Lazaro Aleman
ECB Publishing, Inc.
Some five months after Jefferson County officials accepted a grant from Florida Enterprise for a study of the potential economic viability of a large-size property near Lloyd, commissioners recently heard the results of the study.
Victor Leotta, a consultant whose company specializes in finding optimal locations for commercial and industrial development, conducted the study and presented its results to the Jefferson County Commission on Thursday evening, Nov. 18.
The focus of the study was the Jamaro property, a 240 or so acre parcel on the northwest quadrant of the I-10 and SR-59 interchange that has previously been identified as having high marketability. Especially if sewer service is extended to the interchange, a goal that now seems more reachable than ever, as the county was recently awarded $3.5 million to accomplish the project.
Leotta told the commission that the purpose of the study, which was still in draft form, was to assess the property’s marketability and any problems that it might have, the aim being to increase its visibility and attract the right type of development there.
“You’ve got to ensure that you’ve got the competitive ability, because there is a lot of competition out there,” Leotta said. “But we believe that this site is competitive.”
The study, he said, included a conceptual site design, site profile, environmental assessment, placement of the site on the North American industrial classification system (basically a coding system) and a labor profile within a 45-minute drive time of the property.
The conceptual design, Leotta said, showed what the utilization of the property might look like, based on its topography, elevation, drainage features and the like, as it currently didn’t have a tenant or prospective tenant.
“This is very rudimentary,” he said, adding that it showed what would be covered by a facility’s footprint, roadways, ingresses and egresses, water retention and such.
The site profile, he said, was essentially intended to give a site consultant in another part of the country who was working for a company looking for real estate in the Southeast an idea of the property’s geographic location, its acreage, features, what kind of assets it had, what transportation corridors were nearby and such. Also, the kinds of other businesses in the area, the volume of labor available, and metrics to show that there were no environmental concerns.
The environmental site assessment, he said, was the most rudimentary first boots-on-the ground investigation of the site. Typically, if something suspect was found on the property, the investigation would then go much deeper, he said. Fortunately, the firm that had done the site assessment had found no significant environmental concern, he said.
In terms of the national code, Leotta said, any prospective buyer would want to make sure that the property accurately reflected what was described in the North American Classification System and that the match was good for both the company and county.
The drive-time profile, he said, look at the available workforce within drive times of 15, 30, 45 and 60 minutes. Because basically, employee availability was a critically important factor, Leotta said.
The study, he said, had looked at individuals currently employed in construction, manufacturing, transportation and warehousing within the assigned drive times.
“Because, at the end of the day, people are only going to drive so far to get to work,” Leotta said. “And we came up with a grand total of around 206,000 individuals in those occupations. So that suggests that you have a critical mass for up to 100 jobs.”
Leotta said a more detailed assessment of the property would be required once a company was actually ready to move in. The current study, however, presented a baseline, he said.
County officials accepted the $24,250 from Enterprise Florida in June, after the City of Monticello had turned it down.
At the time, Diane Scholz, with the North Florida Economic Development Partnership (NFEDP), explained that the grant stemmed from a 2018 study that her group had conducted in its 14-county region to identify sites with the highest potential for development.
In Jefferson County, she said, that site was the Jamaro property. And the grant, she said, was intended to move the property to the next marketing stage.