Major manufacturing project at Cecil Commerce Center looks to create 180 jobs in next 5 years (Courtesy of the Jacksonville Business Journal) — Eight months after the Cosentino Group told the Business Journal that it was looking at Jacksonville as the site of its first North American plant, the Spanish manufacturer of natural stone and architectural surfaces has made it official: The company plans to break ground on a $270 million facility by the start of 2025.
The facility will be built on a 330-acre site at Cecil Commerce Center and include a 408,000-square-foot manufacturing facility and 734,000 square feet of support area. It looks to create 180 jobs by the end of 2028, with an average wage of $56,600.
The plant would be Cosentino’s first manufacturing facility beyond its sites in Almería, Spain and Vitoria, Brazil
“In the 78 years that our family has been in the surfacing business, this is one of our greatest milestones yet,” Cosentino Americas CEO Eduardo Cosentino said in a statement. “The North American market has come to represent more than half of our global sales since we established a foothold here in 1997, and has played a pivotal role in positioning our brand at the forefront of the industry.”
Cosentino has had a presence in Florida since 2017, when it relocated its Americas headquarters from Houston to Coral Gables.
The new facility is about 20 miles from the port of Jacksonville, which anticipates handling major volumes of the company’s shipments.
The project fulfills the city’s long-held desire to have a major operation at Cecil, the former Navy base the city took over more than 20 years ago. The 720-acre portion of the site has mainly been kept fallow since the city acquired the land, both because it requires major infrastructure work and because the city envisioned it as home to a just a few major projects.
“As we considered different cities across the United States, it quickly became clear how much Jacksonville and the state of Florida have to offer,” Cosentino said. “The facility’s proximity to ports, railroads and key infrastructure, coupled with expansion opportunities and incentives at the state and regional level, make this a win-win.
On Tuesday, the City Council approved selling the land to the manufacturer for $20 million. It also signed off on a rebate of half of its property taxes for a decade, an incentive deal that amounts to $12 million.
The company has an option to purchase 150 acres to the north of the main parcel, paying 75% of the appraised value for the land. The option will run for seven years, with the company able to extend that for seven more years by paying $150,000 per year.
To prepare the site, the city will spend about $14.6 million on infrastructure improvements, including $3 million to extend Logistics Lane by a quarter of a mile, $2.5 million to extend a rail spur on the site and $2.5 million of the cost of extending water and sewer lines.
“We have been strategic in how we’ve marketed this valuable piece of industrial real estate to attract a world-class manufacturer of which there would be mutual benefit. We found the ideal manufacturer in Cosentino,” JAXUSA Partnership President Aundra Wallace said in a statement. “This is a major win for Cecil Commerce Center and a collaborative effort.