Hines, Key Group announce Florida Space Coast industrial park

Global real estate investment, development, and property manager Hines, in partnership with Titusville, Florida-based Key Group, announce Space Coast Innovation Park, a 3.0-million-square-foot project situated across 450 acres in the heart of Florida’s Space Coast in Brevard County. The state-of-the-art project will be located along Grissom Parkway and Perimeter Road, within the boundaries of Space Coast Regional Airport’s (TIX) federally licensed Exploration Spaceport in Titusville.

Space Coast Innovation Park will be developed in three phases. Phase I, which comprises three rear-load industrial buildings totaling more than 639,000ft² across 50 acres, is projected to break ground in Q1 2024. Phase II will include two industrial buildings of nearly 466,000ft² across 50 acres. Phase III will feature a mixed-use development spanning 350 acres, with details to be announced at a future date.

“As the rapid commercialization and privatization of the aerospace industry continues, with the space economy expected to generate more than $1 trillion in annual sales by 2040, we believe now is the perfect time to create a best-in-class logistics hub for aerospace companies requiring more direct access to Kennedy Space Center and Cape Canaveral than properties located further south can offer,” said Ryan Wood, managing director at Hines. “As one of the first groups to deliver a modern industrial park to prospective aerospace and defense tenants seeking to enter or expand their operations in North Brevard County, we look forward to partnering with Key Group to meet the critical logistics needs of Space Coast businesses.”

The Space Coast is the epicenter of Florida’s growing space industry and is home to one the nation’s largest concentrations of aerospace, defense, and technology employers including Blue Origin, SpaceX, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, L3 Harris, and Amazon, among others. Moreover, the U.S. Air Force recently selected Patrick Space Force Base on the Florida Space Coast as its preferred headquarters location for the U.S. Space Force’s Space Training and Readiness Command operations. The area’s business-friendly environment and proximity to major space, air, sea, road, and rail corridors, has made it a preferred destination for numerous aspects of space technology, including rocket and spacecraft design, development, and manufacturing. Situated 10 miles from the Kennedy Space Center’s vehicle assembly building and offering aerospace and defense firms direct access from I-95 to SR-407, with a direct connection to the newly expanded NASA Causeway Bridge, Space Coast Innovation Park is positioned to accommodate the area’s strong demand for highly specialized industrial space requiring payload assembly and transport to Kennedy Space Center launch pads.

“By partnering with Hines on the Space Coast Innovation Park project, which we designed with the Titusville Cocoa Beach Airport Authority, we’re leveraging their world-class mixed-use development and investment expertise to execute the vision, and giving assurance to the community and our prospective tenants that we will deliver,” said Kathleen Yonce, CEO of Key Group. “We will collectively work with aerospace tenants to provide institutional-grade facilities and tap into the exceptional resources that the Exploration Spaceport has to offer, including incentives from Space Florida, the North Brevard Economic Development Zone, and the Economic Development Commission of Florida’s Space Coast. The Exploration Spaceport Master plan underway will offer multi-modal payload transport and is located within Port Canaveral’s Foreign Trade Zone.”

One of the largest real estate real estate investors and managers, Hines has more than 65 years of experience in the global industrial and logistics sector and operates in 30 countries serving 790 properties totaling nearly 269 million square feet globally.

Key Group is a team of commercial real estate veterans serving corporate, institutional, and private tenants, landlords, owners, investors and speculators in assessing and executing successful projects. It’s been involved in more than $9 billion worth of commercial projects spanning approximately 31 million square feet since 2016.