By Ken Jackson
Staff Writer

The Osceola County Board of County Commissioners Monday cleared the way for construction of a 1.5 million square foot of wholesale retail and business trade space that could bring business in from across the globe.

The proposed Center for International Commerce to be built on a parcel of land on the Judge Farms property across U.S. Highway 192 from Osceola Heritage Park got the green light from the commission at Monday’s meeting, giving County Manager Don Fisher and staff the go ahead to issue a Memorandum of Understanding. A final contract with engineering firm Beijing Construction Engineering Group International’s U.S.-based company in Dallas will come for board review within 60 days.

Fisher even said Monday he would consider the project a priority and work with staff to deliver it sooner than the allotted 60 days.

According to a county report, the Center would “create a place where companies and business people from all over the world meet in order to showcase products, place orders from manufacturers, contract for services or launch new businesses.”

The core of the development would be space for business-to-business commerce, but some will include direct retail space for shoppers.

But the numbers of the project, the manner in which score is kept in local economic development circles, indicate the center would create 12,526 jobs and $500 million in labor income, generate $18.2 million in state and local sales taxes and bring in $1.1 million in Tourist Development Tax revenues. The $1.2 billion capital investment, provided wholly by the company’s investors, will yield a $1.4 billion annual economic impact when fully built out according to study done by Sean Snaith, director of the University of Central Florida’s Institute for Economic Competitiveness.

The county’s costs are just $6 million to make the land for first phase of the five-phase plan pad-ready.

The Compass Trade Center Project, as its called in county documents, also has plans for 500 hotel rooms and 728 dwelling units. County officials said construction could begin as soon as June 2014, and work would progress in phases over a five-year period, reaching 1.5 million square feet of space when all the building is complete. All of that land would be public, tax-generating land.

Fisher said the deal had been several months in the making, and he recently spent time in China working on the deal — and luring BCGEI to Kissimmee over another U.S. location the company examined.

“Our lack of impact fees and business-friendly approach won them over,” he said. “This has the potential to be a remarkable game-changer, unlike even what Disney brought to the area. This will be in the heart of the county.”

Commissioner Fred Hawkins, Jr., also the board’s appointee to the Greater Osceola Partnership for Economic Prosperity, said it could mark the start of a seismic shift for the county’s economic base.

“This can make Osceola County a hub for international business and trade, and serve as an incubator for new local business,” he said. “This will be a magnet for high-paying, high-end jobs, and our children and grandchildren will have a place after they go off to college to come home and work. That’s the opportunity this gives the county.”

Hawkins also noted the plan also includes considerations for long-term water management objectives in the form of a reservoir that can keep collection water locally and be used for irrigation during dry periods.

“We dump so much water down to Okeechobee,” he said.

Commission Chairman Frank Attkisson called the deal “a historic motion” and likened it to the arrival of Walt Disney World.

“Going back 2,000 years, our county has been at the crossroads of the state as far as those who want to do business,” he said. “The future is bright with the prospect of the increased jobs and wages that this project will generate, and I’m very excited. “Don Fisher was our quarterback on this drive and brought home a win.”

The Compass Project was actually one of two projects the county received Letters Of Interest for the phase II portion of the Judge Farm land. The other was called a “megacenter” by Fisher, with retail and restaurant locations that would provide a $150 million local investment. Hawkins said he still wants to work with those behind that proposal as well, and find it a home somewhere else in the county.

“What county wouldn’t want to be looking at just one of these projects?” he asked.

This proposal for use of a portion of the Judge Farms land does not affect a proposal brought forth by the United States Specialty Sports Association, headquartered across U.S. Highway 192 at Osceola County Stadium, to build a ballfield complex on phase I of the land. USSSA’s proposal would turn that complex, if and when built, over to the county after an initial lease, taking it off the property tax rolls.