OVIEDO – Kevin Hipes was sitting in his car waiting for a doctor’s appointment a few years ago when he had an idea for Oviedo Mall.

“It hit me: these medical people ought to be in the mall,” said Hipes, the mall’s enthusiastic director of development. “You’ve got 45 minutes [to wait for the doctor], Mr. Hipes. Go get a craft beer. Go get your nails done. Go work out for 45 minutes. Go to the food court, eat lunch. Go to Barnes & Noble, read a book. I said, ‘Holy, cow. Medical in the mall.’”

Hipes’ vision for what he markets as a “Medical Main Street” is starting to show signs of life as Oviedo Mall undergoes a transformation in the wake of national retailers shuttering at shopping centers across the country over the past decade.

Orlando Orthopaedic Center, which has about 10 offices around Central Florida, is planning to open in a more than 16,100-square-foot space inside the mall.

Elsewhere at the center, an Italian market and bakery from the owners of a Central Florida pizzeria is slated for an 8,300-square-foot space that formerly housed a Chamberlin’s natural foods store.

Four hundred apartments are also planned for a part of the property where the Macy’s store will be demolished.

Orlando Orthopaedic Center is relocating its existing Oviedo office, which is about 11,000 square feet, with an expected opening planned for early September, said CEO Kevin Joyce.

Joyce compared the Oviedo Mall site with the Orlando Orthopaedic Center’s location south of downtown Orlando at the outdoor shopping center there anchored by Target.

He cited all the advantages of the mall as reasons for moving the Oviedo location to inside the mall: ample parking, foot traffic, a location patients can easily find, and the convenience for staff and patients to visit other stores and the food court.

Rent at Oviedo Mall also is less expensive, Joyce said, and the additional space will allow for expansion, including adding an MRI.

“The reality is there’s still a lot of value in the bricks and mortar of the mall,” Joyce said.

Hipes also expects a 2,000-square-foot pharmacy to open in the mall in the next month.

“I’m talking to a family practice guy right now. He wants 7,000 square feet,” Hipes said. “I want a dentist. … I want them all.”

The medical offices’ employees and patients could mean foot traffic for Oviedo Mall.

“My tenants, my food tenants, my other tenants, these people are all going to start to make a little money from the traffic that’s brought in from the destination tenants,” Hipes said.

The mall isn’t free of problems. On a recent weekday, wet floor signs and buckets littered its common areas due to leaks in the roof.

Hipes said the mall has proven it will spend money, citing millions of dollars in recent years going toward new air conditioning and half of the mall’s roof already replaced.

“We will have those [leaks] fixed. It might take another six months to a year,” Hipes said. “They will be fixed, because it’s economics. Why would you not fix your roof leaks when they’re now beginning to get tenants that are paying real rent?”

Jessica Nsouli, of Sanford, was happy the mall had fixed the air conditioning but expressed some concern about the leaks.

“Not having buckets as you’re walking is definitely … more lively,” she said.

The 35-year-old teacher was eating lunch with her husband in the food court and heading to the B. Dalton Bookseller, which Barnes & Noble rebranded last year.

She said she ate at the mall for dinner the night before and expected to be back again the next day as well for bowling with her 11-year-old son at District Eat and Play, making it three days in a row at Oviedo Mall.

“I think there’s a mix of nostalgia here,” she said. “We’ve been coming here since we were kids.”

The mall will also soon be home to D’Amico & Sons Italian Market and Bakery.

Being built by the family behind Papa Gio’s Pizzeria, a restaurant on Colonial Drive east of Orlando near Bithlo, the Oviedo market is planned to open by October, said Philip D’Amico, one of the sons in the family-owned business.

D’Amico & Sons will sell fresh bread, cakes, gelato, grab-and-go meals to heat up at home like chicken marsala and spaghetti and meatballs, cannolis and other pastries, and groceries such as pasta, oil, and wine, D’Amico said.

The D’Amico family also hopes to do wholesale business selling desserts to restaurants.

D’Amico said investments in the space are costing from $1 million to $2 million.

“The mall … it’s in a good shape right now,” D’Amico said. “It’s building back to where it was. So it’s a perfect opportunity for a new business like us to give exposure to the mall.”

The market is replacing the Chamberlin’s that helped fill in a former 55,000-square-foot Bed Bath & Beyond, Hipes said. The former big box space was subdivided, with existing tenants besides the market including Zoo Health Club and O2B Kids preschool, after-school and summer camp center.

Hipes said he offered the market a deal on rent to bring it to the mall but didn’t disclose the specific rate. He added he gave the orthopedic center a “rate that they’ll never get anywhere else, and I did that on purpose.”

“I don’t mind giving a good deal to the first one or two big tenants in,” Hipes said. “Listen, that’s what the malls did back in the day. They gave the department stores dirt and said, ‘Build your own store, you pay no rent’ … but they created the traffic that allowed the developer to make a lot of money on the space inside.”

The market fits Hipes’ vision for transforming Oviedo Mall.

“What we’re creating here is an eat, sleep, work, play community and having an Italian market [and] bakery plays right into that,” Hipes said.