Drive the length of Edgewater Drive through College Park right now and you'll pass two fenced-off properties that used to sell gas. One still has a Citgo canopy standing over empty pump islands, a construction banner zip-tied to the chain link. The other is a squat brick building that spent decades as a 7-Eleven, now wearing fresh green awnings and a new roadside sign that wasn't there in the spring. Neither has an opening date. Both are about as far from each other as you can get in what they're about to become.
The old 7-Eleven at 1500 Edgewater Drive is turning into The Black Sheep, a needlepoint and fiber arts shop that has operated somewhere in Central Florida since 1972. The old Citgo at 3460 Edgewater is lined up for Chester's Chicken, a national fried chicken brand built around convenience-store and travel-stop counters, marking its first Central Florida location. Same real estate type. Same street. Completely different customer walking through the door.
Two Fuel Stops, Two New Uses
The Black Sheep is relocating from its current spot on North Orange Blossom Trail in Lockhart, where it sells needlepoint canvases, fibers, and craft supplies while hosting workshops for stitchers. The shop has changed hands several times since its 1972 founding in Winter Park, most recently passing to longtime customers Cynthia Brumback and Leigh Ann Horton, who bought it from a retiring owner. Construction on the College Park location started over the summer, and as of early September the building looks less like a convenience store and more like a shop people would linger in. No opening date has been announced.
Down the street, Chester's Chicken is working from the opposite playbook. The chain traces back to 1952 in Montgomery, Alabama, and built its business model around fitting a fried chicken counter into gas stations and truck stops rather than standing alone as a restaurant. A banner on the old Citgo's construction fencing was the only confirmation as of this summer. The location wasn't yet listed on the company's store locator, and no one had said when the fryers turn on.
Here's what's easy to miss if you just scroll past both of these as generic "new business" items: neither one needed to demolish anything or build from scratch. Both are reusing the exact kind of small, road-facing commercial lot that gas stations and convenience stores left behind. On a corridor that's mostly built out, that's the inventory available, and two very different businesses are betting it works for them.
The Candy Shop That Didn't Create a Vacancy
A few blocks away, Millie's Swedish Candy Co. opened its first brick-and-mortar shop on June 13 at 2529 Edgewater Drive, right next door to Doghouse. The business started as a pop-up, debuting at Dora Mae Jewelry during Ivanhoe Village's Jingle Eve the previous November, then spent months building a following at pop-ups around Orlando before committing to a permanent address. The opening day line stretched around the corner, with roughly 200 people waiting for pick-and-mix bins of sour, chewy, imported Swedish candy.
The space Millie's moved into used to be Foundation, the music and clothing store. Foundation didn't close. It moved up the street to a new location, and Millie's took over the spot it left behind. Owner Millie McMahon grew up in College Park and described the opening as a full-circle moment, having grown up making the same drive up Edgewater for candy before movie nights.
That distinction matters more than it looks. On a lot of commercial strips, a new business opening means an old one shut down. Here, the storefront turnover reads more like a game of musical chairs than a wave of closures. Foundation is still open. It's just somewhere else on the same street.
The One That Actually Left
Not every change on Edgewater fits that pattern. Dechoes Resale, which specialized in designer, vintage, and modern clothing sourced from sellers around Orlando, announced this summer that it was closing its College Park shop. Unlike Foundation's move or the fuel-lot conversions still under construction, there was no next chapter attached to the announcement, no new address, no relocation plan. It reads as a straightforward closure.
That's worth sitting with precisely because it's the exception. On a strip where Black Sheep is relocating rather than shutting down, where Chester's Chicken is filling a lot that had already gone empty, and where Foundation traded addresses instead of disappearing, an actual departure stands out. It's the kind of detail you'd only notice by tracking the street closely enough to see which businesses are swapping locations and which ones are simply gone.
The Calendar Keeps Running Regardless
None of this construction pauses the parts of College Park that don't depend on any single storefront. The Drive, College Park's Main Street organization, runs its annual signature events on Edgewater Drive whether the block is mid-renovation or not. Dancing on the Drive closes off the street each April for a dance floor, food trucks, and vendors. JazzFest brings bands out in November. Holiday on the Drive turns the corridor into a lit-up winter scene in December.
That means the same stretch hosting an unfinished 7-Eleven conversion and a construction-fenced Citgo will also host a street full of neighbors for JazzFest this November, the same as it has most years. The businesses along Edgewater change hands and addresses. The civic rhythm that brings people out onto the street doesn't wait for any of them to finish their build-out.
What You'd Actually See Walking the Drive Right Now
If you walked Edgewater Drive this week, here's roughly what you'd pass, storefront by storefront:
- 2529 Edgewater Drive: Millie's Swedish Candy Co., open Wednesday through Saturday, having taken over the space Foundation vacated when it moved up the street
- 1500 Edgewater Drive: the former 7-Eleven, now under renovation for The Black Sheep, with a new sign up but no opening date yet
- 3460 Edgewater Drive: the former Citgo, fenced off with a Chester's Chicken banner and no confirmed timeline
- One storefront elsewhere on the strip, formerly Dechoes Resale, now closed with no announced replacement
Three of those four are additions or relocations. One is a closure. That ratio is the real story here, more than any single opening. It says something about how this particular stretch of Orlando absorbs change: businesses that outgrow or need to leave a space tend to land somewhere else nearby rather than leaving the market altogether, and the properties that go dark, like the old gas stations, don't stay that way long.
If you're watching this corridor because you own property near it, or you're weighing what a stretch like this does to the value of a home a few blocks off Edgewater, that kind of steady commercial reinvestment is worth understanding in context rather than headline by headline. Engel & Völkers Lakeland tracks these shifts across Central Florida neighborhoods, College Park included, and can walk you through what corridor activity like this typically means for a specific address if you're curious about where you stand.
