Commercial Real Estate Near Kennedy Space Center and the Tradition Jobs Corridor

Commercial

Oct 22

Quick answer: Kennedy Space Center counted a total population of 17,701 in NASA's FY2025 annual report, up from 15,120 in FY2024, and the Eastern Range recorded 109 orbital launches in calendar 2025. Port St. Lucie's Southern Grove is a 3,605-acre development of regional impact whose jobs corridor along I-95 had fewer than 20 acres left by 2025, with Costco, FedEx, Amazon, Cheney Brothers and Cleveland Clinic among the named users. Planned or in-progress items include a $600 million Blue Origin plant, a $19.5 million Amazon Leo support site under construction, a 163,000 square foot Costco store and a 42-bed rehabilitation hospital. I found no source that ties property values or rents near either center to those employers, so this article does not make that claim.

The two site questions that come up most on these coasts are "what is going on around Kennedy Space Center?" and "what is left in Tradition?" This article sets out what is built, who the employers are and what is planned, with dates, from sources I could check. It then explains how I evaluate a site near a job center without assuming that values or rents follow the jobs, because I found no source that says they do.

Kennedy Space Center: what the annual reports count

NASA's Kennedy Space Center annual reports for FY2024 and FY2025 (the latter numbered NP-2025-11-1087-KSC) give the workforce snapshots below. Snapshot dates differ within each report, so the change column is approximate, and it is my arithmetic.

KSC population	FY2024 report	FY2025 report	Change
Civil servants	2,098	2,079	-19
Contractor employees	4,917 (my sum of 4,873 on site and 44 off site)	5,868 (5,557 on site, 311 off site or near site)	951
Construction workers	402	540	138
Tenants	7,703	9,214	1,511
Total	15,120	17,701	2,581 (17.1%)

The FY2024 contractor total is my sum of the two components; the FY2025 report states its own total. Two details matter for property outside the gate. The largest group, and the largest increase, is tenants, a label the report does not define; the FY2024 report separately counts 100 commercial partners and nearly 250 partnership agreements. And of the 5,868 contractor employees in FY2025, 5,557 are counted on site and 311 off site or near site. The report splits only contractors by location and does not say where civil servants or tenant personnel report; the center covers more than 7,500 acres. The report cannot tell you what that means for a flex building or retail pad outside the gate.

Launches and economic impact: dated, and not the same thing

Launch counts depend on who is counting and over what period. Space Launch Delta 45 says the Eastern Range recorded 109 orbital launches in calendar 2025 (article dated June 24, 2026). NASA's FY2025 report says the center helped launch 110 missions, but that is a fiscal year, October 2024 through September 2025, so it is a different count.

The last center-specific economic impact report I found covers FY2021. NASA's June 8, 2022 summary put 12,312 employees at the spaceport, $2.89 billion in direct sales, $5.25 billion in Florida economic output and 27,004 Florida jobs, with the average salary up from $70,000 in 2019 to $78,000. Those figures are five years old and predate the growth in the table. I found no FY2024 or FY2025 KSC report of that kind, and NASA's newer statewide figures are agencywide, so they do not isolate the center.

Outside the gate: Exploration Park and the announced projects

Exploration Park is a 299-acre development just outside the KSC gates. Space Florida, the independent special district created to foster the growth of the aerospace industry in the state (s. 331.302(1), Florida Statutes), announced a partnership with NASA on December 23, 2011 to develop it. NASA's page, updated August 12, 2026, says it is accessible around the clock, houses the Space Life Sciences Lab and CASIS, and targets aerospace contractors and commercial space service providers. It names no private tenants.

