Despite an unrelenting onslaught of manmade and natural disasters over the past several years, Northwest Florida is showing its resilience as the commercial real estate market begins to rebound slowly, but surely. From Tallahassee to Pensacola, from office buildings to industrial parks to vacant land that’s been set aside for commercial use, 850 provides a snapshot of what is happening across the region and a glimpse into the future.

The Titanic Turns

There are bargains to be found as Northwest Florida’s once-sinking commercial real estate market slowly recovers

By Linda Kleindienst

Northwest Florida’s commercial real estate has taken a devastating financial punch the last few years, a victim of the Great Recession and, in some parts of the region, last year’s Gulf oil spill.

Many businesses shuttered their doors. Empty offices, retail outlets and restaurants were scattered across the landscape from Pensacola to Monticello.

But experts say the times they are now a-changin’. This year, as the national and state economies struggle to right themselves, so too is the 850 region’s commercial real estate market.

“It’s nowhere near recovery, but it’s headed that way,” said Ed Murray, president and co-founder of Tallahassee-based TALCOR Commercial Real Estate Services and a 27-year veteran of the industry. “It’s substantially better than two years ago.”

Companies that have been tightening their belts since the bottom dropped out of the economy are starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel, said Jim Hizer, president of the Pensacola Bay Area Chamber of Commerce. “More and more companies, large and small, are considering investments.”

Malls are being transformed. Commercial parks are expanding. The surplus of office space is beginning to dwindle. Empty apartments are being filled, growing the need for more multi-family dwellings. “Big Box” stores like Walmart and Best Buy are looking for scaled-down properties to expand their presence in new, smaller markets. Out-of-state retailers are again looking to move into growing markets — and property owners are ready to make them a deal.

“Landlords are being very aggressive,” said Daniel Wagnon, a shareholder with Structure Commercial Real Estate in Tallahassee. “The deals we’re seeing are (priced up to) 30 percent below 2006 levels.”

Change is coming faster in some parts of the region than in others. But the certainty is that the population of Northwest Florida is growing, in some of our counties by double digits. Between 2000 and 2010, Leon County grew by 15 percent, Bay County by nearly 14 percent and Santa Rosa County by 28.6 percent.

Those new residents need services and goods. And more will be coming — retiring boomers for certain, as well as thousands connected to changes at local military bases. The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter and the Army’s 7th Special Forces are moving to Eglin Air Force Base — a change that by itself is expected to bring about 10,000 troops and dependents into the region.

“Eglin is one of two bases getting the F-35 and that’s going to bring a lot of jobs to the area. We’re already working with several defense contractors who will be moving big numbers of people here when the plane gets here,” said Craig Barrett, CEO of NBI, which has offices in Fort Walton Beach and South Florida and plans to open one soon in Panama City.

Meanwhile, he added, prices are just right for savvy investors who have been waiting for this market.

“Pricing is at the bottom,” Barrett said. “Right now is the worst time to sell and the best time to buy.”

Capital Region

Fishing tournaments for employee’s families. Soapbox derbies. Green technology. Unlimited broadband width.

Summit East is a 117-acre high-tech campus in Tallahassee where 27 companies employ up to 550 workers — and that’s just in Phase One, which is now built out. Phase Two’s 60 acres have 15 parcels that will be ready to build this summer. Two parcels were sold even before the launch of a new marketing campaign for the park, which is located east of downtown and has easy access to Interstate 10.

“When other parks have 15 percent vacancies, we’re 95 percent leased up,” said George Banks, broker and managing member of Summit Group Commercial Properties. “A lot of it has to do with identifying the businesses you are trying to attract.”

The technology alone has helped attract companies like Florida Commerce Credit Union, IBM, URS Engineering, Mainline, Megas Software and United Technologies.

While Summit East may have a unique success story, local realtors say that Tallahassee has not been as hard hit on the commercial real estate front as counties to the west.

Carlton Dean, managing director for Sperry Van Ness/Southland Commercial Real Estate Advisors in North Florida, said the local market has been partly protected by its universities and public sector jobs.

“Tallahassee has few retail properties that are distressed (other than the Tallahassee Mall) ... . Restaurant demand is as strong as it has ever been,” Dean said. “Many of the businesses that are already located here have used this economic downturn as a time to re-evaluate their real estate occupancy costs and take advantage of lower prices by negotiating restructured or new leases.”

