Avatar’s Poinciana Office and Industrial Park a magnet for companies

July 20, 2006

Poinciana Office & Industrial Park continues to be a magnet for companies seeking to provide warehouse space and services geared to Central Florida’s booming construction industry and robust economy.

Three of the newest tenants to come on board are Small Bay Partners and Poinciana Commerce Center LLC, Godinho Properties LLC, and Giron Investment LLC. Together they purchased approximately 29 acres from the park’s developer, Avatar Properties Inc.

Small Bay Partners of Maitland, in a cooperative venture with Poinciana Commerce Center LLC, purchased approximately 20 acres just east of Poinciana Boulevard, between 17-92 and Robert McLane Boulevard.

Small Bay Partners plans to build approximately six small-bay warehouses starting at about 2,000 sq. ft. on 9.7 acres, while Poinciana Commerce Center LLC plans to build several large-bay warehouses with raised docking areas with a minimum of 7,000-10,000 sq. ft. each on 10.2 acres.

The two projects are estimated to cost $14 million, provide approximately 220,000 sq. ft. of warehouse space, and create about 500 jobs, according to Geoff Longstaff, Small Bay principal. Construction is expected to commence early next year and be complete sometime in the summer of 2008.

Godhino Properties LLC of Longwood purchased five acres on Avenue A. The company, which specializes in swimming pool construction, plans to build a facility for its swimming pool company, Virgil & Brothers, and a gunite staging facility for its other company, Gunite Works, Inc. which was started in 1967. Construction is expected to begin this summer at an estimated cost of between $600,000 to $900,000, said Anthony Godinho, president and operations manager for Gunite Works.

Giron Investment LLC purchased 4.05 acres on Avenue A. The company plans to build a warehouse for Salvador Construction Company which is owned by Salvador Giron. Cost of construction and a construction timetable have yet to be established.

At 1,545 acres, Poinciana Office & Industrial Park is the largest industrial park in Osceola County and home to a host of nationally and internationally recognized tenants. The Park currently has over 3 million square feet under roof and some 2,200 employees, many residents of Poinciana, the 47,000-acre master-planned community also being developed by Avatar, the community’s primary homebuilder.

Major tenants in Poinciana Office & Industrial Park include Lowe’s Home Improvement Warehouse and its $73 million regional distribution warehouse; Nursery Supplies, Inc., the world’s largest manufacturer of molded plastic plant containers for the wholesale industry; Jeld-Wen doors and windows (formerly DoorCraft of Florida), Osceola’s 1998 Industry of the Year; Graham Packing PET; Windsor Metal Finishing, winner of the 2004 Sustainable Florida Best Practices Award for Small Business for its use of environmentally-friendly technology; Cargill, Inc. (Nutrena Feed Division); PepsiCo Beverages & Foods/Gatorade (formerly Quaker Oats); MultiFoods; P.R. Manufacturing; McLane/SunEast; Symbol Mattress Company; Florida Power Corporation; Lehigh Cement; Amtrak; Texaco; 7-Eleven; Williams Properties, Ltd.; SSI Properties, Inc.; Commercial Metals Company (dba as SMI Steel Fabricators of Florida); Chalifoux Management Group; and United States Cold Storage.

For more information about Poinciana Office & Industrial Park, contact Avatar’s Tony Iorio, vice president of land development, at (407) 933-5000, or Hank Yunes, Avatar’s vice president of commercial operations, at (305) 442-7000.

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