Legislation aimed at facilitating the Cosentino Group’s proposed expansion into Jacksonville and improving the Cecil Commerce Center for other prospective occupants is on its way to the City Council.
On Sept. 23, the Mayor’s Budget Review Committee voted to allow the Office of Economic Development to file a bill amending a development agreement between the city and the Spain-based company on plans to build a $370 million manufacturing facility at the commerce center in West Jacksonville.
The amendment would allow the city and JEA to jointly bid a road and utility access project for the Cosentino facility. With the project going out for a new round of bidding, the amendment would extend Cosentino’s closing date by 60 days to Dec. 31, 2024.
Ed Randolph, executive director of the Office of Economic Development, told MBRC members that the city and JEA had agreed to fund the improvements, with the city putting up $2.5 million and JEA $6 million. After bidding the projects separately, he said, the bids came in higher than expected. That prompted the move to bundling the project and bidding it as a whole.
Randolph said the joint bid would save the city money on the project and would further benefit the city by providing road and utility access not only to Cosentino but other development sites within the Cecil Commerce Center. That access would help the city market the center to other prospective occupants, he said.
“We get knocked out of the race all the time because we just don’t have those utilities in place,” he said. “So this will not only accommodate this project, which we’ve been working on for almost three years now, but other future projects.”
With the MBRC vote, the legislation could go to the Council as early as Oct. 8.
Cosentino is an international company that makes countertops, flooring, facade materials and other surfaces for architecture and building design.
The company’s original agreement with the city, approved by the Jacksonville City Council in 2023, was for a land sale and incentives package for Cosentino that included a sale price of $20.5 million for 330 acres, a $12 million property tax incentive and $5.5 million in debt spending to pay for a $3 million Logistics Land Road extension at Cecil and pay $2.5 million for JEA to make sewer and water infrastructure improvements at the site.
Council has approved three amendments to the city’s agreement with Cosentino. The most recent came in June 2024, when the closing date was extended to July and other portions of the timeline were extended due to construction delays brought on by weather and site conditions.
A separate ordinance appropriated $5.5 million awarded by the state in November 2023 from the Florida Job Growth Grant Fund to put toward a CSX Corp. rail line extension at the business park.
Cosentino initially planned to break ground on the $270 million first phase of its Jacksonville production plant in January 2025. That phase includes a 408,000-square-foot production facility and 734,000 square feet of adjacent support areas.
Cosentino said it would hire 180 employees for the site, which could grow to $440 million if future phases are added as planned.