Lake County's First Planned Office Park Wins Staff OK

The park would be developed south of Leesburg, FL, 50 miles northwest of Downtown Orlando and three miles south of the 750-acre Christopher C. Ford Commerce Park near Groveland, FL in south Lake County.

The office park would complement the Groveland area industrial park, Lake County planners say. The industrial park, almost built out, houses distribution centers for Circuit City, Home Depot, Dominos, Marriott International Inc. and other national tenants.

Lake staffers have approved the concept which still needs separate green lights from county commissioners, Florida Department of Community Affairs, Florida Department of Transportation, the East Central Regional Planning Commission, St. Johns River Water Management District and the Florida Department of Environtment Protection. Those approvals are expected to take two years before construction can start, Lake staffers tell GlobeSt.com.

Even so, the park already has a waiting tenant. Orlando-based Irvin Green & Associates plans to move its insurance business to Lake County and build a 30,000-sf, freestanding headquarters building.

Hwang and Leesburg lawyer Steve Richey, who represents the development group, couldn't be reached at GlobeSt.com's publication deadline to learn of other potential tenants and how the venture will be funded.

The campus-like, low-rise building park will be styled after Maitland Center's 42-building, 5.5-million-sf submarket seven miles north of Downtown Orlando, Hwang associates tell GlobeSt.com on condition of anonymity.

"This will be a class project but I frankly can't tell you how much class A-caliber office space will be built in the park or what the projected rents might be," a Lake County broker familiar with the project tells GlobeSt.com on condition of anonymity.

Other brokers tell GlobeSt.com the initial projected rents will be lower than metro Orlando numbers, probably averaging $16 per sf, full-service compared with average quoted rents of $20 per sf in metro Orlando.

Motivation for the office park and other nearby, previously announced commercial enterprises comes from a planned interchange road at County Road 470. The park's proposed site is north of the Florida Turnpike and Bridges Road and west of U.S. 27.