July, August, September 2024 — unable to advance without a confirmed commercial tenant. The January 14, 2025 meeting cleared four approvals in one session: a temporary parking lot variance for compacted-soil parking (4-year maximum) to allow Crooked Can to open while other tenants finalized site plans, the Hills of Minneola City Center site plan, four variances for Crooked Can vertical construction (exterior wall planes, blank wall area, 2:12 roof pitch, artificial turf in children's area), and the Crooked Can building site plan. The applicant was represented by Tara Tedrow (Lowndes) on all four. The tabling-to-approval cadence is the corpus's clearest demonstration that Minneola will not approve speculative commercial — tenant commitment matters.
What enforces and what amplifies
- Form-based requirements at the city's PUD level; commission has consistently extracted condition language on roadway barriers (Keystone Pass Blvd), bonded removal of temporary parking, intersection improvements
- Adjacent infrastructure — Hartwood Marsh Road widening (eastern Clermont side, $12M Lake County loan, construction spring 2026) and SR-516 (new road US-27 to SR-429 with wireless EV charging) are the corridor's binding capacity unlocks
- Wellness Way build-out — the $2B Olympus development and Hills Town Center read as the southern-transformation anchors of a single corridor identity; Hills Town Center sits on the Clermont/Minneola border
Why the entity matters for the corpus
Hills of Minneola Town Center is the cardinal evidence — alongside Wellness Way — of the Quiet Revolution on Highway 27 thesis. A town of 20,000 people getting its own hospital and destination brewery is a structural identity shift, not an incremental project. The six-month tabling discipline before Crooked Can demonstrates Minneola's negotiation posture (the city does not deny projects; it shapes them). Crooked Can's April 2026 opening converts the project from approved drawings to lived environment — the watch crooked-can-minneola-opening tracks the moment vision meets occupancy.
The Tedrow / Lowndes representation across multiple Minneola projects is the same legal-representation network now visible at Citrus Ridge Commercial PUD — the same firm shaping multiple PUDs across the US-27 / Hancock / Citrus Grove gateway.
Bidirectional links across the corpus
- Minneola P&Z January 2025 — Crooked Can four-approval meeting
- Minneola City Synthesis — Turnpike Interchange district