While a few pockets of retail have held up, like in Midtown, rents in the city’s northeast sector that were averaging as high as $25 per square foot are now down to $15. Many local businesses have used those kind of financial breaks to downsize their office space and save money.

“They were happy to get the deal, but that’s not good for the economy,” said Jim Bettinger, managing director and broker of Regional Real Estate Group. “But I think that has stopped. We’re starting to see signs that it’s loosening up. Right now we’re working with users for a total of 55,000 square feet. That’s a good chunk. A couple of (local) businesses are expanding; two are new.”

To help the situation, local brokers say the city and county have become more pro-development, helping to fast-track new projects.

Said Danny Manausa, a real estate attorney involved in projects from drafting contracts to permit approval: “They finally realized, you grow or you die.”

Emerald Coast & Bay County

The commercial real estate market in Northwest Florida’s coastal communities took a major hit from the recession and oil spill, but improvements and new service at local airports, along with changes at local military bases, may become part of the answer to local prayers for an expedited recovery.

“Probably one of the hottest markets in commercial has been Fort Walton Beach … because of the ramp-up in military spending,” said John Paul Somers, a broker who handles commercial and residential real estate from Pensacola to Panama City. “With the massive migration of personnel and their families, you will have friends, high-tech companies, defense contractors (and) people in support functions coming to this area.”

The region’s focus on the aerospace and aviation sector because of the military is also expected to help boost the desirability of local commercial and industrial properties. Among the major marketers is The St. Joe Company, which hopes to fill industrial space around the new Northwest Florida Beaches International Airport in Bay County with defense-related companies.

New low-cost passenger service by Southwest Airlines at the Bay County airport and Vision Airlines at Northwest Florida Regional Airport (Okaloosa County) is another asset local realtors believe will have a positive impact on the local business economy. Not only do the affordable flights open the region to more visitors who otherwise might not have come to the area, giving a boost to the tourist industry, it introduces Northwest Florida to potential entrepreneurs and national companies looking to expand.

“The first thing we’re focusing on is site consultants — 70 to 80 percent of all projects come through them,” said Neal Wade, senior vice president of economic development for St. Joe, who is working to market the company’s major commercial real estate project, VentureCrossings, at the airport. “We have found that Northwest Florida is a fairly unknown region, so we are working on them as much as we possibly can.

We’ve been a somewhat forgotten area, but I think that’s going to change.”

On the retail side, even outlet malls like Silver Sands in Destin experienced some downturn.

“We’ve been flat the last couple of years,” said Art Butterfield, vice president of leasing for Howard Group, which owns Silver Sands and Grand Boulevard. “To be flat is the new up.”

While some say they feel like they are turning the Titantic, they are beginning to see some change.

Last year Rooms To Go opened a 30,000-square-foot showroom in Destin Commons and later this year Lowe’s Home Improvement will open a new 94,000 square foot store there.

“We do extensive research before considering any site in any community, and we look at hundreds of factors before making a decision … (including) home ownership in the area, population, access to major roadways … growth in the community,” said Stacey Lentz, a spokesperson for Lowe’s.

Silver Sands has 100 designer factory stores with 465,200 feet of retail space — and only an 8 percent vacancy rate. The stores that bounced back the quickest are the ones selling luxury goods because “the people at the top are loosening their purse strings,” Butterfield said.

Value retailing, he added, remains fairly strong. Consumers have gotten into the mindset of frugality — and with high gas prices they’ll likely continue looking for bargains.

Of course, those looking to sell or lease office and retail space or restaurant locations are also willing to make deals. Rents and sale prices have been cut. Shopping centers are willing to put up better signage or reposition some tenants into more visible locations. Deals are being cut to customize office space for new tenants.

David Lee, general manager of Pier Park in Panama City Beach, said he didn’t lower rent, but worked with his tenants to make sure they could pay their bills.

“It was in all of our best interests to work through those issues during difficult times,” he said.

Pier Park, which opened in 2008 and covers 100 acres between U.S. 98 and Front Beach Road, has about 1 million square feet of retail and restaurant space. The occupancy rate is “well above” 95 percent and about half the tenants are local entrepreneurs.

“We offer something new,” Lee explained. “We not only have retail, but amusements, restaurants, the beach. It’s a unique overall experience that isn’t offered anywhere else in Northwest Florida.”

Pensacola

One of the slowest areas to rebound in the 850 region has been Pensacola, which in March had 10.3 percent unemployment and was one of Northwest Florida’s slowest growing counties over the past decade.

