A Florida-based private equity company plans to buy out the developer who holds a $15 million note on the Gateway Shopping Center, according to the businessman whose company owns the Northside site.

If that happens, businessman Carlton Jones said he still has big plans for the property, where for the last three years he has envisioned it becoming a sort of medical hub for the surrounding community.

Starting in 2004, Jones borrowed almost $17 million from what was then Wachovia, later Wells Fargo.

In December, Wells Fargo sold the note — including the original mortgage, plus a construction loan and an improvement loan — to a Miami-based developer operating as Gateway Retail Center LLC.

The sale of the note wasn’t a problem, Jones said, “as long as they still worked with me.”

But on Feb. 9, that developer began the process of foreclosing on the property.

The shopping center owner is behind on both the loan payments and on city taxes, according to the noteholder’s filing, with $15,092,319 of the borrowed $16,950,000 still outstanding.

Jones didn’t pay the center’s property tax bills for 2009 and 2010, a total of $585,000.