S. Florida sites vie for Amazon’s HQ2
With South Florida as a finalist to be the home of a second Amazon headquarters, real estate experts have identified potential candidates for a site, which would bring 50,000 new jobs and a $5 billion investment.
The sites are all conjecture, however, as the eight locations proposed to Amazon — scattered throughout Palm Beach, Broward and Miami-Dade counties — are confidential under Florida law to protect negotiations for such competitive projects.
What Amazon chooses depends on the type of headquarters site it wants — multiple spaces in the heart of a city or a large suburban campus of its own. The company told the competing cities and regions that it will initially require 500,000 square feet of space, graduating to 8 million square feet after 2027.
The new site also depends, in part, on whether Amazon wants to go “urban or suburban,” said Neil Merin, principal of NAI/ Merin Hunter Codman, a commercial brokerage and construction management company in West Palm Beach.
He said that Miami-Dade has the capacity to develop 50-story buildings, while Broward would have to be “creative” with developed space, as vacant land is scarce.
Palm Beach County offers land for an entire campus, with possibilities that might appeal to Amazon in northern and western parts of the county, he said.
The planned development Avenir is off Northlake Boulevard in Palm Beach Gardens.
“They have 200 acres that they could build 1.5 million feet on,” Merin said.
But the key to that parcel is that, if approved, Amazon would get 50 acres for free, donated to the county as an incentive. Getting some free land at the site is one preference in the company’s request for proposals, experts say.
Another parcel is where United Technologies Corp. built its UTC Center for Intelligent Buildings, a showplace for UTC technologies, off Donald Ross Road just east of Interstate 95 in Palm Beach Gardens. The land just behind the UTC Center is available and ready for building, Merin said.
If Amazon’s desire is “to be interactive with Latin America,” Miami is the likely spot for the headquarters, he said.
“But one thing that’s good about Palm Beach County is we have a lot of housing coming online,” Merin added. “We have approved some 15,000 new units.”
Some brokers think MiamiDade will end up snatching the main prize, with Broward or Palm Beach counties entering the picture whenever Amazon chooses to expand.
“Miami could amass most of the concentration of space,” said Ken Krasnow, executive managing director for South Florida at Colliers International. “I think it would be the lead from the headquarters perspective.
He also named downtown Fort Lauderdale, near the Flagler Village neighborhood, and pointed to an area in general proximity to the Brightline rail station as a “smaller scale” possibility.