From: News Herald 3/6/2010
PANAMA CITY — St. Joe Company is gearing up to promote West Bay as a premier location for industries and plans to have infrastructure in place before 2012.
“What we are creating in West Bay is a new central business district for Bay County,” said Kevin Johnson, St. Joe vice president of economic development. “This is the largest mixed-use facility in the United States of America.”
Johnson spoke to a packed room of more than 200 government and city leaders during the Bay County Chamber of Commerce’s monthly First Friday event.
“The most exciting news is they have a timetable and they are investing in infrastructure,” said Janet Watermeier, Bay County Economic Development Alliance executive director.
St. Joe has a timeline to complete infrastructure for the first 100 acres at the new industrial park adjacent to the new Northwest Florida Beaches International Airport by about mid-2011, Johnson said. Another 300 acres are planned to be ready by the end of that same year, he said. Eventually, 1,000 acres will be developed for industrial, flex-commercial office and retail use.
The timetable is an estimate because of the magnitude of the project, Johnson said. In the next three years, St. Joe hopes the state will release money to move State 388 to better facilitate the airport.
“This is not like baking a cake – there is no timing on it,” Johnson said of the project. “What we want to do is get all the ingredients so that when the time is right, we have all the necessary ingredients to bake the cake.”
The date release is exciting for economic officials because it indicates the industrial park will become a reality, Watermeier said.
St. Joe is actively courting particular companies, using a Dallas real estate group whose corporate clients St. Joe hopes to attract. To draw attention, St. Joe is targeting trade writers to tour the new airport and, beginning Tuesday, plans to make presentations directly to specific companies, Johnson said.
Bay County is best positioned for aerospace and defense industries, followed by transportation and logistics, financial, health services and environmental, Johnson said. St. Joe hopes to see a cluster of aerospace firms at the new airport. That means a focus on education and advanced training and research, he said.
The local workforce is only one element on which Bay County plans to focus, Watermeier said. The alliance recently revealed a comprehensive plan that looked at everything from ready-to-build sites and existing structures to telecommunications and infrastructure needs.
St. Joe is working with the alliance to develop incentives to attract businesses, Johnson said. He would not give any specifics about what St. Joe wants in any incentive package.
“We want to be able to respond to the bottom-line needs (of companies),” Johnson said.
Bay County has relied on beautiful beaches to build its tourism industry, but sugar sand and green water isn’t enough to draw diverse, high-wage companies and keep them, Johnson said.
“Don’t just turn on the sunshine light — that’s not enough,” Johnson said. “We have to change how we compete and you can’t do it by standing still. We have to think about how we compete for jobs. We can’t just wait for them to come.”