What has been selling mostly has been the very low end — property that is distressed, bank-owned land and property people need to turn into cash.

“There have been a couple of commercial building starts around here, but two does not make a trend,” said Mike Mangrum, director of commercial real estate for Coldwell Banker in Pensacola. “Residential real estate has begun to rebound, but not so much in commercial.”

Leasing is what has sustained the local commercial real estate market in the toughest times, “it’s what has kept a lot of folks alive,” explained Mangrum, chairman of the Pensacola Association of Realtors. Some people who owned had to sell and get into rental or had to downsize, so that kept some deal action going, but not what Mangrum would classify as economic development.

Office space remains a soft market — but rates are down, and it’s a good time for businesses to move in.

“In the wake of the oil spill, some companies teetered or went out,” said Hizer of the Pensacola Chamber. “We probably hit the high water mark of vacant space last fall, but the market is now recovering. Our tourist numbers have been up four months in a row. In February this year, they were 30 percent higher than February of 2010.”

Some new commercial projects are slowly beginning to pop up in the region. A $42 million development, which includes a Hyatt Place hotel and a mix of office and retail, is underway at the Pensacola Gulf Coast Regional Airport. The construction is expected to employ 500 people and, on completion, the businesses to be located there are expected to create 235 jobs. And improvement money is being pumped into businesses like the Margaritaville Beach Hotel.

In downtown Pensacola, the old sewage treatment plant has finally been torn down to make way for a community Maritime Park and technology center — something long sought by the local business community.

Last year the Chamber launched Vision 2015, an economic development campaign designed to create 3,000 new jobs, and this summer it plans to kick off a major marketing campaign to lure new industry and business.

Echoing a theme repeated in other areas of the region, Hizer added, “We need to raise our visibility with the professional site selector community. Northwest Florida has not been on the radar. In the next couple of months we have trips planned to strategic markets like Atlanta, New York City and Chicago to increase our visibility. We’re going to get there.”

Rural

Small towns scattered between the cattle ranches, cotton fields and farms of Northwest Florida probably face the biggest challenge when it comes to luring industry and manufacturing plants that will boost their commercial real estate market.

Opportunity Florida has won a $23.6 million federal grant to provide a broadband network in eight rural counties — Calhoun, Franklin, Gadsden, Gulf, Holmes, Jackson, Liberty and Washington. Many hope the technology boost will encourage the development of more commercial properties.

Another glimmer of hope is the project to turn Port St. Joe into a deepwater port that would then encourage more commercial development in the region, especially around the port and at the Port St. Joe Commercial Park.

For Jackson County, meanwhile, it was a major victory to win a Love truck stop planned for the interchange at U.S. Highway 231 and I-10.

“I hope it will plant the seed at a sleepy intersection,” said Robby Roberts, the former Chamber of Commerce chairman who runs Prudential Jim Roberts Realty in Marianna.

To put it mildly, he adds, “It’s been kind of dead.” The county suffered a major blow several years ago when it lost Alliance Laundry, which occupied a still-vacant 284,000-square-foot plant that employed 450.

Yet it does have the 75-acre Family Dollar distribution center at I-10 and Green Circle Bio Energy, which built the world’s largest wood pellet plant in Cottondale.

“We have the interstate, the rail system, the rivers, the new airport,” Roberts said. “The stars are trying to line up somehow. When they do, there will be great things happening here.” 

Writers Jason Dehart and Ann McQueen contributed to this report.

At the Crossroads

Giving Northwest Florida business access to air, sea and land

By Linda Kleindienst

Aptly named, VentureCrossings is a 1,000-acre commercial real estate project that sits at the hub of a transportation network that can open the world to a business.

Under development by The St. Joe Company, it is one of the largest commercial projects in the country and includes plans for office space, retail, restaurants, industrial and manufacturing facilities and warehouses. The big plus? It’s got access to a 10,000-foot runway at Northwest Florida Beaches International Airport — and to a nearby seaport, rail lines and a major east-west interstate highway.

“This is new space with so much potential,” said Neal Wade, the former head of the Alabama Development Office who last fall joined St. Joe as senior vice president of economic development.

“Ten years ago this was only pine trees. It was a white piece of paper and you could do whatever you want — and with a brand new airport. The key part is that it is an international airport, and I believe we’ll soon be having cargo flights from places like Europe and South America.”

The first 100-acre phase of the project is where St. Joe plans to build its new corporate offices, having recently relocated its headquarters from Jacksonville to Northwest Florida. The second, 300-acre phase is now being marketed, and Wade believes it will end up being used mostly by companies involved in renewable energy and the aerospace sector.

