It’s been more than six months since NorthPoint Development met with Ocoee city officials for a pre-application meeting to discuss bringing a distribution and logistics center to town near the Plant and Franklin Street exit on the 429 beltway. Since then, the project appears to have dropped off the radar for Ocoee.
No planning documents have been submitted to Ocoee by NorthPoint to indicate that it still has intentions to seek approval for a distribution center that it discussed with the City of Ocoee. It told the city it planned two buildings that would be used for assembly and logistics for distribution to local areas, as well as regional distribution over a five-to seven-state area. Materials would come to the distribution center by rail and then be dispensed by tractor-trailers.
The development would create an estimated 190 jobs, according to a letter from Ocoee to NorthPoint that reiterated NorthPoint’s proposal from the meeting.
In February, NorthPoint said it couldn’t tell Ocoee at the time how many rail car containers would come into the site or how many trucks would go out, according to a letter addressed to Brent Miles, vice president of economic development at NorthPoint Development in Riverside Missouri from the City of Ocoee. The level of traffic such a distribution center could bring was a sticking point for Ocoee’s neighbor, Winter Garden. The two cities have a joint development plan for the corridor connecting the cities’ quaint downtowns. The plans call for a bike path through the area near where the distribution plant was proposed.
“There are great places for this (distribution and logistics center) to be, but that is not it,” said Michael Bollhoefer, Winter Garden city manager.
tburney@growthspotter.com or 407-420 6261
