The Bay County Economic Development Alliance’s “Project Rocket” has been revealed to be a regional FedEx ground distribution center serving customers from Pensacola to Tallahassee.
This new facility will bring about 200 jobs over the next three years.
“It’s very exciting because we have been working very hard to get jobs in Bay County, the EDA and the commission,” Bay County Commissioner Bill Dozier said. “Just to get jobs that pay better than the average wage so we can help raise the pay scale in Bay County and that’s what this is going to do.”
FedEx is investing $55 million into their location at the intermodal distribution center off Highway 231.
“The port authority has invested a lot of time and a lot of finances in improving a site at the IDC.”
Workers are already moving dirt on the 33-acre plot of land that will soon hold the over 250,000 distribution center.
Bay EDA President Becca Hardin said the distribution center is going to be a state-of-the-art automated facility.
“This is an extremely big deal for Bay County and it’s a project we’ve been working on for about eight months now,” Hardin said. “It was very competitive, this could’ve gone to other places in the Southeast but because we had a certified site that was shovel-ready, we were able to compete and win this project for the Bay County.”
Officials said the timeline for construction is aggressive and they hope to be complete by the end of the year.
