Atlanta developer plans spec warehouse near TPA
By Ashley Gurbal Kritzer
Tampa Bay Business Journal
Published: May 3, 2024

An Atlanta developer plans to build a speculative warehouse near Tampa International Airport.

Stonemont Financial Group and PCCP LLC have formed a joint venture partnership to develop TIA Executive Center, a 100,620-square-foot warehouse that will break ground in May at 6101 Johns Road. Stonemont purchased the 14.5-acre parcel from Jacksonville-based Chestnut Hill Investments for $3.6 million on April 12, Hillsborough County property records show. Byline Bank of Chicago provided a $10 million loan for the project.

The warehouse will be completed in the first quarter of 2025, and the developer said it will accommodate tenants as small as 33,000 square feet. The project team includes Frampton Construction, general contractor; Harley Commercial Architecture, architect; and Kimley-Horn, engineer. JLL Inc. will market the property for lease.

“Over the past few years, we have seen firsthand the immense growth and demand for quality industrial space in the Tampa market, which has spread to surrounding submarkets as competition has tightened near the airport,” Avery Dorr, Stonemont vice president, said in a statement. “At the end of the day, users of all sizes want to be in a centralized location with transportation access to the rest of the state. TIA Executive Center offers just this, in an area where land is becoming harder to come by. We have full confidence in Tampa and the success that this premier project will see once lease-up begins.”

The industrial real estate market surrounding the airport is among the hottest in the Tampa Bay region. In the first quarter, the vacancy rate in that area was 4.7%, the developer said, citing data from JLL. JLL said it was the 17th consecutive quarter that the area had a vacancy rate below 5%. New York-based Clarion Partners has been on a buying spree in the area, purchasing two industrial parks there totaling over $104 million between both properties.

Stonemont is bullish on Tampa and Florida. In the Tampa area, its projects include 361,000 square feet across two buildings in the Sunlake Business Center in North Tampa and 905,440 square feet across four buildings in Lakeland. Elsewhere in Florida, its projects include over 1.5 million square feet of development under construction in Groveland; a 457,000-square-foot facility under construction in Ocala; and a 259,255-square-foot warehouse that recently started construction in Ocoee.

It also recently delivered a 1.3-million-square-foot industrial development in Fort Pierce.