Online used-car retailer Carvana appears to be developing one of its auction and reconditioning “megasites” in northwest Jacksonville at its ADESA wholesale auction property.
City power provider JEA issued a service availability letter Sept. 30 for the project, described as development of a Carvana maintenance and storage site on about 90.8 acres at 11700 New Kings Road. A JEA letter indicates a project is being explored and does not confirm a project will proceed.
Separately, the city received an application for a mobility fee calculation certificate for the project, specifying a more than 77,000-square-foot Carvana inspection and reconditioning facility on the 89.32-acre site at the New Kings Road address. Real estate consulting firm Atwell LLC of Jacksonville was the applicant.
That application shows a 5.45-acre proposed paved parking lot on the site as part of the project.
It’s not clear why the acreage differs on the JEA letter and the certificate application.
The site is in the Dinsmore area about 3 miles northwest of Interstate 295.
Carvana declined to comment.
ADESA Florida LLC owns the 89.32-acre site, developed in 1996. A.D.E. of Jacksonville Inc., in care of Adesa Corp. of Indianapolis, bought the site in 1994.
State corporate records show ownership was amended in 2022 to that of Carvana, the year it bought ADESA.
Carvana says ADESA is a leader in the wholesale auto auction industry, serving customers online and at its locations across the country.
Duval County property records show the Jacksonville location comprises three buildings totaling 38,127 square feet of space among an office building and two buildings for service and repairs.
What to expect
Arizona-based Carvana, which buys and sells used cars online, was founded in 2012 in Phoenix and moved its headquarters to Tempe in 2017.
Information on Carvana.com outlines what is anticipated at the ADESA site.
On Aug. 19, 2024, Carvana announced it would develop its first auction and reconditioning “megasite” in Kansas City, Missouri.
It said Carvana would establish inspection and reconditioning center capabilities at the ADESA Kansas City wholesale auction site while maintaining all digital and in-lane auction operations.
That indicates ADESA continues its regular functions while adding the Carvana capabilities.
“This location will anchor the growth of Carvana’s retail and wholesale operations in the area and enhance the company’s offering for retail and commercial customers,” the company said in a news release.
Carvana said the suburban Kansas City site in Belton, Missouri, would be the first of the 56 ADESA wholesale auction locations to become an “auction-IRC Megasite.” IRC is “Inspection and Reconditioning Center.”
The announcement said that in becoming an auction-IRC Megasite, the Kansas City location will implement Carvana’s proprietary CARLI software systems that support the full reconditioning cycle and lead to greater efficiency, scalability and consistency across Carvana’s IRC network.
It expected the transition to create about 200 entry-level and skilled manufacturing jobs as the site expanded.
The vending machine
Carvana said in the 2024 release that its customers “can choose from tens of thousands of vehicles, get financing, trade-in, and complete a purchase entirely online with the convenience of home delivery or local pick up in over 300 U.S. Markets.”
A signature function is what it terms its “Car Vending Machine,” such as that along Lenoir Avenue, off of I-95 near Butler Boulevard.
Carvana can deliver a car to the customer’s location or to a vending machine, where the buyer drops a custom coin into a slot, activating the delivery system.
The system mechanically retrieves the vehicle from within the multistory tower and lowers it into the delivery bay for the customer.
Carvana launched its eight-level car vending machine that can hold up to 30 vehicles at 4777 Lenoir Ave. in October 2017, allowing buyers of late-model used vehicles from its website to pick up their purchases at the Southside location.
Third-quarter update
In the company’s third-quarter letter to shareholders, posted Oct. 29, 2025, Carvana wrote that through July 1-Sept. 30 it “continued to expand the number of locations where we can produce retail inventory by integrating three more ADESA locations. This brings our total number of ADESA integrations to 15 and our total number of retail inventory pools to 33.”
“We have real estate to support annual retail production of 3 million units and, by the end of 2025, we expect to have fully built out annual retail production capacity of over 1.5 million across our Carvana and integrated ADESA production locations,” the shareholder letter says.
“In 2026, we expect to continue to integrate ADESA locations at a similar rate as in 2025 and begin construction on full build outs at select ADESA locations throughout the year.”
Carvana said that after the ADESA acquisition, it had two types of large industrial facilities: Carvana IRCs and ADESA wholesale auctions.
“As we integrate these sites, we combine retail and wholesale capabilities within single sites. In order to support retail sales, a site must have reconditioning capabilities. In order to support wholesale disposition, a site must have auction capabilities. Over time, we are making sites across our network more powerful by adding reconditioning capabilities to ADESA sites and adding wholesale auction capabilities to Carvana IRCs with ADESA Clear,” it says.
ADESA Clear is a proprietary digital wholesale auction product that includes vehicles sold from more than 45 locations across the ADESA and Carvana network, reaching ADESA wholesale buyers nationwide.
“By adding wholesale and retail capabilities to more locations, we become a better buyer of cars from both our customers and commercial partners,” the letter says.
Carvana buys ADESA
On May 10, 2022, Carvana, then based in Phoenix, announced its $2.2 billion acquisition of ADESA’s U.S. auction business from KAR Global.
The acquisition comprised the 56 ADESA U.S. locations totaling about 6.5 million square feet of buildings on more than 4,000 acres.
“This alignment with ADESA U.S. will further strengthen our foundation for growth and provide us with significant flexibility to execute our plan through a wide range of macroeconomic scenarios,” said Carvana founder and CEO Ernie Garcia in that release.
“We aim to use this ADESA U.S. alignment to both improve the experiences of the ADESA U.S. physical auction customers and to focus on significant and sustainable efficiencies, and unit economic improvements, for Carvana to catapult back into rapid profitable growth as the industry inevitably rebounds.”
ADESA President John Hammer said the two would combine “our physical auction and retail capabilities to better serve buyers, sellers and consumers across the automotive industry.”