Three announced projects carry dollar figures, with the date each source gives. Blue Origin, in a Space Florida release that cites April 2026 job figures, plans a $600 million, estimated 830,000 square foot upper stage manufacturing facility at its Rocket Park campus at the Cape Canaveral Spaceport, with 500 aerospace jobs. SpaceX appears on Space Florida's list of 2025 wins with a $1.8 billion Gigabay facility and 600 jobs, but I did not confirm a specific site for it. Amazon says it operates a 100,000 square foot payload processing facility at Kennedy Space Center for Amazon Leo, renamed from Project Kuiper on November 13, 2025, with total investment to reach more than $140 million, a $19.5 million secondary support site under construction and more than 130 jobs on the Space Coast since 2024 (Amazon, July 24, 2025, updated after the November 2025 rename).

Tradition and Southern Grove: what is built

Southern Grove is a 3,605-acre Development of Regional Impact (DRI) south of Tradition Parkway, inside the 8,200-acre Tradition area, east and west of Village Parkway and north of Becker Road. The city's fact sheet says a 2004 Urban Land Institute report designated 1,321 acres as an employment center, projects "the potential to create more than 22,500 jobs," and lists the I-95 interchange at Becker Road among infrastructure funded through a $165,529,700 special assessment district. By 2025, the city says, fewer than 20 acres remained in the jobs corridor. The table pairs the city's description of each user with the headcount the employer reported to the county EDC in 2022 and 2023, where the list I read gives one.

User (city's Southern Grove page)	Facility	Jobs per city	EDC headcount (2022 to 2023)
City Electric Supply (TAMCO)	411,000 SF manufacturing and distribution, $38M	Retains 200, creates 50	221
FedEx at Legacy Park (Sansone Group)	245,000 SF sortation center, $44M	450	469 (FedEx Ground)
Amazon	220,000 SF delivery station	200 full time	300
Cheney Brothers	$55M food distribution center	"Hundreds"	201
Accel International Holdings	10-acre wire and cable plant	125	No figure
OCULUS Surgical	10-acre headquarters	50	47
Costco distribution center	1.8M SF on 192 acres, under construction	500 expected	No figure
Cleveland Clinic	Seven-story Tradition Hospital; 107,000 SF research center, opened 2020	Not stated	97 (research center)
FIU Center for Translational Science	Not stated	Over 50	75

Costco's distribution center is the largest of those by floor area. The city's January 10, 2024 announcement describes two facilities totaling 1.87 million square feet at Legacy Park at Tradition employing more than 500 people: a 595,000 square foot Phase One for cold and dry storage with 265 jobs at an average wage of $55,350, and a 1.06 million square foot Phase Two for dry goods. The site plan was approved December 4, 2023. The city's project page still describes the center as under construction, and I did not confirm an opening date.

What is planned in Port St. Lucie, with dates

On October 13, 2026, WFLX reported that the City Council approved a site plan for a 163,000 square foot Costco retail store in Southern Grove, along with a 5.5-acre first phase of a Tradition Entertainment District and a 42-bed acute care rehabilitation hospital of more than 55,000 square feet. That is a television report, and it names no operator for the rehabilitation hospital. WQCS reported on March 2, 2026 that FDOT plans to study a future Marshall Parkway interchange at I-95 beginning in fiscal year 2026-27, which the report says would shift traffic away from the Gatlin Boulevard and Becker Road interchanges. A study is not a funded interchange.

One proposal connects the two coasts. The draft 2026 update to the Port of Fort Pierce master plan proposes a launch vehicle recovery facility with a heavy-load wharf of about 700 feet and 8 to 10 acres of upland, and CBS12's June 1, 2026 report mentions SpaceX and Blue Origin but reports no commitment from either, and I found none. A proposal in a draft plan with no committed user can still show up in marketing as if it were certain.

How to evaluate a site near a job center

I apply the same discipline at the KSC gate and on Village Parkway. Proximity to an employer is a fact about location, not about income. The one dated demand statement I found, Cushman and Wakefield's February 24, 2026 release on net migration and buyers "looking northward for more affordable options than South Florida," does not say that rents or values near these employers moved because of them. So I do not say it either.

