Construction begins on spec warehouse near Tampa International Airport
A rendering of TIA Logistics Center

By Ashley Gurbal Kritzer
Tampa Bay Business Journal
Published: May 24, 2021

A speculative warehouse near Tampa International Airport will celebrate its groundbreaking Monday.

TIA Logistics Center, a 245,000-square-foot warehouse at Knox Street and Hoover Boulevard, will begin construction without a tenant in place — though there is interest from national and regional tenants, said Julia Silva, JLL Inc. managing director.

Silva and her team at JLL have been hired to market the property for the developer, a joint venture of Indianapolis-based Scannell Properties and Bryan Sykes and Ken Morin of Tampa-based Legacy Development Partners. It is the largest speculative warehouse development in the airport submarket in 15 years, though several other developers are also pursuing deals in the area.

The developers paid $4.8 million for the 20-acre site in late 2019. Warehouse construction costs are around $28 million.

"Given the flurry of activity we are already experiencing and the fact that there hasn’t been any new development in the last 15-plus years we are confident we will prelease the building," Silva said. "Additionally, vacancy rates are hovering in the very low single digits, so we believe that there is unmatched pent-up demand that we will benefit from."

Silva said the warehouse would accept tenants as small as 50,000 square feet. She said she is seeing interest from e-commerce operators who are targeting the property as a last-mile fulfillment center as well as freight-forwarding companies, traditional distribution tenants and light manufacturing operations.

TIA Logistics Center is slated for completion in the first quarter of 2022.