BTH breaks ground on a small-bay first phase in Port St. Lucie

BTH Development Partners has broken ground on Tradition Commerce Park, a 530,000-square-foot industrial and flex campus in Port St. Lucie, but the first phase is a deliberately modest slice of that approval: two buildings totaling 55,200 square feet on a 34-acre master plan approved for seven structures. Miller Construction Company is handling construction at 12051 SW Tom Mackie Boulevard, with Claren Architecture and Planners as designer and Colliers International Florida holding the exclusive leasing and sales assignment.

Building 4 runs about 28,800 square feet and Building 5 about 26,400 square feet, each with layouts that start at 3,000 square feet and can be customized for a single company or a handful of tenants. BTH is pointing that product at what it describes as the region's surging demand for small- to mid-bay flex and light industrial space — space a growing business can take in pieces without committing to a full warehouse.

The park's larger product is not in this round. Later phases are planned to deliver large-bay, dock-high distribution facilities of up to 166,968 square feet plus build-to-suit opportunities, so the Phase 1 construction commitment of 55,200 square feet is roughly one-tenth of the 530,000 square feet BTH is approved to build. The distribution boxes stay in the ground for now; the phasing reads as a bet that the first tenant to arrive will be a small-bay user, and the big-box tenant can wait. The build-to-suit track matters for the same reason: it keeps a path open for a large user whose requirement fits no spec building.

Building small first trims the sponsor's upfront exposure and turns the first phase into market evidence, since the 166,968-square-foot boxes can later be underwritten against rents actually signed at the park rather than projections. If the small-bay market cools, the downside is two modest buildings rather than a 167,000-square-foot shell — for a developer betting on the small end of the demand curve, the order is to commit capital where BTH says demand is and reserve the large product for a user who has not yet appeared.

Colliers will market the park on both the leasing and sales side, and the build-to-suit options add a third channel for a single large user. Until one of those channels produces a signature, Tradition Commerce Park is a 55,200-square-foot test of whether the small-bay demand the developer describes can carry a 530,000-square-foot plan; the 166,968-square-foot distribution boxes are the stakes.