What do Opportunity Zones mean for Collier County? Will they attract more industrial activities?
Immokalee Rd
NEW HORI-ZONES Immokalee Rd
Pelican Bay
Golden Gate Blvd W
North Naples
BY ARTIS HENDERSON
Pine Ridge Rd
A
sk REALTORS® and business leaders in the Naples area about local industrial real estate and the answer is often the same: There isn’t enough. “The vacancy rate on industrial properties is between one and five percent, which is incredibly low,” says Bill Poteet of Poteet Properties, who has received commercial REALTOR® awards from both Florida Realtors® and the National Association of REALTORS®. “It’s a question of zoning,” Poteet says. “Industrial properties are not the most popular properties in town. People don’t want to mix cement trucks with residential communities. Developers right now have a gated community concept that works well for them and is very successful economically. We’re seeing people buy land and zone it residential or commercial, usually retail or office, mostly C1, C2, C3, or C4.” In fact, he adds, many commercial areas are being rezoned into residential areas. Recently, the Courthouse Shadows retail center in East Naples has been torn down and swapped out for a 300-unit apartment complex. The Naples Design District has plans for mixed-use spaces that combine commercial and residential. With residential use dominating real estate and commercial slotting in behind, that leaves little room for industrial
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spaces. This can potentially inhibit the future expansion of industry in the area, Poteet says. “Communities need a balance. Otherwise, we have to rely on one or two industries to maintain the economy. In Collier County right now, that’s construction and tourism with some agriculture. We don’t have a major manufacturing component. And we won’t get it unless we have more industrial properties.” When REALTOR® Chip Olson, manager and broker at RE1 Advisor, moved to Naples in the mid-1980s, industrial properties weren’t so rare. He remembers an industrial park off Airport Road that felt like it was far outside of town. “Guys would go out behind the buildings and shoot guns because there was nobody around to bother them,” he says. “Now you look at the Airport Road area and it’s totally surrounded by residential neighborhoods.” The area north of J and C Boulevard was the crème de la crème of industrial property in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. Olson remembers friends who kept a ski boat on one of the lakes in the area because nobody was around. Then developers came along and transformed the property into residential communities. The days of industrial property—and awaiting ski boats—are long gone.
Golden Gate
Naples
East Naples
Lely
South Naples
Naples Manor
Pine Ridg
Marco Island
Q3 2022
026-FEAT-COLLIER-NRQ3-2022.indd 26
6/21/22 3:00 PM
