REAL ESTATE
6
TCBusiness.com
ST. LUCIE ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT COUNCIL
A half-dozen industrial real estate developers, all with multistate footprints, are working on seven St. Lucie County sites. Higher prices and fewer large parcels
south of the Treasure Coast has pushed developers to Indian River, Martin and St. Lucie counties.
of the value would have been $40,000 per
acre, Murphy said.
Chamberlin says land values for large
parcels good for industrial development
are $150,000 to $200,000 per acre, up from
$90,000 and less several years ago.
It’s the location, land price and the
access to major highways that lures big
companies from Amazon to FedEx to build
in the region.
“You can reach 65% of the population in
Florida within two to three hours” of St. Lucie
County, said Pete Tesch, president of the
St. Lucie Economic Development Center,
which has been instrumental in the process
of developing the large land parcels.
Tesch said the county and the Treasure
Coast benefits by the growth of the overall
Florida economy, which he says would be
the 15th or 16th largest in the world if it
were its own country.
DELIVERING THE GOODS
There are precious few large parcels of
land still open to industrial development in
the more populated counties south of the
Treasure Coast: Miami-Dade, Broward and
Palm Beach. Those are also the three most
heavily populated counties in the state to
make up its largest consumer market.
When there are such parcels in the largest
counties south of the Treasure Coast,
the prices are much higher, said Chris
Dzadovsky, St. Lucie County commissioner.
As the consumer market shifts to
delivery-to-home purchases, there is more
demand for massive warehouses and distribution
centers, Chamberlin said.
“This is all new territory for us,” Chamberlin
said. “It’s the advent of distribution being
the new retail. Delivery to your home.”
W. Lee Dobbins, a land-use attorney in
St. Lucie County, said that rather than put
a distribution warehouse in South Florida
or Central Florida, it makes sense to locate
on the Treasure Coast in order to serve
both of those big markets.
When city and county and economic
development officials work to land large
industrial facilities, they use code words to
help identify them but keep their details
secret until sales are closed.
Elijah Wooten Jr., business navigator
for Port St. Lucie, said a Project Green and
a Project Apron both call for 1-millionsquare
foot buildings north of the underconstruction
Amazon 1.1-million-squarefoot
distribution center in the Midway
Business Center.
RIPE FOR DEVELOPMENT
Industrial land development is progressing
on a smaller scale but is active in
Indian River and Martin counties.
Phil Matson, community development
director for Indian River County, said that
there are about 9,000 acres of land for potential
development in Fellsmere west of
I-95 and north of State Road 60. And there
is a 99-acre parcel ripe for development
on Oslo Road and I-95 that was the former
site of a state youthful offender prison.
There is major potential for industrial
development on Oslo Road, in the southern
part of the county, particularly once a
new interchange at Oslo and I-95 opens
in three years, Matson said. There is also
a plan to improve Oslo Road from 58th >>
/TCBusiness.com