Commercial Real Estate News Excerpt from Ashely Gurbal Kritzer – Tampa Bay Business Journal
“I like the market. We’re working with a fair amount of folks up there,” he said. “I don’t see it being a one-hit wonder. I think this is going to be a continuation moving forward.”
Ocala, Florida, has been named an emerging industrial real estate market by CBRE Group Inc. Its industrial real estate market totals 23.7 million square feet, of which 16% has been built since 2021.
Tampa, Lakeland and Orlando are well-known hubs for industrial real estate in Central Florida —and a fourth market in the region is emerging as an epicenter for big warehouse deals.
Ocala has been named an emerging industrial real estate market by CBRE Group Inc. Rian Smith, aCBRE senior vice president, says Ocala is comparable to where Lakeland was 10 to 12 years ago.Lakeland’s industrial real estate market started to pique the interest of national developers andinstitutional investors in 2015.
The industrial real estate markets in Lakeland and Ocala were both given credibility by thepresence of Amazon.com, one of the biggest users of industrial real estate on the planet. Amazonsigned a deal for its first 1 million-square-foot fulfillment center in Lakeland in 2013; it leased aspeculatively built warehouse in Ocala in 2020.
Ocala’s industrial real estate market totals 23.7 million square feet — 16% or 3.7 million square feetof which has been built since 2021, according to CBRE. Year to date, 1.8 million square feet in four buildings have completed construction.
