Cushman & Wakefield to market 1M square foot spec warehouse in Ocala
By Ashley Gurbal Kritzer
Tampa Bay Business Journal
Published: Oct 3, 2023

A team of brokers from Cushman & Wakefield Inc.’s Tampa office will market a 1-million-square-foot Ocala warehouse for lease.

The warehouse, part of the Florida Crossroads Logistics Center off of Interstate 75 and U.S. 27 in Ocala, was speculatively built, meaning that it broke ground without a tenant in place. Speculative development in the 1 million-square-foot size range has slowed in Central Florida in recent years as an onslaught of speculative big-box warehouses hit the market. But the Ocala market is just starting to come into its own: In August, it was nationally recognized as an emerging industrial market.

Cushman’s Lisa Ross, Trey Carswell and Sam Korolos will market the warehouse for lease on behalf of its ownership, a partnership of Red Rock Developments and LXP Industrial Trust. The warehouse is Red Rock’s third speculative building in Central Florida.

“This Class A distribution building provides a unique opportunity to form a hub or expand presence in a strategic location that is accessible to the rest of the Southeast,” Ross said in a statement. “We expect strong interest from many potential tenants looking to take advantage of Ocala’s logistics and labor benefits and look forward to working with ownership to identify users best suited for the property and all it has to offer.”

In 2020, Red Rock was part of a partnership that speculatively built a 617,055-square-foot warehouse in Ocala that was leased to Amazon.com. Red Rock and its partner in that deal then sold the property for $58.4 million.

“The combination of strong labor numbers, a central location between Miami and Atlanta, and a very supportive local government makes Florida Crossroads Logistics Center a true diamond in the rough for users looking to distribute to the Southeastern United States,” Carswell said in a statement.