What Comes After the Winn-Dixie at Northlake and Military Depends on a Lease

"Transformation sometimes requires difficult decisions, and in certain cases this can mean closing a store when it's necessary to support the future success of our company." That was Winn-Dixie's statement to the Palm Beach Post in March when it confirmed it was closing the supermarket at Gardens Park Plaza. The store sat at 8924 N. Military Trail and had anchored the plaza for a long time. For the roughly 419 homes in Garden Oaks, just inside the gate near Northlake Boulevard and Military Trail, it was the supermarket on their own corner.

The store closed for good on April 19, 2026. Nearly six months later, the useful question for anyone who lives next to that plaza is what fills the box next. The answer will come out of a property deal, and the people negotiating it have already said the next anchor may not sell groceries.

The lease clock behind the closing date

The closing date makes more sense next to another date. Property owners told WPTV that Gardens Park Plaza sits on a ground lease of more than 50 years, and that the lease was set to expire at the end of April 2026. The Winn-Dixie closed less than two weeks before that.

The supermarket wasn't the only tenant facing new terms. The owner of Dollar Deals Plus told WPTV that an 80% rent increase from new property management left the store no choice but to close after decades in the plaza. Management gave a different picture for the plaza overall. It said about 90% of current tenants had renewed their leases, so most of the center would keep operating.

Both of those things are true at once. Most of the smaller storefronts stayed, and the space that defined the plaza is open for a new deal. In 2026, a lease running out matters more to that corner than anything a grocer decides.

The closing had nothing to do with the grocery chain's well-known ownership changes, either. The Palm Beach Post reported that Aldi bought Southeastern Grocers, Winn-Dixie's parent company at the time, in 2024 and sold it nearly a year later. Aldi has kept converting some Winn-Dixie stores into Aldi locations. The Palm Beach Gardens store was not named as one of those conversions. A Winn-Dixie spokesperson said the closing was not related to talks with Aldi.

October at 8924 North Military Trail

For now, the old supermarket sells costumes. Spirit Halloween opened a seasonal store in the former Winn-Dixie space. The Palm Beach Post reported in late September that the company planned to open before the end of the month. Spirit's own store page lists the location as Gardens Park Plaza, describes it as "Former Winn Dixie," and gives the address as 8924 North Military Trail. Posted hours run to 10 p.m. on weekdays.

WFLX described the store as a seasonal tenant. Spirit hasn't published an end date. Pop-ups like this usually leave after the holiday, so the space will probably be empty again sometime after October 31. That's the expected pattern, not a confirmed schedule.

A short-term tenant also tells you something about where the permanent search stands. In March, the Palm Beach Post reported that a city spokesperson said no one had submitted plans or requested building permits for the site. Our research found no later public announcement of a permanent anchor, and no report on whether the ground lease was extended or who controls the land now.

The grocery stores around Garden Oaks now

Until something permanent moves in, the weekly grocery trip goes somewhere else. The stores below come from each chain's official store locator. Hours are as posted on those pages.

There are two Publix stores on the same roads that frame Garden Oaks. Gardens Towne Square is on Northlake Boulevard and Garden Square is on Military Trail. The ALDI on North Congress Avenue in Lake Park is about 2 miles southeast of Gardens Park Plaza, according to the Palm Beach Post. It's one of two ALDI stores in northern Palm Beach County, and the other is in Jupiter. The Target at 500 N. Congress Ave is also in Lake Park, so one trip down Congress covers both.

The one new supermarket on Northlake Boulevard this year is much farther west. Publix opened a 48,387-square-foot store at Avenir Town Center, 12535 Northlake Blvd, on May 21, 2026, about a month after the Winn-Dixie closed. Its posted hours are 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily, the same as the other Publix stores in the table. New grocery space opened far out on Northlake, and the older corner near Garden Oaks lost its grocer in the same spring.

Why the next anchor may not be a supermarket

When WPTV reported the closing in April, management said it was negotiating with big-box retailers for the anchor space and that a replacement might not include another grocery store. That's the most direct thing anyone involved in the deal has said publicly, and it changes what a "replacement" could mean.

Some Winn-Dixie closings elsewhere in Florida have led to other grocers. The Palm Beach Post noted that some former Winn-Dixie stores became ALDI locations. It also reported that Presidente Supermarkets, one of South Florida's leading Hispanic grocery chains, bought other Winn-Dixie stores as it grew to more than 45 locations statewide. At Gardens Park Plaza, neither chain has been named, and the landlord has said it's talking with retailers that aren't necessarily grocers.

The WPTV report also pointed to a wider pattern in South Florida retail. Rising commercial real estate costs are pushing out longtime local businesses while national chains and larger retailers look for well-located sites. An anchor space at a busy intersection, half a mile from I-95, with a decades-long ground lease at its scheduled end, is the kind of site that report describes.

What to watch at the corner

Few public signals will show up before a new anchor opens. The order they tend to appear in:

1. City filings. As of the Palm Beach Post's March report, no plans or building permits had been filed for the site. A permit application or site plan with the City of Palm Beach Gardens would be the first public record of what's coming.
2. The post-Halloween gap. Spirit Halloween is a seasonal tenant. A dark storefront after November would mean no permanent tenant is ready to move in yet.
3. Who signs the renewals. With about 90% of tenants renewed as of April, most storefronts in the plaza are set for now. Any new small-tenant openings or departures will show what rents look like under the new management.
4. A named retailer. Whoever takes the anchor will decide the plaza's daily traffic: whether people come weekly for groceries, now and then for bigger purchases, or for something new to that corner.

Until one of those happens, the Publix stores at Gardens Towne Square on Northlake and Garden Square on Military Trail are the supermarkets on Garden Oaks' own two roads, and the Winn-Dixie building at 8924 N. Military Trail is a Halloween store through October.

A change at the plaza next to Garden Oaks affects more than errands. It also changes how buyers see the neighborhood's location and how sellers should describe it. The Wolfe Team follows what happens at Northlake and Military so our Garden Oaks clients get a valuation based on what's actually at the corner today. If you want to know how your home compares this fall, ask us for a home valuation.