Nocatee Now Has Two Town Centers, and They're Growing Into Different Jobs

On a Tuesday evening in Twenty Mile, the decision used to be simple. If you wanted dinner out, groceries, or a place to walk off the day, you pointed the golf cart toward Crosswater Parkway and Town Center. That was the errand loop. It was the only one.

It isn't anymore. Head the other direction, west along Valley Ridge Boulevard, and there's a second Publix, a second set of restaurants, and a fitness studio that didn't exist a year ago. Nocatee residents now split their week between two commercial centers that grew up close together but are not turning into the same place. One is settling into its role as the food-and-full-service side of the community. The other is becoming the fast-casual, wellness-forward stop. Neither is replacing the other, and that distinction matters more than it sounds like it should if you're deciding where to run tonight's errands.

Two Grocery Anchors, Half a Mile Apart

Most master-planned communities anchor around a single grocery store. Nocatee has two, and they're not redundant. The original Town Center is home to what Nocatee's own materials describe as the largest Publix and the first Greenwise Market location in Northeast Florida. Marketplace at Nocatee, the newer retail node along Valley Ridge Boulevard, has its own full-service Publix with a pharmacy drive-through and an adjacent Publix Liquors.

That's two full grocery anchors inside one community, which is a detail worth sitting with if you're mapping out which side of Nocatee makes more sense for your weekly routine.

What Opened This Year, and Where

Salata moved into Town Center this past spring, taking over the space that used to hold Coastal Wine Market & Tasting Room, and officially opened its doors on April 7, 2026, according to Nocatee's own news site. It's a build-your-own salad and wrap concept, and its arrival kept Town Center's identity intact: a place where an existing storefront gets handed to the next full-service restaurant rather than sitting empty.

Marketplace at Nocatee, meanwhile, has spent 2026 filling in around its Publix with a different kind of tenant. SoFresh brought cooked-to-order bowls, wraps, and smoothies to the plaza. The Nail Boutique Spa is adding a full-service nail salon with lash and brow services. A Gate convenience store is planned for the corner of Valley Ridge Boulevard and Burbank Avenue, aimed squarely at the drive-through, grab-a-coffee-on-the-way-out crowd rather than the sit-down dinner crowd Town Center still leans on.

That pattern isn't a coincidence. It's two centers sorting themselves by function instead of competing head to head.

The Fitness Studio Test Case

The clearest evidence of that sorting is BODYBAR Pilates, a reformer studio set to open at Marketplace at Nocatee in fall 2026. The studio is owned by residents of Twenty Mile at Nocatee, which means the person building it out lives inside the same commute radius as the people who'll take classes there. A building permit filed in April 2026 and reported by the Jax Daily Record put the tenant build-out at the location, 75 Irondale Road, at roughly $297,000, handled by Coastal Building Group. That's a real, dated commitment, not a rendering.

Town Center hasn't needed a project like that because it already has its anchor personality: Chophouse at Nocatee, the steakhouse and rooftop bar that opened with an inside bar, a main dining room, and a covered rooftop, plus Coastal Wine & Tapas in its rebranded, expanded space. Town Center is where you go for a night out. Marketplace is where you go to work out beforehand.

The Trail Network That Ties It Together

Whichever side of Valley Ridge Boulevard you're closer to, the Greenway trail system is the connective tissue, and it's built around three distinct color-coded loops rather than one generic path:

1. Pelican Trail, 2.15 miles: the short loop for a quick evening walk or a dog that's had enough for the day.
2. Heron Trail, 5.5 miles: a mid-length option for a longer bike ride or a run with some actual mileage behind it.
3. Osprey Trail, 6.4 miles: the long version, for residents who want to log serious distance without leaving the community.

Together those three loops add up to roughly 14 miles of fitness trail, according to Nocatee's own lifestyle materials, and they all begin near a shared trailhead behind Splash Water Park. For anyone who wants unpaved terrain, the 2,400-acre Nocatee Preserve extends the option further, fronting a stretch of the Tolomato River for hikers and mountain bikers willing to trade pavement for dirt.

The point isn't that Nocatee has trails. Plenty of Florida communities do. The point is that the system is built in tiers, so a resident chooses a loop based on how much time they have that evening, not just on which village they live in.

The One Answer Neither Side Owns

Here's the wrinkle in the two-centers story: Splash Water Park doesn't belong to either side. It's a resident-only amenity, open to Nocatee residents and their guests, which makes it the one piece of the community that both halves of the map share equally. And it's not just a pool. Nocatee's own recap of the amenity lists a running calendar of community events tied to Splash:

• Food Truck Friday
• Karaoke nights
• Trivia
• Beer Bingo
• Nocatee on Tap
• Event Lawn Movies

That's a weekly and monthly programming calendar layered on top of a five-acre water park, and it functions as neutral ground between Town Center and Marketplace. Whichever direction your errands take you earlier in the day, Splash is where the week tends to end up.

Why a Third Node Is Coming, Not a Replacement

The next piece of this puzzle is already public. The Hub at Nocatee, a planned 63,225-square-foot open-air marketplace with weekend live music built around a central courtyard, is set to open adjacent to Marketplace at Nocatee, west of Valley Ridge Boulevard South. It's expected in 2028, per an announcement posted by The PARC Group, Nocatee's master developer, in July 2026.

That siting detail is the interesting part. The Hub isn't going up next to Town Center. It's going up next to Marketplace, which tells you where the community's retail growth axis is actually heading. Over the next two years, the newer side of Nocatee is set to gain another gathering space, while Town Center's footprint stays roughly what it is today. That doesn't make Town Center less relevant. It means the two centers are on track to keep specializing rather than converging.

What This Means for Your Week

If you've been defaulting to Town Center out of habit, it's worth testing the other side of Valley Ridge Boulevard, especially if fast-casual dinners and a reformer class fit your schedule better than a rooftop bar. If you're the kind of resident who wants a sit-down dinner and a wine list, Town Center still does that job better, and Salata's arrival this past spring suggests it isn't losing tenants to the newer plaza anytime soon.

Either way, the trail system means you're never locked into one side. A short Pelican Trail loop after dinner at Marketplace, or a longer Osprey Trail run before a night out at Chophouse, both start from roughly the same place. And whatever else changes as the Hub gets built out toward 2028, Splash Water Park's Friday night food trucks and trivia nights aren't going anywhere.

Nocatee didn't outgrow its original Town Center. It grew a second one with a different job to do, and figuring out which errands belong on which side of Valley Ridge Boulevard is the small, useful piece of local knowledge that makes a normal week here run a little smoother.

If you're weighing what a home in one part of Nocatee versus another actually means for your day-to-day routine, or you're curious what your current property here is worth given how much the surrounding retail map has shifted this year, the team at Market Makers Group knows this community block by block. Reach out for a free home valuation and a conversation grounded in what's actually happening on the ground, not just what the map used to look like.