Separate built from announced. The Costco distribution center and the Costco store are different projects at different stages, and the Gigabay has a dollar figure but no confirmed site.
Date every headcount. The EDC figures are from 2022 and 2023; the KSC snapshots are from June and September 2025.
Ask where the workers report. At KSC, 5,557 of 5,868 contractor employees are counted on site.
Confirm access from the property, not from the map: which interchange, which turns, and whether a study like Marshall Parkway would change it.
Pull the parcel's land use and zoning with a land use attorney or planner, and ask the city whether any special assessment balance applies to the site. My no-HOA guide explains how to find non-ad valorem charges on a tax bill.
Order the survey, the environmental assessment and the title review from the licensed professionals who do that work before you sign.

What I could not confirm

I could not confirm the Gigabay site, a bed count or opening date for Cleveland Clinic Tradition Hospital, the current status of the Florida Center for Biosciences and the Torrey Pines Institute that the city's fact sheet (undated, referencing 2018) placed in a "Tradition Center for Innovation," an operator for the 42-bed rehabilitation hospital, or an official 2026 launch count. The city's two Costco jobs figures, 500 expected and more than 500 across two facilities, are close but not identical. The city's square footage figures also differ: 1.87 million in the January 2024 release (whose two phases add to 1.655 million) and 1.8 million on the project page. Each of these is a question to put to the source, not a reason to avoid a site.

Both job centers are documented well enough to describe and not well enough to price from a distance. Describe them accurately, date every figure, and let the parcel's own numbers, its rent roll, its assessment, its survey and its access, carry the valuation. That is the order I work in, and it is the one I would ask you to hold me to.

Questions buyers and tenants ask about these two job centers

How many people work at Kennedy Space Center?

NASA's FY2025 annual report lists a total KSC population of 17,701: 2,079 civil servants, 5,868 contractor employees, 540 construction workers and 9,214 tenant personnel. The FY2024 report listed 15,120, and the snapshot dates differ.

How many launches took place on the Space Coast in 2025?

Space Launch Delta 45 says the Eastern Range recorded 109 orbital launches in calendar 2025. NASA's figure of 110 missions covers fiscal year 2025, October 2024 through September 2025, so it is not the same count.

What is Exploration Park?

A 299-acre development just outside the Kennedy Space Center gates; Space Florida announced a partnership with NASA on December 23, 2011 to develop it. NASA's page names the Space Life Sciences Lab and CASIS as occupants and lists no private tenants.

Which employers are in Port St. Lucie's Southern Grove jobs corridor?

The city names City Electric Supply (TAMCO), FedEx at Legacy Park, Amazon, Cheney Brothers, Accel International, OCULUS Surgical, a Costco distribution center under construction, Cleveland Clinic Tradition Hospital with its Florida Research and Innovation Center, and FIU.

How much land is left in the Southern Grove jobs corridor?

The City of Port St. Lucie says fewer than 20 acres remained available by 2025. Confirm current availability with the city before you plan around it.

Does being near KSC or Tradition raise a property's value or rent?

I found no dated source that says so. Evaluate the parcel on its own rent roll, assessment, access, land use and survey, and treat the employer as a fact about location, not about income.

Talk with William. Looking at a site near the KSC gate or in Tradition? Send me the address or the listing flyer. I will check each claim in it against the public record, date every figure, and build the question list for your attorney, surveyor and lender before you spend money on due diligence. Call or text (772) 800-2274 or send a message.

General information, not legal, tax, lending, insurance, survey, environmental or engineering advice. Project figures, job counts and site plans in this post are as announced on the dates shown and can change; the Gigabay site, the rehabilitation hospital operator and the Costco distribution center opening date were not verified. Confirm land use, zoning and assessments with a land use attorney or planner and the city, and have a Florida real estate attorney, a CPA, a licensed surveyor and an environmental professional review any site before you commit. Statute and rule references are as reviewed on October 22, 2026. William Merchant, REALTOR®, RE/MAX Gold. Each RE/MAX office is independently owned and operated. Equal Housing Opportunity.

Sources

kennedy space centertraditionsouthern groveport st. luciecommercial real estate

William Merchant