Will Lakewood Ranch master plan include Amazon?

When Max Stewart, director of global business development for the Bradenton Area Economic

Development Corp., heard online retail giant Amazon was hunting for a second corporate headquarters location, he went to his boss.

One location came to mind as he and EDC President and CEO Sharon Hillstrom sat down to brainstorm. It was Lakewood Ranch’s Collaboration Opportunities for Research and Exploration, or CORE, a 305-acre biomedical industrial research park slated for the northeast corner of State Road 70 and Lakewood Ranch Boulevard.

“I told Sharon, we should go for it, really put our corporate headquarters recruitment program through its paces,” Stewart said.

CORE met almost every one of Amazon’s criteria, including an approved site plan for development, being a 45-minute drive from an international airport (Stewart test drove it with his 2-year-old in the back seat) and having a minimum of 100 acres available for the future Amazon campus, among other criteria.

The only thing it really lacked was availability of mass transit.

“I don’t think there is any community out there that has every single requirement of that RFP,” Hillstrom said. “Our evaluation suggested we can meet most of them, so we said, ‘Let’s go for it.’ I saw no downside to this whatsoever.”

They contacted Kirk Boylston, president of Schroeder-Manatee Ranch subsidiary LWR Commercial Realty, about the idea and got approval to move forward.

“CORE’s focus is life sciences tech and Amazon clearly is a tech company,” Boylston said. “We are long shots, but long shots happen occasionally. It would be amazing.”

Amazon, which is headquartered in Seattle, reported it received 238 proposals from cities and regions in the United States and Canada.

The Manatee County application also includes a suggestion for a site farther north. Developer Carlos Beruff, of Medallion Home, had the same idea for headquarters, but using a more than 900-acre property he has in north Manatee.

Beruff paid about $5 million in 2013 for the land, which is on the Manatee-Hillsborough County line, just off Interstate 75.

He contacted the EDC, which agreed the site could work and included it in the overall bid for Manatee County. Beruff created his own 93-page site specific glossy book, which the EDC incorporated into its proposal — 38 pages in responses to specific Request for Proposal questions and the equivalent of another more than 100 pages, including Beruff’s booklet, of supplemental materials.

“We had two strong sites to submit,” Hillstrom said.

EDC officials tailored the proposal to Amazon’s culture and requirements as much as possible — something it usually cannot do because RFPs for corporate headquarters are rarely public and usually do not include the name of the company or industry.

Hillstrom would not discuss any possible incentives offered to Amazon.

Amazon’s long-term plan would include a multi-building campus with potential of more than 8 million square feet and 50,000 employees within 15 to 17 years. Buildings could be spread across multiple sites.

An initial 500,000-square-foot building would be comparable in size to Feld Entertainment’s facility in Palmetto.

Boylston said that would fit well within CORE’s site plan, which is entitled for about 1.3 million ground square feet. Traffic also could be accommodated, as demonstrated through the entitlement process.

Later expansion would have to be approved by the county.

Even if Amazon doesn’t choose Manatee County, Hillstrom said the RFP exercise gave her team a template for going after other Fortune 500-type companies if future opportunities arise.

“I think we have to leave this at, ‘It’s a long shot,’” Hillstrom said. “It gets people thinking and maybe others will come. We want people to know we’re the best (for business) in the south Tampa Bay region.”

Amazon spokesman Adam Sedo said Amazon is not commenting about the new headquarters at this time.