Watch Ocala, FL Grow!
The city of Ocala has negotiated a memorandum of understanding with the Jacksonville Port Authority to explore a partnership that could include Ocala in the container port supply chain.
Both the ports of Tampa and Jacksonville are seeking "agreements of understanding" with the city of Ocala to work together to accommodate what both describe as "significant growth in container traffic expected in the coming decades," largely because of the expansion of the Panama Canal. With Ocala’s central location and transportation assets, city officials believe it is an ideal location for an inland port, where goods could be distributed, warehoused or assembled after being unloaded at Florida’s seaports.
Other Great News on the Growth Front! 
- CSX railroad is building a double track through Marion County, which the massive rail carrier has put on its list of national economic development hot spots. The more important point is that Ocala will be the only place along CSX's new S-Line between Tampa and Jacksonville — a veritable rail interstate highway — where trains will be able to drop off and pick up large amounts of freight.
- Our community's budding but growing high-tech node is quietly gaining ground, in part because of the opening this year of the downtown Power Plant business incubator.
- Ocala/Marion County continues to boast important quality of life assets in its two hospitals, both ranked among the top 100 in the nation, and the College of Central Florida, listed for the second year in a row among the nation's top 10 percent of community colleges.
- Continued expansion of industrial sites, we now have multiple commerce parks in the works, led by the Ocala/Marion County Commerce Park (Ocala 489) at Interstate 75 and U.S. 27 and the airport's Ocala Business Park.
- Marion County’s unemployment rate improved for the second straight month in September, dipping 0.3 percent to 9.8 percent overall. The drop in unemployment came at a time when Marion County is also seeing growth in its labor force, which swelled from 135,506 people in August to 136,089 in September. Of those, 122,788 people are employed.
And perhaps most importantly of all..........Ocala/Marion County always has location, location, location. Amazingly, we are located dead center between Miami and Atlanta, Tampa and Jacksonville, The Villages and Gainesville. Make no mistake, as the aforementioned port authorities pointed out, transportation matters more and more in Florida's economic development future, and at least three major logistics companies are taking close looks at our community and all the dots on our economic development map.
Ocala/Marion County, it seems, is truly in the middle of it all!
Comments(0)