Cecil Commerce Center developer Hillwood working on 5 more large projects

Columnists
Mathis Report

Hillwood, the real estate company developing AllianceFlorida at Cecil Commerce Center, responded to five large project inquiries during the second quarter, but none was as large as the deal set to open this week - Amazon.com.

Amazon spokeswoman Brenda Alfred said the Seattle-based internet retailer would be “welcoming new employees” this week at the 1,000-job West Jacksonville fulfillment center at Cecil.

The center initially was expected to open the last week of September, but Hurricane Irma delayed that.

Amazon expects to open its Westside Industrial Park sortation center in October. That is 16 miles north of the Cecil project.

Amazon.com was completing landscaping and other work Friday at the 1 million-square-foot fulfillment center at 13333 103rd St.

The facility will process orders for large consumer products.

Another fulfillment center at 12900 Pecan Park Road near Jacksonville International Airport opened at the end of August to process small products. It expects to staff 1,500 positions.

The almost 240,000-square-foot Westside Industrial Park sortation center at 4948 Bulls Bay Highway is expected to hire 200 positions. Those centers take shipments from the fulfillment centers and sort them by ZIP codes within a defined market region around the center. The packages then are taken to the U.S. Postal Service or local couriers for delivery, including Amazon delivery stations.

A 63,000-square-foot Alta Lakes delivery station for Amazon is at 11084 Cabot Commerce Circle in North Jacksonville. Those stations sort packages for last-mile delivery to customers in a tightly defined area. Often, deliveries are performed by multiple local courier companies contracted by Amazon.

As the master developer for the city at the Westside Cecil Commerce Center, Dallas-based Hillwood must make quarterly reports.

It filed the second-quarter report Friday for activity from April 1 through June 30.

Hillwood told the city it received and responded in the second quarter to five large projects:

An inquiry from a broker representing a prospect seeking to lease about 675,000 square feet of distribution space.
A request for proposal from a prospect seeking about 400,000 square feet of distribution space. The prospect made an initial inquiry in the first quarter.
An inquiry from a broker representing a prospect seeking to buy 25 to 50 acres for 385,000 square feet of manufacturing and distribution space.
An inquiry from a broker representing a prospect seeking to buy about 40 acres for a 300,000-square-foot distribution facility.
An inquiry from a broker representing a prospect with a multistate requirement for distribution space. The AllianceFlorida requirement was for about 120,000 square feet. The inquiry came through one of Hillwood’s national broker relationships.

Hillwood did not identify any of the brokers or prospects.

Hillwood also updated the second-quarter status of Amazon and a speculative warehouse. The 407,000-square-foot spec distribution center has been completed at 4660 New World Ave.