Love it or hate it, Cecil Commerce Center is here to stay.  That is why Clockwork Marketing teamed up with the Cornerstone Regional Development Partnership’s Commercial/Industrial Development Task Force for a behind-the-scenes tour of Cecil Commerce Center.

The group of 40 people included key business leaders and decision makers in Jacksonville’s commercial real estate, construction, development and finance sectors. The tour’s purpose was to get educated on what is currently happening at Cecil, what is slated to happen in the future and to have a better understanding of why this site is such an asset to our city.

Here are some highlights:

• Cecil’s airfield has the 2nd largest commercial runway in Florida at 12,500 feet (Miami’s is only 500 feet longer).
• Cecil Field not only is licensed as a Spaceport, but it is also the “abort” runway for a space shuttle in the event a launch goes awry and needs an emergency landing location.
• Cecil Field connects to Brannon Field where the Blue Angels originally trained.
• Flightstar Aircraft Services, a company that does aircraft repair and maintenance, was making repairs on the Presidential Aircraft (their version of Air Force One) from the African nation of Burkina Faso while we were there.
• Cecil Commerce Center has been designated as a “Mega-Site” which means it meets the following requirements – has at least 1,500 acres, can accommodate a major industrial company like a car manufacturer, environmentally free of endangered species and archeological attributes, abutting a major interstate, and has direct access to rail (or the ability to build access within 6 months).
• FSCJ has an air traffic controller school at Cecil Commerce Center – one of the only of its kind in the country.
• Despite popular belief that beavers don’t live in this part of the country, they have been building dams and lodges in the wilderness at Cecil causing some back roads to flood.
• The Navy still uses some of the land there to train their men against terrorist situations. Their weapon of choice for the training … paintball guns.
• The Bridgestone Americas Tire Operation ships out 15,000 – 20,000 tires per day. The largest tire they’ve had in their warehouse was 12-feet tall, which I think they sold to my neighbor who had those installed on his pick-up truck. The Bridgestone warehouse currently holds about 600,000 tires, but can hold 1.5 million if it is filled to capacity.

We believe the Cecil Commerce Center offers outstanding opportunities for Jacksonville’s future economic development. Tell us your thoughts by commenting to this post.