Belvedere Terminals, a start-up company developing a new gas and diesel distribution network by rail, will build a fuel depot and distribution plant on a 78-acre site on Palm Coast’s Peavy Grade, next to the city’s Water Treatment Plant 3 off U.S. 1. The company intends to start operations in late 2026.
The $75 million to $80 million capital investment locally will result in a half dozen fuel tanks with a total capacity of 300,000 barrels of gasoline and diesel storage, or 12.6 million gallons–the equivalent of 17 water towers like Palm Coast’s off I-95.
A 125-car train will deliver the fuel to the facility, emptying the fuel into the storage tanks about once a week. (The locomotive will be run by CSX engineers on Florida East Coast’s rail line, but the train cars, designed at the latest safety standards, will be owned by the company). From there, tank truck will distribute the fuel to stations in Flagler, Volusia and St. Johns counties, leaving the plant at the rate of one every four hours, 24 hours a day. Not including the truck drivers, the plant is expected to employ 30 to 40 people, most of them engineers, at an average salary of $100,000.
Local property tax revenue is expected to reach $800,000 a year, according to Flagler County Administrator Heidi Petito. That would make the plant by far the largest generator of property tax revenue in Palm Coast or the city. (In comparison, a Publix store generates roughly $125,000 a year.) Petito announced the company’s pending deal alongside Interim Palm Coast City Manager Lauren Johnston in a meeting with reporters today, with Tim Schwarz, Belvedere Terminals’ chief financial officer, joining by phone.
County and city officials are touring the company’s plans as an economic development win that would bring much-needed non-residential property tax revenue in a county where homeowners account for 90 percent of tax revenue, against 10 percent for commercial and industrial.
Schwarz is touring the plant as an innovative, less expensive and environmentally safer way to transport fuel, most of which is currently transported by ship to ports before it is loaded onto delivery tank trucks. “We’re 10 to 15 percent cheaper than the distribution cost of bringing it through the ports,” Schwarz said, though don’t count your savings at the local pump just yet.“It might cut a nickel or a dime off the price.”
Schwarz spoke at length about elaborate safety measures that will be in place, down to a substantial membrane that will run beneath the entirety of the area where the tanks will be built, to mitigate any spills, and a standard 10 times more stringent than the Environmental Protection Agency requirements to minimize odors. Still, he’s aware that the plan may face public resistance.
The company attempted to build its site in Ormond Beach. It did not go well. Public opposition, litigation and a change in political support from the Volusia County Council halted the plan there, shifting it to Flagler County. Though the acreage in Palm Coast is zoned industrial, the size of the project is likely to require public hearing before the Palm Coast Planning Board and the City Council once Belvedere Terminals submits its site plan.
“When people say, well, it’s not what we were hoping for,” Schwarz said, “it takes a little bit of learning. That’s why we want to communicate. But we are an absolutely, very safe way of bringing in a product that everybody uses every day, is on every corner of your city, and it takes some education. But I think that what we are offering is a way to help the vast majority of the residents.”
The company is benefiting from a $10 million Florida Department of Commerce grant to buy the land in Palm Coast and use about $2 million of that for site preparation. County government is the grant’s local agent. The County Commission is set to approve it on April 7, as the county will own the property for the first five years, though Belvedere Terminals will pay property taxes from the time it begins operations.
“I would hope that people would appreciate the fact that we’re trying to bring commercial, industrial opportunities into the community to lessen the impact and burden on the residential tax base,” Petito said. “Unfortunately, you can’t sustain yourself on residential property, so we need to find a different way to be able to support that. And I think when you look back at our strategic plan, the city strategic plan, it’s about improving overall quality of life for our residents and reducing that tax burden.”
Officials are aware, like Schwarz, that the plan may not sail through without at least some echoes from Ormond Beach: the depot would be located near a water plant, at 3,500 feet from two of the city’s wells, and not far from residential development. But it is also near a construction-waste dump, part of whose acreage will be acquired by the new company, and a high-power line right of way.
Local officials prefer to focus on the plant’s benefits to the city’s tax base. “It’s part of Palm Coast’s strategic plan for economic vitality,” Johnston said. “We know that our residents want us to focus on this important aspect, because it’s indicated in our most recent citizen survey results. And for Palm Coast, [the economy] was rated the third most important at 91 percent, but the quality of our economy is only at 46 percent.” The survey did not get so granular as to ask what type of economic development residents favor.
Johnston underscored the joint approach between the city and the county, overlooking boundaries.
To that end, Johnston and Petito today spoke of three other potential economic development projects, one of them closer to realization than two others. That project is a revival of Palm Coast’s plan for a $93 million sports complex on its west side. The plan failed when voters rejected an amendment to the city charter that would have facilitated a public-private partnership to finance the complex, which would be built and run by a private company called Synergy.
Synergy is back. So is the project, now at $110 million. Except that Synergy will present it before the County Commission. County government is not barred from entering into public-private partnerships. The complex would still be built in Palm Coast. But the county would be the financing agent with Synergy–an end run around Palm Coast’s limitations, if not its voters: the complex proposal had drawn significant opposition.
Petito spoke of two additional economic development projects, both at the county airport. One of them, a Black Hawk helicopter repair company, was reported on her earlier this month. The other is less sure for now: the airport is a finalist, along with Jacksonville and a site in Seminole County, for what the county is calling Project X-Ray, a 1,200-employee manufacturing plant that would be built in two phases, with a total investment of $750 million.
That company will announce its intentions at the end of April. Petito and Jorge Salinas, her deputy (who was part of the meeting), would not disclose what type of manufacturing company that would be, other than to say it’ll be “advanced manufacturing,” by a company most people would not be familiar with.
