$100 million spec project coming to Lakeland

Amid a growing buzz about the need for additional distribution product in the Interstate 4 corridor between Tampa and Orlando to meet demand, an Illinois-based company is planning to construct the largest speculative industrial park in Lakeland in more than a decade.

Brennan Investment Group, of Rosemont, Ill., is planning roughly 1.2 million square feet of industrial space on a 112-acre tract at 3401 Old Polk City Road, just off the interstate's Exit 38 and across the road from Florida Polytechnic University.

The first building in the Centerstate Logistics Park, as it will be known, is slated to be 600,000 square feet and is scheduled to be completed by the end of this year, says Robert Krueger, a Brennan managing principal and co-founder based in Tampa.

In all, Centerstate — the largest underdeveloped piece of land along I-4 — is slated to involve a roughly $100 million investment by Brennan.

Brennan is in the process of obtaining necessary building permits, Krueger says. The company finalized its $6.25 million purchase of the land from New York-based Rockefeller Group, late last year. Rockefeller had paid $9.3 million for the property in July 2008, according to Polk County records.

Brennan's plans are a significant departure from the “build-to-suit” distribution center developments that Amazon, Wal-Mart, Rooms-To-Go and others have embarked on in the I-4 corridor in recent years.

The developer has retained Colliers International Tampa Bay's Ed Miller to market the Centerstate property. Miller, together with Colliers agents Dolores Seymour and Deborah Mickler, represented seller RG Lakeland LLC, a Rockefeller affiliate, in the sale.

Krueger, who has developed more than 5 million square feet of space in the I-4 corridor, says the time is right for spec development.

“Many companies don't like to assume the risk of doing a build-to-suit,” he says. “That takes a year to 18 months, and many don't want to, or can't, wait that long. And now, all the Class A space there has been leased up.”

Brennan, too, is no stranger to the Florida industrial market. It owns 20 buildings totaling more than 1 million square feet in the state, in Tampa, Orlando and Sarasota, among other cities.

Founded in 2010, Brennan's total portfolio totals 34 million square feet nationwide.