Ocala is Florida's next big industrial real estate market
By Ashley Gurbal Kritzer
Tampa Bay Business Journal
Published: Aug 10, 2023

Tampa, Lakeland and Orlando are well-known hubs for industrial real estate in Central Florida — and a fourth market in the region is emerging as an epicenter for big warehouse deals.

Ocala has been named an emerging industrial real estate market by CBRE Group Inc. Rian Smith, a CBRE senior vice president, says Ocala is comparable to where Lakeland was 10 to 12 years ago. Lakeland’s industrial real estate market started to pique the interest of national developers and institutional investors in 2015.

The industrial real estate markets in Lakeland and Ocala were both given credibility by the presence of Amazon.com, one of the biggest users of industrial real estate on the planet. Amazon signed a deal for its first 1 million-square-foot fulfillment center in Lakeland in 2013; it leased a speculatively built warehouse in Ocala in 2020.

Ocala’s industrial real estate market totals 23.7 million square feet — 16% or 3.7 million square feet of which has been built since 2021, according to CBRE. Year to date, 1.8 million square feet in four buildings have completed construction.

One of the driving forces behind that growth is Ocala’s proximity to a large population base. Online retailers are engaged in a never-ending arms race to get products to consumers’ doors as fast as possible. In Ocala, warehouse tenants are within 250 miles of 20.7 million consumers, according to CBRE.

With all of those factors taken into consideration, warehouse developers and tenants are viewing Ocala differently, Smith said.

“It’s coming into its own — it’s no longer an afterthought,” Smith said. “It’s at the forefront.”

One major project underway is a partnership between Hunt Midwest, controlled by the Kansas City Chiefs’ Lamar Hunt family, and Ocala-based Boyd-Mox. Known as Ocala South Logistics Park, the development spans 93 acres and will be home to 1.4 million square feet at completion. It is Hunt Midwest’s first industrial development in Florida.

Smith’s team is marketing Ocala South for lease.

“I like the market. We’re working with a fair amount of folks up there,” he said. “I don’t see it being a one-hit wonder. I think this is going to be a continuation moving forward.”