Another development is in review to meet tenant demand in Jacksonville’s tight warehouse market of 4% or less vacancy.
The city is reviewing permits for the foundation and building construction for Commonwealth Logistics Center totaling 502,250 square feet of space in West Jacksonville.
InLight Real Estate Partners of Ponte Vedra Beach is developing the two warehouses on 39 acres at northwest Imeson Road and Commonwealth Avenue at a cost of $30.2 million, permits show.
InLight bought the land April 5 for $3.95 million from N.G. Wade Investment Co. It acquired and is developing the project as Commonwealth Avenue Jacksonville Propco LLC.
Dana B. Kenyon Co. is the contractor for the projects, shown as:
• A 230,060-square-foot Building 1 at 7489 Commonwealth Ave. at a foundation cost of $1.54 million and a building cost of $12.28 million.
• A 272,190-square-foot Building 2 at 1700 Imeson Road at a foundation cost of $1.87 million and construction cost of $14.53 million.
Both are designed as multitenant structures.
Building 1 is a single-load warehouse and Building 2 is a cross-dock center.
Single-load, meaning there are dock doors on one side, is traditional warehousing.
Cross-dock, with dock doors lining both sides of the building, allows for moving goods from one truck directly into another for shipping out.
Cushman & Wakefield Managing Director Tyler Newman and Senior Director Jacob Horsley are representing the project.
A brochure says delivery is expected in the second quarter of 2023.
It is one of several warehouse projects InLight plans in Northeast Florida.
“We think this market is set to really pop, and we’re positioning to take full advantage,” Managing Partner David Burch said in July 2021.
Founders created InLight in early 2021. It is based in Ponte Vedra Beach and has an office in Atlanta, where some of the executives previously led real estate investments.
“We are not buying and waiting for build-to-suits. Tenants in the market don’t have time to wait for build-to-suit projects,” said Charles Margiotta, InLight local market officer.
“We plan to build on spec to meet that fast-paced demand.”
That does not rule out building for a specific tenant if the opportunity is presented.
“This is a modern Class A design spec,” Margiotta said.
He said InLight expects to be of interest to national and international firms that seek Class A speculative structures.
InLight Real Estate Industrial Acquisitions LLC previously applied to the St. Johns River Water Management District for InLight Industrial at Commonwealth in West Jacksonville.
The site is opposite the USPS Bulk Mail Center on Imeson Road, and is across Commonwealth Avenue from a FedEx Ship Center and Firestone GCR Tire center.
Prosser Inc. is the civil engineer and Environmental Resource Solutions is the environmental consultant.
Atlas Collaborative, based near Atlanta, is the architect.
Cushman Wakefield said in its first-quarter industrial market report that the traditional distribution hubs for the region, the North and West Jacksonville submarkets, dominated warehouse/distribution leasing activity, accounting for 96% of new deals
It found that new leasing activity totaled 1.4 million square feet in the first three months of 2022 with 59%, or 824,400 square feet, in North Jacksonville.
Cushman & Wakefield said that at the end of the first quarter, 3.7 million square feet of space was under construction with close to 75% speculative, meaning it was not leased in advance.
