The main event at the Palm Coast Planning Board Wednesday evening was the recommended approval of a new Walmart and satellite retail businesses in a mammoth shopping center on State Road 100. But the Planning Board also approved two other, smaller commercial developments with a potential for more than 200 new jobs and an expanded commercial tax base.
One is a pair of large warehouses that could generate up to 100 new jobs. The other is a medical and professional office building at the north end of town that could generate up to 120 jobs.
One is a pair of warehouses totaling 82,000 square feet on 7.5 acres at 5 Commerce Boulevard, about a quarter mile west of Commerce’s intersection with Pine Lakes Parkway. The north end of the warehouse property abuts Palm Coast Parkway.
The property, currently vacant–about 2 acres are wetlands, split into 16 wetland areas–is near what used to be the Palm Coast Data campus, and before that, what used to be Palm Coast’s City Hall. (Palm Coast Data, a subscription fulfillment company, used to be the city’s largest private employer before its demise as one of the many victims of the contraction of print media.)
About 0.8 acres of wetlands are expected to be lost and mitigated by the developer through the purchase of wetlands mitigation credits.
Both buildings will include two semi-truck loading wells per building and eight additional loading spaces. There will be two entry and exit points on Commerce Boulevard but internal roads will be designed to minimize truck traffic in parking and pedestrian areas. The warehouses are expected to generate 571 net new vehicle trips per day on average, peaking at 80 an hour at the evening peak hour.
The property is zoned light industrial and is surrounded by industrial properties. Each warehouse will be partitioned into eight 5,000 square feet units, potentially allowing 16 businesses to occupy space. In reality, a single business–Alleima, the manufacturer that currently occupies 1 and 3 Commerce Boulevard–will be expanding to the entirety of one of the two new warehouse buildings.
The land is owned by GPR2, a company established last August and registered to Gary Roberts of Ormond Beach, according to Florida Department of Corporations records. GPR2 acquired the land–as GPR1–for $700,000 in March 2025 from Montclair, N.J.-based Palm Coast Industrial Equities, which still owns the property at 11 Commerce Boulevard.
Roberts is the owner, developer and general contractor. “We’ve had some inquiries about building two. We’re talking with a couple different potential tenants for that,” Roberts said.
Alleima employs 223 people at the two buildings and is expected to add 30 to 50 new employees at the warehouse, Roberts said. The second warehouse would generate a few dozen jobs.
Businesses along Commerce Boulevard include an electrical installation service, a heating and air business, Alleima (a stainless steel and alloys manufacturer), and an energy-focused manufacturing company, among others. “We will construct both buildings at the same time, so we don’t move a tenant in and have to interrupt them with building the building next door.” Roberts built both the buildings occupied by Gioia Sails at 10 Commerce Boulevard, and built warehouses in Ormond Beach. “We’ve done quite a bit of work for other customers in the park here as well,” he said.
The Planning Board had no questions (other than an inquiry about air conditioning compressors) before approving the plans, 5-0. The application does not have to go before the City Council, since the size of the project is below 100,000 square feet.
The other non-Walmart related project on the board’s agenda Wednesday evening was the site plan for the Palm Harbor Professional Complex, a two-story, 62,000 square-foot medical office building on 8.6 acres less than 200 feet southwest of Frontier Drive’s intersection with Palm Harbor Parkway. The footprint of the building will be 34,844 square feet.
The area, zoned for mixed use, is near a Circle K gas station and convenience store, and is otherwise surrounded on three sides by the F-Section’s residential houses. Palm Harbor Parkway north of the site is still wooded, though it is also zoned for mixed use and could be developed by right. (The building’s address will be 1195 Palm Harbor Parkway, not, as previously listed in the staff report, 220 Frontier Drive.)
The building, built on a site that was used for the “stockpiling the dredging materials from the canals” when ITT was building Palm Coast, Casey Travers, the applicant for the project, said, will consist of 43 medical suites with 205 parking spaces.
The project has been going through various applications and managers–on the applicant’s side and the city administration’s side–since 2023, but now appears ready for construction. Office space will be available for medical professionals, dental offices, chiropractors, dermatologists, counselors, financial advising, and so on. “If we fill those 43 units, we will create about 120 jobs,” Travers said. “We’re looking for prestige profession,” she said.
Planning Board member Dave Ferguson wanted to know whether the building has been marketed. “From an investment point of view. Normally, when you build something, you expect to lease it,” he said. But Travers said no specific tenants have been identified for it. “The shell of the building is going to be constructed before they figure out the actual units, and in hopes that they’re going to be coming.” They being tenants.
“The city welcomes any commercial development that can happen,” Ferguson–a former city council member–said. “In that particular geography, mostly there’s not a lot of commercial there. A lot of the medical stuff is condensed in pockets in the city. This is a new place where people can get that kind of care, so that’s a plus in my mind.”
If it is filled, the building is expected to generate 2,558 daily car trips, peaking at evening rush at 194 trips for that hour, with that traffic concentrated on Old Kings Road, Frontier Drive and Palm Harbor Parkway.
“I think the architectural elevations are really unattractive,” Planning Board member Suzanne Nicholson said. “Specifically, what I’m objecting to, so it’s clear, is the horizontal band that has the diagonal, jagged edges going across the second floor area, as opposed to the rendering that was in the package we received. It looked like very nice orderly tiles. So that is my aesthetic issue.”
Cezary Sadlinski, the operating manager for the developer said the architecture is not set in stone. “Our goal is to get approval right now, mostly for the land,” he said, “and we’ll be more than happy to go over the process of all of the coloring every material which we’re going to be used before we’re going to receive the permit for the shell.” He added, in answer to Ferguson’s concerns, that “there is a huge potential in Palm Coast for actual upscale professional center.”
But by way of evidence, he did not–like Gary Roberts, who had lined up a named tenant for half his warehouse space on Commerce Boulevard–name a tenant. Rather, he spoke of how he and his wife used to live in Palm Coast a decade ago but moved to Orlando because she “was a little bit complaining about not to have so much professional places, actually,” in Palm Coast. Now the couple wants to return to Palm Coast. He repeated that the building will be “modern” and “really high quality, upscale.”
But no tenants yet.
The board approved the plan unanimously. Nicholson wanted to vote conditionally–she wanted her vote to be conditional on the plans hewing to a particular architectural look than another–but procedurally, that could not be done, since the motion had already been put on the table. Nicholson still voted approvingly.
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