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Some hope new grocery store will draw more businesses to Pine Hills

By Karen Parks, WFTV.com and James Tutten
By Karen Parks, WFTV.com and James Tutten

ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. — Residents inside an Orange County neighborhood are hoping a new grocery store will help draw big businesses into the area.

The Presidente Supermarket is almost ready to open at the corner of Pine Hills Road and Silver Star Road, but not without some challenges.

This property manager is having to spend three times as much as usual to take drastic measures to keep workers and shoppers safe. These are security measures most companies may have to take when considering opening up shop in an area in desperate need of new businesses.

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Workers are now stocking the shelves and getting ready for business in Pine Hills.

“It’s a great community and they are in need of business,” said owner Ariel Martinez. But Pine Hills is a community with a unique set of challenges.

“We have a lot of drug addicts and homeless people who will come through the shopping center panhandling for money,” said property manager Veronica Lett.

Lett manages nearly a dozen properties in Central Florida and she said the average business complex this size would spend around $2,000 a month on security. But along Pine Hills Road at Silver Star Road, that bill jumps to $7,000 a month.

“You will get 10 or 15 homeless people who will come in at the end of the night dragging mattresses insulation, anything they can find, and camp out in these areas,” Lett said. “We have security 12 hours a day now and we actually have bags that we give them with care products like mouthwash, and things like that, and we explain to them that they can't be here,”

There will also be two additional guards patrolling the property 24 hours a day.

“We will not tolerate crime in our community and [when] you have every partner participating in that conversation, you will see a change,” Commissioner Victoria Siplin said.

Even though crime is down 15 percent in Pine Hills, the commissioner said Orange County deputies will beef up patrols when the store opens in May.

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