Armed with a 4-inch-thick, three-ring binder of information and ownership of 155 acres of entitled North Jacksonville property ready for sale, landowner Steve Leggett met with representatives looking for a deal.
“We didn’t know who it was and were speculating it’s probably Amazon,” Leggett said Wednesday.
They were correct.
Amazon.com said Wednesday it would open a fulfillment center in North Jacksonville, which JAXUSA Partnership expects will be completed for the 2017 holiday season. It will create 1,500 full-time jobs and many more seasonal positions.
Leggett had been contacted in January to show representatives the property.
He met with the Cushman & Wakefield site selection committee and knew his land was on a list with five others “that were half the price.”
Yet it was no question, he said. “Amazon wanted that one.”
They made an offer. He countered. USAA Real Estate Co. paid $15 million a week ago for the Leggett group’s land at 12900 Pecan Park Road. Seefried Industrial Properties Inc. is the developer.
In 2007, Leggett’s group bought the undeveloped property north of Interstate 295, at Pecan Park Road and International Airport Boulevard.
That was before the real estate market crashed. He held on.
“I never lost confidence in the site,” he said.
He knew its value. It’s close to Jacksonville International Airport, specifically the air cargo functions, and it’s not far from JaxPort.
“Amazon saw the same thing I saw in that site. I chose the site and it worked out,” said Leggett.
Leggett signed a contract in February that came with a confidentiality clause, meaning he couldn’t divulge it was Amazon.com.
The deal moved quickly then. City Council introduced and approved an incentives package in the course of two weeks in April for the code-named Project Rex. Leggett said the development team and engineers worked with the city on an expedited basis.
A horizontal development permit was issued in April and building plans for the $87 million, 855,000-square-foot building are in review. Site work has begun.
“We tried to help them with our contacts with the city, but they were already on it,” Leggett said.
The deal went from contract-signing in February to construction in July.
It had been germinating for a while.
Over at the JAX Chamber, JAXUSA Partnership President Jerry Mallot said Wednesday his economic-development team had been recruiting Amazon.com for at least seven years.
During that time, Mallot said he and Aaron Bowman, JAXUSA’s senior vice president of real estate development since 2012 and a City Council member since 2015, met regularly with some key people.
The meetings didn’t lead to inclusion in the first round of Florida cities chosen for fulfillment centers. Amazon.com announced in October 2013 it would open centers in Lakeland and Ruskin. Those started operations in 2014.
Mallot said Jacksonville was one of the initial sites under consideration for those facilities, but population density and demographics drove the first centers to Central Florida.
When Amazon.com then looked at North Florida and Georgia, Mallot knew Jacksonville had a good shot, but was concerned it would go north of the state border.
“We kept providing data and information and site options,” he said.
Mallot said the first meeting with Seefried Industrial representatives was in February at the JAXUSA offices. He didn’t know who they were for a month and a half, but he speculated like Leggett did.
Seefried representatives did not identify themselves, Mallot said, because it might give away the identity of their client. Seefried has developed several Amazon.com centers.
“When it became absolutely real was when they sent their real estate folks. They found a site that made sense and said, ‘All right, let’s make that deal happen,’” Mallot said.
He said JAXUSA had been suggesting sites to Amazon.com for five years. The company’s real estate team takes care of the rest.
Key to the transaction was a timeline. “Meeting their constructions schedule, getting their permits in, working out a package that made sense, all of those were critical issues,” he said.
The mayor’s office, the Office of Economic Development, council, the state and other supporters all worked on the project.
The city and state offered $18.4 million in taxpayer incentives for the deal, a $200 million project. Mallot credited the city for “a marvelous job” on permitting.
Mallot said Amazon.com wanted to be under construction by July. Dirt was moving before July 13 and a part of Pecan Park Road was closed July 14 for realignment to serve the center.
“We are just really pleased that we are successful,” he said.
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