“There are more than 300 aerospace and defense companies in the Northwest Florida region,” Wade said. “The airport and VentureCrossings sits right in the center of the region’s military bases.”

The third phase, encompassing 600 acres, will have direct “through the fence” access to the airport runway.

Wade said St. Joe is currently focused on making economic development site consultants aware of the project and the region. With Northwest Florida having suffered tourism setbacks the last two years from the Great Recession and then the BP oil spill, “the economic challenges have forced leaders in a lot of areas to realize that you can’t live on tourism alone. Economic diversity is a very important thing.” This month the company will be talking up its venture at the Paris Air Show and has Asia, Central and South America and Cuba in its sights as areas of opportunity.

“We (at St. Joe) have been characterized as the 800-pound gorilla. With that comes responsibility,” Wade said. “Owning about 560,000 acres in this region, we have a responsibility to help grow this economy.”

Shovel-Ready

Depending on where you go, there is a vacant commercial lot ready for the right owner

By Jason Dehart

Expanding businesses need room to grow, and new businesses need a place to start. Finding the right spot of commercial land in Northwest Florida takes a savvy developer and a solid business plan, especially in this day and age.

“I know that throughout the 16 counties there is vacant, shovel-ready land,” said Cindy Anderson, marketing committee chairwoman of Florida’s Great Northwest, the economic development arm of the Panhandle. “Local economic developers are making a point to ensure that we have product ready for new industries looking to come into Northwest Florida and for our existing industries that may want to expand.”

In Tallahassee, there are 21 sites in the four counties that make up the capital city’s metropolitan statistical area, according to Beth Kirkland, executive director of the Economic Development Council of Tallahassee/Leon County. According to the EDC, these include the Gretna Industrial Park in Gadsden County, which offers 75 acres of available land just two miles north of Interstate 10. Here, the streets are paved and already hooked up to water, sewer and electrical services. In Leon County, there is the Airport Commerce Center, which also has 75 total acres and tracts ranging in size from half-acre up to
16 acres. The area is zoned Planned Unit Development, which allows for office, light manufacturing and distribution with quick access to major roads. Also in Leon County is Northwest Passage on the northwest side of Tallahassee with “easy access” to I-10.

Kirkland said many incentives, programs and service utilities exist to make these tracts, and others, prime for development.

“The EDC will assist companies looking to bring jobs to Florida,” she said, noting that the EDC’s website maintains a list of available properties and acts as sort of an MLS for interested commercial developers.

“Around (Tallahassee Regional Airport) there are 1,200 acres of properly zoned land,” Kirkland said. “That is an example of a publicly held opportunity. On the privately held side there are several opportunities that are entitled through the growth management process. We’ve got Summit East preparing its second phase and will allow an additional 800,000 square feet of commercial and light industrial space. Canopy, the (505-acre) Welaunee mixed-use development, is going to be residential, commercial, medical and light industrial.”

In Bay County the biggest challenge is lack of appropriate inventory or desirable inventory, said Janet Watermeier, Bay County Economic Development Alliance executive director. She said there currently is a 20-acre “pad” that’s ready for development in the Intermodal Distribution Center, a 250-acre business park owned by Port Panama City. Port Panama City includes the core 138-acre port located on Dyers Point, just off U.S. Highway 98 at the southwestern boundary of Panama City, and the distribution center, about 10 miles to the northeast on U.S. Highway 231.

“The utilities and dirt are ready. You just have to put the building on it. It has rail access and it’s on Highway 231, and connected to the port by rail,” she said. But there’s more to come in the near future. A parcel of 1,400 acres around the new Northwest Florida Beaches International Airport will become available once it is permitted and approved in about a year, she said. But until then, nothing can be developed there.

“Then there is VentureCrossings at West Bay (site of the planned headquarters for The St. Joe Company), and when that is permitted there will be lots of great industrial and light industrial sites out near the new airport,” Watermeier said.

However, Watermeier said there are other challenges facing Bay County, such as the lack of available vacant buildings. She said 80 percent of the inquiries her office receives want an existing building that meets their criteria. And that’s a tough sale in her neck of the woods.

“Most industrial sites either are small or they’re not yet fully entitled. You’d have to get some approvals to put something in the ground. Or, they’re stand-alone pieces and not in a park. That can be difficult for some customers,” she said.

