FedEx Ground Package System Inc. has confirmed interest in Cecil Commerce Center for a logistics center.
"I can confirm that FedEx is considering a facility in the Cecil Commerce Center," said Jesse Bull, FedEx Ground communications coordinator, in an email Wednesday afternoon.
The confirmation came the same day a City committee reviewed preliminary plans for an unidentified company to build a 300,000-square-foot distribution warehouse, plus additional buildings, within Cecil Commerce Center for the purpose of logistics.
Cecil Commerce Center is owned by the City and is being developed by Hillwood, which calls the property AllianceFlorida at Cecil Commerce Center.
The unidentified project is planned directly north of the Saft America Inc. battery plant, which was developed along Waterworks Street, just off New World Avenue.
Site documents presented to the City Cecil Commerce Center Architectural Review Board on Wednesday for the "JCCC Parcel D2" project show a 300,000-square-foot warehouse, a 5,180 square-foot maintenance building and a 1,890-square-foot gateway.
Documents show 537 employee parking spaces, a fuel island with a canopy, several areas for trailer and long-trailer parking and space for "deadline parking."
In his email, Bull said it is company policy not to discuss specifics when a project is still under consideration, including the size of a proposed facility.
The site documents list Bradford Davis of Prosser Hallock Inc. as the engineer, Clary & Associates Inc. as the surveyor and Charlotte, N.C-based Suncap Property Group as the developer.
Under the "featured project" listing at Suncap's suncappg.com website, the company features an October 2011 award from FedEx for the development of a major distribution center near Rochester, N.Y.
The site describes the Rochester project as a $20 million, 111,969-square-foot trucking terminal for FedEx Freight. Construction began in June 2011 and was completed in December 2011. The location also had "wetlands challenges," which were relocated and/or mitigated.
Documents show there are wetland impacts on the proposed Cecil Commerce Center site.
Davis and Duncan Ross, also of Prosser Hallock, presented the board with the preliminary documents and renderings, seeking conceptual approval and deviations to the Cecil Commerce Center design guidelines and standards for building- and site-design elements.
Ross told the board the 300,000-square-foot warehouse was planned on about 45 acres and is a build-to-suit project for logistics.
No name was provided. Board members did not ask for the name of the tenant.
Documents detail justification for the deviations, saying "the proposed building is special-purpose logistics facility which accommodates the handling of multiple vehicle types and sizes."
The site is not intended to receive significant customer or visitor traffic and the closest building is about 800 feet from the nearest public street, the statement says.
During the discussion, Davis said the tenant "has a prototype they use in all of their locations" and "has a proven track record" of the design working.
"This site was hand-selected for this purpose," Davis told the board.
Davis and Ross declined comment about the project after the meeting.
In February, Bull confirmed that FedEx Ground Package System has been considering a project in Jacksonville, but did not confirm the details circulating among those who were hearing about the search.
Several sources said FedEx is looking at Jacksonville for a potential logistics operation at Cecil Commerce Center.
"I can confirm FedEx Ground is looking into something in the Jacksonville area, but nothing is confirmed," Bull said in February.
"We're still in the preliminary phase," he said at the time. "We don't have further details."
FedEx Corp. is based in Memphis, Tenn., and FedEx Ground is based in Pittsburgh.
According to FedEx's annual Securities and Exchange Commission filing, FedEx Ground Package System Inc. is a leading North American provider of small-package ground delivery services. It says FedEx Ground provides low-cost, day-certain service to every business address in the United States and Canada, as well as residential delivery to nearly all U.S. residences through its FedEx Home Delivery service.
The FedEx Ground segment also includes FedEx SmartPost Inc., which specializes in the consolidation and delivery of high volumes of low-weight, less time-sensitive business-to-consumer packages using the U.S. Postal Service for final delivery to any residential address or P.O. Box in the United States.
The SEC report said FedEx Ground operates a multiple hub-and-spoke sorting and distribution system consisting of 525 facilities, including 33 hubs, in the U.S. and Canada.
It conducts its operations primarily with 30,770 owner-operated vehicles and about 35,000 company-owned trailers. FedEx Home Delivery's operations are often co-located with existing FedEx Ground facilities.
It said advanced automated sorting technology is used to streamline the handling of millions of packages daily.
"Using overhead laser and six-sided camera-based bar code scan technology, hub conveyors electronically guide packages to their appropriate destination chute, where they are loaded for transport to their respective destination terminals for local delivery," says the filing.
As of May 31, FedEx Ground had about 50,500 employees. In addition, it said FedEx Ground relies on owner-operators to conduct its line-haul and pickup-and-delivery operations.
Its primary competitors are UPS and the U.S. Postal Service.
(904) 356-2466
Karen Brune Mathis contributed to this report.