On this episode of the Babcock Ranch Podcast, Tyler Kitson welcomes Matt Buehler, Senior Vice President of Commercial Development at Kitson & Partners, who has led the planning, leasing, and development of Babcock Ranch’s commercial and retail hubs since joining the company in 2010. They start with the pivot: before Babcock, Kitson & Partners held a portfolio of roughly eleven shopping centers across Florida for over fifteen years, assets the company exited to focus fully on building Babcock Ranch’s own commercial core.

They talk through the shift from a quick-turn land development strategy to a long-term, recurring revenue model, a change driven partly by the company’s fiduciary responsibility to the Washington State pension fund that backs Babcock Ranch’s development. Matt explains how that long-term mindset shaped the town’s first retail centers, Crescent B Commons and the Shoppes at Yellow Pine, and the early challenge of convincing cautious, recession-scarred retailers that Babcock Ranch’s residential growth was real.

The conversation turns to what’s next: a second Publix opening in Midtown in 2027, a 96,000-square-foot health and wellness center, and B Street, Babcock Ranch’s first true downtown district, a car-free, oak-shaded core designed for nightlife, restaurants, and boutique retail aimed at younger residents.

They close on what “self-sustaining” actually means for a town like Babcock Ranch, giving residents everything they need, from groceries to jobs to nightlife, without leaving the community, and why Matt still sees decades of commercial growth ahead.

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