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Dallas-based Dalfen Industrial has filed a development plan and rezoning application for a large chunk of undeveloped land northeast of the Orlando International Airport where it plans to build a massive spec industrial park.
About 243 acres with prime frontage along State Road 417 was sold by Bal Bay Realty LTD. to Dalfin earlier this year for $15.5 million. Dalfin is calling the project Vista Commerce Park and is seeking Planned Development zoning with entitlements for 3.38 million square feet of industrial and distribution warehouse space.
Goodwin & Marshall created the site plan, which reserves about 50 acres for conservation.
The property sits just south of Lee Vista Boulevard and the 112-acre Beltway Commerce Center developed by Taurus Investment Holdings.
Cushman & Wakefield’s Jared Bonshire, David Perez and Taylor Zambito represented Dalfen in the transaction.
Bonshire said the project will be economically competitive with other industrial development markets where land is cheaper, such as in Apopka and Polk County. To give an example, Amazon recently announced it would be opening a second facility in Auburndale.
“It represents the first true bulk development in the city of Orlando,” Bonshire said.
The Cushman & Wakefield industrial team also will handle leasing for the Dalfen asset. According to Bonshire, users will be able to occupy 500,000 square feet to 1.5 million square feet.
The owners see themselves catering to the type of users that will be distributing not only specifically in Orlando, but up and down the I-4 corridor and the Space Coast, Bonshire said.
The property is part of a much larger assemblage of land acquired by family members of Brunetti Jr. in the early 1970s.
Around 2004, a bulk of their holdings had been approved for thousands of homes and apartments, but those plans were infamously postponed, partly due to discoveries of buried explosives from a World War II-era bombing range called the Pinecastle Jeep Range.
A lawsuit over the cost of cleaning up 1,500 acres of the site was settled in 2018.
Brunetti Jr.'s family members founded the Brunetti Organization. His father, the late Brunetti Sr., was known mostly as the owner of the Hialeah Park Race Track.
Dalfen is one of the nation’s largest buyers of industrial real estate. The firm currently owns and operates millions of square feet of industrial properties throughout the United States and in Canada.
The company is one of many taking interest in the Orlando International Airport submarket.
GrowthSpotter reported in July the increased investor interest in that area, due in part to a new $2.8 billion terminal that will bring the total number of workers to 2,500.
Foundry Commercial, for instance, expects to deliver phase two of its Crews Commerce Center on the northeast corner of Orange Blossom Trail and West Taft Vineland Road by the first quarter of 2020. The second phase will consist of 430,000 square feet of industrial space across three buildings.
Once complete, the entire project will span a little more than 768,000 square feet.
In 2018, Amazon began operating a 2.3 million-square-foot fulfillment center in Lake Nona.
The new development isn’t limited to industrial users. Pulte Homes paid $7 million in early 2019 for 250 acres of the former Beltway Commerce Center just north of the Lee Vista interchange and is currently developing a 440-home community called Pinewood Reserve.
GrowthSpotter editor Laura Kinsler contributed to this report.
Have a tip about Central Florida development? Contact me at arabines@GrowthSpotter.com or (407) 420-5427, or tweet me at @amanda_rabines. Follow GrowthSpotter on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.