Area News
New Airport-Area Plans Revealed
June 20, 2009 by admin · Leave a Comment
Added On: 06/15/2009
By PAT KELLY / News Herald Writer
PANAMA CITY
The St. Joe Co. has plans to begin developing about 1,000 acres near the entrance of the new Panama City-Bay County airport under construction near West Bay.
Jerry Ray, vice president of communications for St. Joe, said Monday the land near the front entrance of the airport was being targeted for industrial, commercial and services-related use.
“These parcels, which are for a wide variety of users, are adjacent to the southwest side of the airport site,” Ray said in a phone interview from the Paris International Air Show, which opened Monday in France. “They are not tarmac-connected.”
The St. Joe plans are separate from the airport’s recent decision to hire a “master developer” for 1,400 airport-owned acres surrounding the runway and terminal complex, airport executive director Randy Curtis said Monday.
Ray said he was at the international air show trying to line up businesses and manufacturers in the aviation industry that might be interested in locating to Bay County. “I’m here trying to bring jobs to Bay County,” he said.
St. Joe president and CEO Britt Greene said the company’s initial focus for the 1,000 acres was on aerospace, logistics and defense-oriented technology companies. As part of the master-planning process, planned “development nodes” could join a corridor of Air Force, Navy and Army aerospace and aviation facilities along the Florida, Alabama and Mississippi Gulf Coast, Greene said.
“With the scheduled opening of the airport now less than one year away, we are accelerating our preconstruction activity and stepping up marketing outreach to global users who need ready access to the new airport,” Greene said. The airport is set to open in May.
Greene said St. Joe, Northwest Florida’s largest private landowner, had entered into master-plan agreements with The Haskell Company and TranSystems Corporation to develop the land, part of about 71,000 acres the company owns within the West Bay Sector Plan.
