No identity has surfaced for the “significant industrial user” exploring a 300-acre site in AllianceFlorida at Cecil Commerce Center, but previous interest in the property indicates the potential size and type of user.
A food manufacturer was exploring the site about three years ago.
There also was a bottling company looking around Jacksonville at that time.
As for the size, those previous prospects looked at 1.5 million to 2 million square feet of space.
Those are not the prospects for the new project, but they show what’s possible.
The “significant user”
To recap, a “Significant Industrial User” is exploring Parcels L-O at AllianceFlorida for a manufacturing facility that would use an average of up to 600,000 gallons of water a day.
City water and power provider JEA is reviewing a request submitted Dec. 22 to determine the availability of service for the unidentified project.
The identity is not in the request nor being shared by the entities involved.
Civil engineering firm BGE Inc. submitted the application for “Jacksonville Manufacturing at Cecil,” referring to AllianceFlorida at Cecil Commerce Center, a city-owned industrial park in West Jacksonville.
Dallas-based Hillwood is the city’s master developer of AllianceFlorida at Cecil Commerce Center.
BGE and Hillwood leaders have declined comment.
A JEA request means a project is being explored and does not mean a deal has been done, although the city is aware of the prospect.
“This is a confidential economic development project, so we are unable to share any details, per state statute,” said city Chief Communications Officer Phil Perry in an email Jan. 5.
AllianceFlorida at Cecil Commerce Center is generally between Interstate 10 to the north and south to Normandy Boulevard and 103rd Street.
The industrial park is west of the First Coast Expressway. POW-MIA Memorial Parkway runs through the lower part of the park from the expressway to Normandy and 103rd.
The service availability request specifies the significant user’s address as 617 Water Works St., on the west end of that street. The street is also called Waterworks.
An AllianceFlorida site plan shows Parcel L at 146.98 acres and Parcel O at 152.37 acres, totaling more than 299 acres.
The project description says that:
• The manufacturing facility will be constructed in two phases.
• The average daily demand is 581,491 gallons of water per day and 401,455 gallons of wastewater produced.
• The maximum daily demand is 976,995 gallons of water per day and producing 531,148 gallons of wastewater.
• Those daily demands are for full build-out and within a 24-hour period.
• The manufacturing facility would operate 24/7.
The application states: “We are anticipating that this will be classified as a Significant Industrial User with additional pre-treatment & discharge requirements that will be determined during the Industrial User Application process.”
JEA says it classifies industrial users according to U.S. Environmental Protection Agency guidelines.
The EPA definition for a significant industrial user is one that “discharges an average of 25,000 gallons per day or more of process wastewater to the POTW (excluding sanitary, noncontact cooling, and boiler blowdown wastewater).”
EPA defines POTW as a publicly owned treatment works.
Food or drink
The Water Works site has been of interest for years.
Hillwood told the city that in the fourth quarter of 2023 it was eliminated by a prospect for an up to 2 million-square-foot industrial lease because of infrastructure timing.
In November 2023, BGE applied to JEA to determine the service availability for a 1.5 million-square-foot “food-grade manufacturing company” on Parcels L and M at 650 Waterworks St.
Parcel M is 113.95 acres. The two parcels total about 261 acres.
JEA responded Nov. 21, 2023, that it was currently unable to meet the demand for water treatment, which would require treatment plant upgrades and permitting that would take an estimated three to five years if approved and budgeted.
In a required quarterly report for the 2023 fourth quarter, Oct. 1-Dec. 31, Hillwood told the city it had continued discussions that started during the previous quarter with a prospect interested in leasing 1.2 million to 1.5 million square feet of industrial space.
Hillwood said that during the fourth quarter, the prospect delivered a written Request for Information that provided an updated size requirement of 1.5 million to 2 million square feet, “as well as details about the prospect’s electrical and water-supply requirements (both of which were very large),” the report said.
It wrote that JEA “indicated that satisfying the prospect’s electrical & water requirements would require the construction of new infrastructure, which could not be completed within the prospect’s required time frame.
“Hillwood conveyed this information to the prospect. As of the end of Q4, the prospect had eliminated AllianceFlorida based on timing considerations,” the report said.
As of mid-2025, Hillwood continued looking at developing the four parcels that include the three considered by the prospects.
Hillwood told the city in its second-quarter report for April-June 2025 that it conducted due diligence investigations of Parcels L, M, N and O “to more fully understand the development opportunities and challenges of these parcels.”
Environmental, survey, geotechnical and wetland studies were ongoing or completed by the end of the second quarter.
Parcel N is 170.86 acres. The four parcels total 584.16 acres.
“The 1.5Msf-2Msf deal that’s referenced in the Q4 2023 report (the prospect that eliminated Cecil due to infrastructure timing) is not, to my knowledge, the same deal that submitted the December 22 JEA service availability request,” Tatsch said Jan. 7 by email.
Project Z
Also in late 2023, the unidentified Project Z was exploring a site in November that included North Jacksonville, where InLight Real Estate Partners of Ponte Vedra Beach sought to determine the utility availability at a site east of Eastport Road next to a CSX rail line.
Project Z was described as a 1.5 million to 2 million square-foot light industrial building on about 100 acres. An email with the Nov. 13, 2023, application described it as possibly a large bottling operation with high water and sewer demand needs.
InLight had requested a development meeting with JEA.
InLight Real Estate Partners Managing Partner David Burch said at the time that the project was “very preliminary and our understanding is that the potential project is considering multiple sites in multiple Southeastern states.”
JEA records show that the project was abandoned.
The name Project Z could have referred to the landowner, Zion Jacksonville LLC of Bronx, New York.
“I have not heard about a re-start to the project Z process and that as of the time we reviewed it (year+ ago), it had larger water/sewer requirements,” Burch said by email Jan. 8.
The Project Z request to JEA request showed a maximum daily demand of 1.35 million gallons of water along with an average sewer discharge of 300,000 gallons per day.
About AllianceFlorida
The city’s master development agreement calls for Hillwood to build-out AllianceFlorida on about 4,499 acres of city property, the former Naval Air Station Cecil Field, off Normandy Boulevard and 103rd Street in West Jacksonville.