The city issued a permit Aug. 18 for Darifair Foods LLC to put down the foundation for its Southside Innovation and Technical Center in Flagler Center.
The foundation permit shows a job cost of $15 million. Stellar Group Inc. is the contractor.
Darifair is a Jacksonville-based food-science company based in Mandarin at 4131 Sunbeam Road. It now occupies a 13,500-square-foot office building.
Darifair intends to build an almost 43,000-square-foot building with about 5,300 square feet of unenclosed space at 13129 Flagler Center Blvd.
Plans show customer service cubicles; a break room-meeting area; storage areas, including for raw materials; a research and development kitchen and a separate show kitchen; research rooms; R&D cubicles; a conference area; and accounting and human resources, among other functions.
Darifair Foods LLC wants to develop the commercial building on 5.07 acres at northeast Gran Bay Parkway and Flagler Center Boulevard.
The company paid $2.1 million Jan. 23 for the development site.
The Flagler Center office and industrial park is south of Old St. Augustine Road between Interstate 95 and Philips Highway.
Darifair.com says Darifair Foods focuses on creating culinary and food science-focused innovations for restaurants and food manufacturers.
Darifair Foods produces and supplies dairy products such as creams, cottage cheese, yogurt, fluid creamers, milk, ice creams, yogurt smoothies, sauces and other dairy products to clients in the U.S.
The Block family founded and continues to lead the privately owned company. Arbor Investments, with offices in Chicago and New York, announced May 1, 2019, that it invested in the company.
A spokeswoman said by email July 30 that she was not ready to comment.