In 2023, the biggest news out of the retail corner outside Glen Kernan's gates wasn't a golf course or a guard gate. It was chicken. Former NFL linebacker Angelo Crowell and his wife Kimberly had bought 1.1 acres at Glen Kernan Park for $1.44 million, and the plan was Northeast Florida's first stand-alone Slim Chickens, patio and drive-thru included, right at the corner of Hodges and Butler boulevards. Crowell already ran dozens of Jersey Mike's locations across three states. This was supposed to be the next chapter.
It never happened. If you drive past that corner today, you'll find a Dunkin' drive-thru line instead, sitting on land the Crowells' company sold back in December 2024. The chicken deal that generated headlines quietly died, and the doughnut chain nobody was writing about is the one serving coffee to Glen Kernan residents on their way to work.
That reversal is the real story of what's happening at Glen Kernan Park right now, and it says more about how this corner actually fills in than any single opening does.
The Deal That Was Supposed to Be the Story
The paperwork tells it plainly. Kalo Holdings, the Crowells' company, had spent nearly two years moving toward construction: a mobility fee calculation in 2023, civil engineering plans under city review, a construction permit application estimated at $1.1 million with another $400,000 in site work. Then, on December 27, 2024, the land sold to a Jacksonville-area investor tied to Mardon Realty and Development Group, for $1.5 million, roughly what the Crowells had paid for it two years earlier.
Christopher West, the Mardon Realty principal who bought the site back, explained the shift in franchise strategy to Jax Daily Record:
"The opportunity came up where they were thinking of making that shift and creating the opportunity (for us) to buy the site back."
The short version: Slim Chickens' operators decided that owning standalone parcels and building from scratch was slower and more expensive than leasing endcap space with drive-thru capability inside existing shopping centers. It's a real estate calculation, not a Glen Kernan calculation. West's group already owned the site next door, where Dunkin' opened in December 2024. So when the chicken concept fell through, the corner filled in with what was already sitting there, not with what had been announced with the most fanfare.
West also noted that the former Slim Chickens parcel is now the last undeveloped outparcel left in Glen Kernan Park, meaning whatever lands there next will be the final piece of this particular puzzle.
The Corner's Actual Scoreboard
Strip away the announcements and here's what's actually true about the retail lineup outside the gates as of this year:
| Business | Status | The Detail That Matters |
|---|---|---|
| Culver's | Open | Part of the original site plan since Glen Kernan Park broke ground |
| Gate gas station and car wash | Open | Same, one of the earliest tenants to fill in |
| Dunkin' | Opened December 2024 | Sits on the site next to the abandoned Slim Chickens parcel |
| Slim Chickens | Never built | Land resold, franchisee shifted to inline leasing strategy |
| Olive Garden | Under construction | First new-build Italian Kitchen in the Jacksonville area in more than 15 years |
| Embassy Suites (174 rooms) | Under development | Seven stories, sits next to the Olive Garden outparcel |
| RadiFi Credit Union | Planned tenant | Space allotted in the multitenant buildings |
The pattern is not subtle. The businesses that actually opened are the ones that already had capital committed and land in hand. The one that generated the most local buzz is the one that never broke ground.
Why Olive Garden Wanted This Exact Corner
Olive Garden's arrival is worth pausing on, because it isn't a small commitment. Darden Restaurants bought 1.83 acres for $2.7 million in January 2025 and is building its newest "Domani" prototype design, a 7,847-square-foot restaurant seating 237 people, at a construction cost of $2.4 million. It's the first new-build Olive Garden in the Jacksonville area in more than 15 years. The other four locations in the metro (Regency, Argyle, Avenues, and River City Marketplace) all date to 1990-91 or 2009.
That's a meaningful gap for a chain that makes up 44% of Darden's total sales to leave unfilled for over a decade, and the reason it's filling in here specifically is spelled out in the city permitting record: a Glen Kernan Park location gives Olive Garden a presence closer to both the Beaches and Mayo Clinic's Jacksonville campus. In other words, this corner isn't attracting a national chain because Glen Kernan is fashionable. It's attracting one because it sits in a drive-time gap between two population centers a corporate site-selection team had already mapped.
Sign permits went up in March 2025, six signs at a total cost of just under $29,100, spelling out "Olive Garden Italian Kitchen" and "Olive Garden To Go." Whether the doors are actually open yet depends on which week you drive past. Construction on a restaurant this size, sitting next to a hotel project of its own, tends to run past whatever timeline gets announced first.
The Embassy Suites next door, seven stories and 174 rooms, has been part of the Glen Kernan Park plan since before Olive Garden ever filed a permit. Once it opens, it puts a full-service hotel within walking distance of the neighborhood's front gate, which changes the calculus for anyone hosting out-of-town guests during a busy weekend.
The Other Renovation, Behind the Gate
While all of this has been shaking out on the retail side, Glen Kernan Golf & Country Club has been running its own transformation on the other side of the guard gate. The club's ownership group, Corner Lot and Hampton Golf, put $25 million into rebuilding the golf course and clubhouse starting in 2024, a project that eventually grew into a $32.8 million investment across the entire property. The course, redesigned by Jim Furyk with practice areas shaped by Cameron Smith, stretched from 6,900 yards to more than 7,300. The clubhouse lost its dark wood and taxidermy for an interior Hampton Golf COO Travis Norman described to Jax Daily Record as feeling more like a modern, upscale hotel lobby and spa area. Dining now runs under executive chef Sean van den Berg, who came up through TPC Sawgrass alongside general manager Bill Hughes and food-and-beverage director David Bacon.
The club reopened its redesigned course and clubhouse in 2025, and membership is intentionally capped at roughly 250 full-golf members, a scarcity that has made it one of the more talked-about private clubs in the region.
So residents here are watching two food-and-gathering stories unfold at once. One is happening a few hundred yards outside the gate, driven by national chains chasing drive-time math between the Beaches and Mayo Clinic. The other is happening inside the gate, driven by a membership-capped club spending eight figures to make sure its own dining room feels like a destination rather than an amenity. Neither one is really about what Glen Kernan residents asked for. Both are about what made financial sense to the people writing the checks.
That's worth remembering the next time a new sign goes up on Sweetgrass Place with a name attached that sounds exciting. The businesses that actually open here are rarely the ones with the best story. They're the ones with the land already paid for.
Curious what any of this means for property values or timing if you're thinking about a move in or out of Glen Kernan? Sharon Mills tracks these changes as part of following the neighborhood day to day. Reach out for an instant home valuation whenever you're ready to talk specifics.
