A former Food Lion and Big Lots building on Beach Boulevard is about to get a new life as a Harbor Freight tool store, with city permits now moving through review for the buildout at Pablo Station. If approved, it would mark the tool retailer's fifth Jacksonville location and seventh across Northeast Florida.
According to Jacksonville Daily Record, the tool chain plans to lease about 17,000 square feet inside the old grocery and discount-retail space at 14333 Beach Blvd., part of the Pablo Station shopping center near Northwest Beach Boulevard and San Pablo Road. The city is reviewing a permit application for a contractor to build out the interior and complete exterior renovations, with the earlier report pegging the estimated project cost at $400,000 — though separate seed data tied to the same filing cites a project cost of $2.4 million, a discrepancy that has not been resolved in the available records. Exterior work is expected to include a new entry door and a new forklift ramp, the outlet reported.
The architect of record for the project is identified in that reporting as ADA Architects of Lakewood, Ohio, a firm that says on its own website it has partnered with Harbor Freight Tools since 2011 and helped deliver more than 800 stores nationwide, per ADA Architects. The building itself has history: Duval County property records show the 32,011-square-foot structure was built in 1989, and it is owned by Pablo Shopping LLC of Boca Raton, the Daily Record reported.
Who's Actually Building It Remains Unclear
There's a wrinkle in the contractor details. The earlier Daily Record report names Harbor Contracting Co. Inc. of Thomasville, Georgia, as the firm handling the buildout and exterior renovations, while separate seed facts tied to the same permit filing list Marco Contracting Inc. of Warrendale, Pennsylvania, as the contractor. The available records do not reconcile which firm is actually doing the work, and this article does not attempt to resolve that conflict.
What is consistent across the reporting is the scope of the retailer's ambitions in the area. Harbor Freight already operates four Jacksonville stores — at 9861 Beach Blvd. in Southside Estates, 10950 San Jose Blvd. in Mandarin, 932 Dunn Ave. in North Jacksonville and 8102 Blanding Blvd. in the Argyle area of West Jacksonville — plus one each in Orange Park and St. Augustine, rounding out its Florida footprint, according to the Daily Record's earlier coverage. The Pablo Station store would push its Jacksonville count to five and its Northeast Florida total to seven.
A National Growth Streak Continues
The Pablo Station project fits into a broader expansion pattern for the chain. Harbor Freight now operates more than 1,600 locations across 48 states, and it has announced four new store openings since the start of 2026 alone, including two in Alabama, one in Louisiana and one in Texas, according to HBS Dealer. Among those, a Sylacauga, Alabama, store and a Scottsboro, Alabama, location are both expected to open in winter 2026, while new stores in Sulphur, Louisiana, and Odessa, Texas, are slated for spring 2026 — the Odessa store would be the company's 134th in Texas, per the same report.
Harbor Freight describes itself as America's number-one tool store, and the company says more than 75 million customers shop its lineup of automotive, air and power tools, storage, outdoor power equipment, generators, welding supplies, shop equipment and hand tools, the Daily Record has reported. Chairman and CEO Eric Smidt founded the company in 1977 as a small mail-order tool business in North Hollywood, California, a origin story the company continues to highlight as it expands into markets like Jacksonville decades later.
No opening date for the Pablo Station store has been disclosed, and the status of the city's review of the building permits has not been confirmed beyond the application being under consideration. Until those details firm up, Jacksonville shoppers on the city's Southside will have to wait to see when the new aisles of tools and equipment actually open their doors.
