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August 6, 2021 | 5:10 P.M.
Industrial developers are starting to find new fortunes on Florida’s Treasure Coast, kicking off with the area’s first Amazon fulfillment center.
The Seattle-based online retailing giant announced that Atlanta-based Seefried Industrial Properties is building a 1 million-square-foot center in Port St. Lucie’s Midway Business Park as Amazon continues to stitch together a vast global distribution network.
The fulfillment center will employ 500 people when it opens sometime next year.
Amazon said in its announcement that the center will “pick, pack and ship large customer items, such as sports equipment, patio furniture, fishing rods, pet food, kayaks, bicycles, and larger household goods.”
The center is helping to establish that part of Florida as a distribution hub along with St. Louis-based Sansone Group working with NorthBridge Partners to build a 5.5 million-square-foot industrial commerce park called Legacy Park at Tradition Center for Commerce.
The 425-acre industrial development sits within a 1,247-acre master-planned community named Tradition. A 520,000-square-foot cross-dock building and a 168,000-square-foot rear-loading warehouse are scheduled to open next Spring.
Pete Tesch, president of the St. Lucie County Economic Development Council, said during Legacy Park’s groundbreaking earlier this summer that it “marks the day our Tradition Center for Commerce truly becomes the long-envisioned jobs corridor.”
The area’s location runs along Interstate 95, which stretches from Miami up the East Coast. Orlando, Florida, is roughly 125 miles away.
Erin Amon-Surlis, a CoStar senior market analyst covering Port St. Lucie, said there was only about 1 million square feet of industrial space built in the past five years, and half of that was built last year. Only 150,000 square feet was built in the five years before 2015.
“So, 2020 really marks the start of the development boom” and now has 6 million square feet in the pipeline, Amon-Surlis said.