Ferd Salomon, a commercial realtor who does business in Santa Rosa and Escambia counties, said Santa Rosa County has done a good job of making industrial land available but not so much in Escambia.

“They’d like to have more inventory of county-owned industrial property for a commercial park, but it doesn’t have to be smoke stacks. I think there is a lot of promise for that. There is a shortage of publicly-owned industrial property, generally,” Salomon said.

Anderson at Florida’s Great Northwest said that in Santa Rosa County there are three industrial parks, all of which have property owned by the county. These come with pricing guidelines approved by the county leadership, and the county also provides discounts based on factors such as number of employees a company will be needing, the average wage rate they pay and what type of industry it is.

“So those are shovel-ready with specific prices,” Anderson said. “The prices vary from $35,000 an acre up to $75,000 an acre, based on the needs of the company looking for property.”

In that way, Anderson said, land that is publicly owned has certain advantages over land that’s privately held.

“Private property owners are in the land sale business and economic developers are in the job creation business,” she said. “So, if a company comes with a lot of jobs and has a high wage rate, we can drop the price very low, to (provide incentive for) them to come. Whereas, we don’t have as much flexibility with the private sector.”

Anderson said Florida’s Great Northwest, long famous for its military-industrial complex, is always looking to attract more of that high-tech sector.

“We target aerospace and defense across the 16 counties of Northwest Florida as well as renewable energy companies, companies associated with human performance and information technology companies,” she said. “We want to develop a Web-based portal to identify all the available industrial property, private or public.”

Helping that along is the fact that the county’s residential and industrial growth rates have gone up, but commercial is still lagging a bit, she said. However, she’s not worried.

“According to economists, commercial is always the last to pick up. So we are very optimistic with our other two growing as much as they are. The residential growth rate is 29 percent in Santa Rosa County, and last year was the most fruitful regarding industrial, growth-wise,” Anderson said.

Salomon said the biggest challenge in Santa Rosa and Escambia is the shortage of undeveloped commercial land.

“Even if you can find it, developing it is a challenge because financing is a challenge. Banks are tighter, terms are a little tighter, so if you got a solid business plan you can get financing,” he said. “The biggest challenge is (vacant land) and there are so many vacant buildings available that it is cheaper to buy an existing building than buy a tract and build on it. I think in both counties that’s the case — and regionally.

People have options, and unless they are really well financed and have a specific purpose in mind it’s cheaper to buy a building and change it.”

Art Kimbrough, president of the Jackson County Chamber of Commerce, offered a different analysis for his county, saying now is the time to grab up undeveloped commercial/industrial land because prices are low and sellers are “very eager” to cut a fair deal. And, he added, building and construction prices have stabilized to a point they are competitive.

“That’s a prescription for success,” he said. “If a business has the need and the long-term vision and financial ability to do it, now is an excellent time to acquire and ‘build to open,’ or acquire and hold for later use. Either of those scenarios is good.

“If there is a motivated buyer, the prices are right,” Kimbrough added. “If you have a high-value location where the owner has no urgency to sell, then some of those prices are still up there because they believe they will find the right customer to pay for it. Other than that, if it’s not that kind of property, prices are cheap.”

But it’s still not without its challenges, according to Bill Stanton, executive director of the Jackson County Development Council.

“The challenge is hundreds and millions of acres of land that doesn’t have access to infrastructure. The first basic is roads. If it’s landlocked you can’t do anything,” he said.

However, land that is held in timber has proven to be a moneymaker. Stanton pointed out that Plum Creek, now the largest private landholder in Florida, is purposely buying up tracts of timber whereas The St. Joe Company has been selling off its holdings in recent years.

“(Plum Creek) and other companies who are into raw acreage are growing trees, and even trees during the Great Recession are providing income,” he said. “Trees, yellow pine in particular, have been providing income to tree owners in Northwest Florida. This has been traditional because of the price point. Land that is planted in trees prior to the recession was selling for less than $2,000 an acre and as much as $4,000 an acre. Today, that is still selling in that same range. Other land, I don’t care what it is, has been reducing in value.”

The income from timberland comes from selling it for lumber or paper, but lately it’s being sold to renewable energy plants like Green Circle Bio Energy, a project that Stanton helped bring to Cottondale.

Green Energy takes timber and turns it into wood pellets, which are then used to supplement coal in “co-fired” power plants.

Grand Boulevard

Work. Stay. Play.

