One of the largest undeveloped tracts in the Interstate 4 corridor is set to break ground next week — at a time of unprecedented demand and investor interest in Central Florida’s industrial real estate market.
Infrastructure work will begin at Lakeland Central Park, the 730-acre property Parkway Inc., and Silverpeak Real Estate Partners paid $10 million for in 2019. At full buildout, the park — west of Airport Road and south of Old Tampa Highway, near Publix Super Markets Inc.’s corporate headquarters — will include 5 million square feet of industrial space and 500,000 square feet of multifamily, retail, and general commercial space.
The first phase will be 2 million square feet of industrial space, and the developers will begin construction on a 708,000-square-foot warehouse as soon as infrastructure work wraps up, Parkway CEO Jim Heistand said. The timing of the remaining 1.3 million square feet in the first phase will depend on the leasing of the spec building.
Jr. Davis Construction Co. has been hired to handle the infrastructure work, and Heistand said the developers are in negotiations with general contractors for the vertical construction.
Berkadia Commercial Mortgage LLC arranged the $38.25 million construction loan for phase one with Wells Fargo.
The development costs for the industrial portion total $400 million, Heistand said.
There’s already been an influx of interest, Heistand said, though those potential tenants needed space faster than the developers could deliver it as they wound through the entitlement process.
Speculative construction in the 700,000-square-foot range was unprecedented in the I-4 corridor until about five years ago; since 2017, several warehouses have broken ground speculatively, landed a tenant, and sold for scorching prices. Most recently, the speculative 700,000-square-foot Lakeland Dragstrip Logistics Center landed Amazon.com as a tenant and sold for more than $100 million.