ORLANDO—The national expansion for data provider Xceligent continues as the GlobeSt.com Thought Leader prepares to launch its services in the Orlando market. With all eyes on a first-quarter 2015 launch, work behind the scenes has been furious. Danny Rice, senior director of client services for the Florida market, says the firm's national drive team just completed its months-long process of scouring the area, “cataloging some 30,000 buildings in the six counties that make up the greater Orlando marketplace.” Now researchers are building the ground-up data base from that intel.

There's also been a flurry of activity in the hiring process, as Xceligent preps to support the local market with some 22 service people. According to Todd Marovich, recently named Eastern region VP of sales, key among these hires was the recent appointment of a new regional director of analytics, Rick Siems, who previously spent 14 years at Cushman & Wakefield Tampa before joining Xceligent. Marovich reports that two local directors of client services and drivers will be added shortly as well as a dedicated 18-person support team in the firm's Independence, MO home base.

Finally, Marovich and Rice will be interviewing some of the top area brokers, based on nominations submitted by the managing directors of real estate firms supporting the local market, to build its office, industrial and retail advisory boards. Consisting of 15 to 20 professionals each, the boards are critical to Xceligent's ongoing process of ensuring the accuracy of its data.

It's prime time to expand into the market, say the two executives. “Industrial is hot, just as it is in virtually every market around the country,” says Rice. “And Orlando is well positioned from the sheer fact of its infrastructure and expanding road network.” He reports a growing trend in spec development as indicative of the market's industrial growth.

Retail, of course, is planted in the fertile ground of Orlando tourism and “demands some of the highest square foot sales volumes in the region,” he notes.

Even in the lagging office sector, Downtown Orlando is seeing a major surge. “Vacancies are coming down,” Rice says, “and Red Lobster will be relocating its headquarters here, which is the first time in a long while a major corporation of this size has entered the downtown market.” Multifamily construction downtown is also creating a lot of excitement as is the newly opened performing arts center, both additional indicators of a market surging back.

Buoyed not only by the success of Tampa and the positive feedback of their recent market launch party, Rice says he and Marovich are looking forward to “partnering with the local community on an ongoing basis. We heard clearly that the local market was eager for an alternative solution, for a data provider that will supply analytics that are better than their current choices.”

What then? Then rollouts will continue, as the pair look to Miami and Jacksonville in 2015 and 2016.