Developers Looking to Infinity and Beyond to Create Commercial Opportunities in Fla.

The Texas-based Hines real estate investment firm is partnering with local developer Key Group on a $500 million industrial park near Florida’s Cape Canaveral, aiming to cash in on the booming aerospace industry.

The real-estate firm is betting that companies such as Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin and Elon Musk’s SpaceX and their suppliers will pay high rents for warehouses and manufacturing space close to launch sites that can store rockets, space shuttles, satellites and parts used to build and maintain them.

“Aerospace is really a new and emerging supply chain,” said Ryan Wood, managing director of industrial development and acquisitions at Hines for the Southeast region. “We feel like the real-estate industry hasn’t quite kept up.”

Rockets and spaceships require an army of suppliers, creating demand for storage and manufacturing facilities close to launch sites.

The space industry is transforming a mostly sleepy coastal stretch east of Orlando, as Hines and Key Group control a 450-acre property in Titusville, a short drive from the Cape Canaveral rocket-launch site.

The developers plan to break ground on the project’s first three warehouses spanning 639,000 square feet in early 2024 and complete them in 2025. The total project will span around 3 million square feet. Meanwhile, Florida real-estate firm Onicx Group and partner Aries Capital have announced plans to build a 1-million-square-foot industrial park in nearby Edgewater.