- October 9, 2024
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Palm Coast received 24 requests for information from businesses looking to move to Palm Coast in the last year.
For 12 of those businesses, Palm Coast did not have the existing space the companies requested, Palm Coast Chief of Staff Jason DeLorenzo said in a Nov. 14 City Council meeting presentation summarizing Palm Coast’s economic development efforts over the 2022-2023 fiscal year.
“You're aware that we continue to struggle with available buildings," he told the council. 'We're getting a lot of requests for space."
The 12 businesses were looking for buildings ranging from 16,000 square feet to 680,000 square feet. The businesses represent $57 million in potential investments and $12,750,000 in lost potential for annual wages.
“These relocations, they want to get to market as quickly as possible,” DeLorenzoe said. “And that limitation is slowing down our opportunities right now.”
Council member Theresa Carli Pontieri asked city staff to bring the council some options about investing in spec buildings — pre-built buildings made without particular buyers in mind.
Three other businesses out of the 24 did not seem to city staff to fit in with the community, DeLorenzo said. One of the applications was a smokestack-type industrial businesses, and another was a place to raise non-human primates for medical testing, he said.
“We didn't think that fit our community very well,” he said. “So, we said 'No thank you.'”
DeLorenzo said Palm Coast Park Tract 17 — a city-owned tract of land — was one of 10 sites in Florida selected by Florida Power & Light for its Florida First Sites program. The program is a site-certification program that develops project-ready industrial sites.
“FPL is doing all of the marketing for this site, including some drone work,” he said.
