Holon manufacturing plant civil plans under review (Courtesy of the Jacksonville Business Journal) — Civil plans for Project Link, which has been identified as a manufacturing facility for autonomous shuttle producer Holon, are under review by the city.
The proposed facility is located off Zoo Parkway near Imeson Park Boulevard and Blount Island.
Holon, which is receiving $7.5 million in incentives for the project, will produce 5,000 autonomous vehicles annually at its Jacksonville plant.
Plans show construction of a 491,472 square feet building and a test track have been drafted for the facility.
The site is 41 acres and located adjacent to a CSX Transportation railway, according to the plans.
VanTrust Real Estate is developing the site through JI Westlake 19 LLC, records show, and England Thims & Miller is the engineer for the project.
The autonomous shuttles being manufactured are meant for mass transit and are larger vehicles than what is used by AV companies such as Waymo.
Each shuttle would hold more than a dozen people.
Beep Inc., a provider of autonomous shared mobility solutions, will also be doing work at the facility once it’s operational to run tests on the software it implements within the vehicles, said Beep CEO Joe Moye.
Moye said he expects the company to create “several-hundred” jobs in Jacksonville over the next 3-4 years to support AV deployment.
Plans for the AV manufacturing facility are in review as the Jacksonville Transportation Authority is on track to launch the first phase of its Ultimate Urban Circulator, a program to introduce autonomous vehicles into JTA’s transportation system.