Gulf South Commerce Park begins work on first industrial warehouse, acquires more acreage

The Gulf South Commerce Park near Mandeville has broken ground on its first industrial warehouse and expanded its footprint by acquiring an additional 300 acres, developers announced Wednesday. The new 200,000-square-foot, "spec" warehouse — being built on 13 acres by Florida-based Blue Steel Development — is a $22 million project slated for completion in the first quarter of 2027, while the park's acreage will grow from roughly 100 acres to nearly 400 acres after the new purchase and site preparation.

"We need to have projects ready to go for these tenants," said John Crosby, CEO of Crosby Development, the Mandeville-based firm behind Gulf South Commerce Park. "The bigger deals will come along in the future, but for the smaller companies, spec space is really important."

Blue Steel Development is partnering with Crosby Development on the warehouse buildout and has constructed the facility without a tenant in hand, betting on demand for logistics, manufacturing and distribution space on the Northshore. Matt Hubert, executive vice president of investments at Blue Steel Development, said the move validates market interest: "We're building significant interest from users of all sizes, so it's just proof that the plan that was kicked off years ago is coming to fruition."

The recent land acquisition was supported in part by a $2 million investment from Louisiana’s FastSites program, announced at the same event. That FastSites funding will help cover costs tied to buying an additional 300 acres and will be fully repaid to the state by 2031, with officials saying the funds are intended to be recycled into future infrastructure work. Crosby said the land that brings the park closer to 400 total acres will be prepped and cleared by the end of 2028.

Crosby declined to provide a precise figure for the full cost of the most recent acquisition but said the total development cost for Gulf South Commerce Park is approaching $100 million to date. That total includes the new warehouse under construction, land purchases, internal streets and utilities, a water tower, and a Love's Travel Stop that opened in March off Interstate 12. Brandon Moore, a district manager at Love's Travel Stops, participated in the Love's grand opening earlier this year.

Context and site buildout

• Crosby Development purchased the original land for the park roughly five years ago and has spent the past three years installing infrastructure and clearing sites to support the master plan, which envisions up to 900 acres in the long term.
• Approximately 1,000 acres in the surrounding area are already zoned for manufacturing and logistics, enabling warehouse, distribution, light manufacturing and cold storage uses on the site.
• Crosby said a large-scale data center is unlikely for the location because such a facility would require additional energy generation.

Local economic development leaders at the event emphasized the park's role in making Northshore communities more competitive for industrial tenants. "We have not had a park like this in pretty much our whole region," said Grady Fitzpatrick, chief business development officer at GNO Inc. "To see this vision, to stay competitive, we have to have things like this that are shovel-ready."

Outlook

Developers expect the spec warehouse to attract a logistics, manufacturing or distribution tenant after its projected first-quarter 2027 completion, catalyzing further leasing and construction across the expanded campus. Crosby credited Blue Steel for recognizing the market need for speculative space: "We had a lot of companies come and go that didn’t want to do it not on a spec basis, they wanted to have a tenant lined up," he said. With FastSites financing in place and the Love's Travel Stop operational, the Gulf South Commerce Park is positioning itself to be a ready-built option for a range of industrial users on the Northshore.