Chick-fil-A has filed plans for a new restaurant at Nocatee and Crosswater parkways, north of 355 Pine Lake Drive, marking the fast-food chain's fourth active project in St. Johns County. St. Johns County received the plans on August 24, and the proposed restaurant would measure 4,847 square feet.
According to the Jacksonville Daily Record, Foresite Group is serving as the project engineer and filed a permitting preapplication for the site. The engineering firm is overseeing multiple Chick-fil-A projects in St. Johns County and has previously developed Chick-fil-A sites in Georgia and Mississippi. Foresite Group requested JEA's service availability determination letter back on June 16, 2025, and JEA issued that letter the same day, concerning an unnamed 4,847-square-foot restaurant at the Nocatee site. The outlet notes that a service availability request only indicates a site is being considered for development and does not by itself confirm a project will move forward.
The property is owned by Sonoc Company LLC, which partners with The PARC Group, Nocatee's developer, on the land. Chick-fil-A first signaled interest in the site in 2023 and began the permitting process with St. Johns County that year, but the same report notes a Chick-fil-A project did not move forward after the permitting process began in 2023 — leaving open whether this filing revives that earlier effort or represents a fresh push at the same location.
Part of a Broader St. Johns County Push
The Nocatee filing is one of several Chick-fil-A projects currently active across the county. Other locations include a site at County Road 210 across from The Fountains at St. Johns, an outparcel at World Commerce Center tied to the proposed Walmart Supercenter development, and a site in Bartram Park, the Daily Record reports. Chick-fil-A currently has at least 24 locations in Northeast Florida, part of a chain that operates more than 3,000 restaurants located across the United States, Canada, Puerto Rico, the United Kingdom, and Singapore.
Hoodline previously reported on the CR-210 filing near The Fountains at St. Johns, where Chick-fil-A proposed a 4,713-square-foot restaurant with dual drive-thru lanes on a 2.4-acre site owned by Jacksonville-based Bel Property Management Inc. Separately, site plans submitted in late 2024 to the St. Johns River Water Management District describe a 5,558-square-foot Chick-fil-A with dual drive-thru lanes capable of holding up to 57 vehicles at the World Commerce Center outparcel, across from Tocoi Creek High School. A third project has already produced a $2.5 million building permit for a 5,000-square-foot restaurant on Bartram Park Boulevard near Race Track Road, across from The Pavilion at Durbin Park.
Nocatee's Commercial Corridor Keeps Filling In
The Crosswater Parkway filing lands in a section of Nocatee that has seen steady commercial infill as the master-planned community approaches residential build-out. Nocatee grew from 4,524 residents in 2010 to 22,503 at the 2020 Census, according to Wikipedia, and has repeatedly ranked among the nation's top-selling master-planned communities. The community spans 25 square miles across northern St. Johns and southern Duval counties, with more than 60% of its land set aside for environmental conservation under its original 2001 Development of Regional Impact approval.
Just last month, county officials approved a $10.5 million, 20,000-square-foot Turner Ace Hardware store along the same Crosswater Parkway corridor near the Nocatee Splash Water Park, a project Hoodline covered as part of a wave of Nocatee retail expansion. Elsewhere in the county, the World Commerce Center hub along International Golf Parkway has also drawn a Dutch Bros Coffee kiosk and what would be Northeast Florida's first White Castle, both filed earlier this year.
Growth Numbers Behind the Demand
The rush of drive-thru filings comes as St. Johns County continues adding residents, even as the pace has cooled. The county added roughly 11,400 residents between July 2024 and July 2025 to reach an estimated population of 346,328, its slowest annual numeric increase since 2020, per the St. Johns Citizen — down from nearly 19,800 new residents added between July 2020 and July 2021 during the post-pandemic migration surge.
Employment growth has kept pace with the county's population gains. Total jobs in St. Johns County grew 26.1% between 2020 and 2025, rising from 91,019 to 114,739 employees, according to the county's Economic Development Office — far outpacing the 10.7% national employment growth rate over the same span. Florida is already home to 242 Chick-fil-A locations within the Atlanta-based chain's national network, which now tops 3,000 restaurants across 48 states.
The Nocatee project's next public checkpoint comes September 9, when the county's Development Review Committee is scheduled to discuss the proposal. Whether the filing results in an approved restaurant, as with the Bartram Park site, or stalls the way the original 2023 Nocatee effort did, remains to be seen.
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