By Linda Kleindienst

It’s a shopping center. It’s a lifestyle center. It’s an office park — and much more. Grand Boulevard in Miramar Beach is one of a kind in Northwest Florida, a commercial property that has it all, from a Publix to a Marriott to a dry cleaner. With bistros, boutiques and a bank in between.

Having all this in one place is why accounting firm Carr Riggs & Ingram made the decision to move 50 CPAs into a new office at Grand Boulevard, a location that gives the firm easy access to clients in Destin and Panama City. CRI rents about 13,500 square feet in a space that was built specifically to accommodate the firm and its needs.

“There is absolutely no down side to this,” explained Steve Riggs, CRI’s managing partner. “We had at least five viable competitive options, but we made this decision because it was our best option.”

Built by the Howard Group, Grand Boulevard opened about three years ago, just as the economy was starting to go south. But they got creative on pricing and deal structure to keep tenants in their buildings.

“There is so much excess inventory on the market that, to be successful, your property has to offer a lot of extras to win out in someone’s decision making,” said Dana Hahn, lease administrator for the Howard Group who focuses on retail. “Grand Boulevard has those extras, from retail to office to restaurants.”

The concept has been well received, said Merlin Allan, Howard Group’s vice president of real estate, who handles office leasing.

“I’m getting more and more calls from businesses looking to expand,” he said. (This summer, Charter Capital, a private wealth management company, will move into an expanded 2,500-square-foot office.)

“It’s primarily local people, but we’re starting to get some national calls as well.”

About 60 percent of the 200,000 square feet of office space has been leased and close to 90 percent of the 850,000 square feet of retail and restaurant space is also occupied. As soon as the economy recovers, more phases of the project will be developed.

“What we have here is true Class A office space,” said Hahn. “We have the work, play, stay element. You get a lot more than just office space.”

Enhanced Partnership

Saufley Field in Pensacola may see new life as a commerce park

By Jason Dehart

Historic preservation and commerce will blend together when an old Navy airstrip becomes a new-age business park in the near future.

Saufley Field is an “under-utilized” airstrip, located near the community of Belleview on the northwest side of Pensacola, which consists of about 100 acres of X-shaped airfield and several buildings. But a private-public partnership currently in the works may transform parts of the facility into an office complex with the feel of a college campus.

Greg Clauson, commercial advisor for Coldwell Banker Commercial, said the venture is being administered under the Enhanced Use Lease process, which means the government has put it in the public domain to generate revenue.

“We are negotiating to lease it from the Navy for fair market value, under specified terms,” Clauson said.

Not all of the facility’s 700,000 square feet of land area will be “developed.” There are four 30,000-square-foot aircraft hangars on site, as well as some desirable environmental features that will be targeted for preservation.

“Some of that will be historical and will be maintained,” Clauson explained. “There are some beautiful specimen trees which will be preserved, and a walk-able campus environment will be created. Much like what you’d see at a campus university, but a business campus of some kind, an office park.”

The airplane hangars have been there since the 1940s and exhibit architecture that is “absolutely gorgeous,” he said.

“We are going to replicate that style in some of the new development and renovation of existing buildings,” Clauson added. “The hangars for the most part stay as is, not much you can do to a hanger, but some of the other buildings (will be renovated).”

The vision of the new park is simple. It involves offering up new executive office suites with all the amenities, such as media room, conference room and all the luxury of a built-out Class “A” office space.

“If you were essentially an out-of-town office user you could set up an office here and have a presence in this market,” he said.

Negotiations are expected to be finalized in the second quarter of 2011. Shortly after the ink is dry, Clauson said final building inspections will be done in preparation for renovation work, but it’s unlikely any brand-new buildings will be constructed.

“We probably wouldn’t build a new building … unless we had a tenant who required that,” he said. “We have enough existing space. We have plenty of buildings that (the Navy) is going to be turning over to us.”

The working title for the new park will be the Center for Innovation and Technology at Saufley Field. And, in a region consumed by the military-industrial complex, it wouldn’t be surprising to see that kind of usage take place at Saufley Field.

“Certainly it will have a share of defense contactors, but we will seek synergistic uses that share technologies like information tech, lab sciences and medical technologies,” he said.

Meanwhile, the Navy will still retain control over the airfield — although it rarely uses the outlying field.

Clauson said he believes the project is in a position to provide a great economic boost to the local economy. “To have this much land and vertical structure in inventory is a very unique opportunity,” he said.

“We’ll become the economic driver … and that’s a good thing for the community.”