Last three parcels at Mossy Head Industrial Park purchased by real estate development group

MOSSY HEAD — From 2002, when Walton County purchased it, until 2013 when Love's Travel Stops and Country Stores came to town, a 312-acre wooded tract of land off State Road 285 between Crestview and DeFuniak Springs was known simply as "the future site of the Mossy Head Industrial Park."

As of Tuesday, a property whose future once looked so bleak a county commissioner suggested planting pine trees on it is no longer open for development. By vote of the Walton County Commission, the final three parcels in the industrial park were approved for sale to Onicx Group.

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Onicx Group, which bills itself as a full-service real estate development and construction company, has obtained the last available 34 acres for $1.3 million, according to Bill Imfeld, the director of the county's Economic Development Alliance.

The company plans to construct several buildings in which it will conduct light manufacturing work, Imfeld said.

Onicx Group beat out three other competing interests for the remaining parcels at the industrial park. In April, the County Commission was asked to consider offers from Alliant Capital Partners in Freeport, which wanted the 34 acres that went to Onicx Group; Truckworx in Homewood, Ala., which was seeking 12 acres; and Ps 37 Properties of DeFuniak Springs, which was looking to obtain a 10-acre parcel.

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The properties Alliant Capital Partners wanted would have pre-empted the other two suitors from obtaining the parcels they desired, so at the advice of counsel, commissioners opted to re-bid the property. Onicx Group stepped in and won the day.

While Imfeld was having to tell potential industrial park tenants Monday he had nothing left to offer in Mossy Head, he recalled when, as a county commissioner in 2013, he and then-Walton County Special Projects Coordinator Larry Jones met with representatives from Love's at the Mossy Head site.

Knowing a truck stop would be a lure for other businesses to move to the region, they were hoping to sell the company on a 15-acre parcel at the intersection of Interstate 10 and State Road 285 and were less worried about the price they got than nailing down the sale.

Imfeld said he struggled to maintain his game face when an offer of $500,000 was tendered.

With the truck stop came fast food restaurants McDonald's and Subway. In 2014, it was announced that a 70-bed Sleep Inn motel would open at the industrial park site along with Empire Truck Sales, a dealer for Freightliner and Western Star trucks. Southern Tire Mart and I-10 Truck Center would soon follow. The Walton County Sheriff's Office even opened a substation on the property.

The arrival of Onicx Group will bring the number of businesses to 15, including a FedEx distribution center. Not bad for a parcel in which County Commissioner Sara Comander said in 2013 “We’ve been looking at this Mossy Head project for what, eight years now? It’s time to do something or plant pine trees.”

Imfeld said county officials are speaking to landowners adjacent to the Mossy Head Industrial Park and could conceivably expand the park's borders.

He said the biggest driver for development in the park was getting roads and infrastructure installed. That was something he said he pushed for as a county commissioner.

Okaloosa County waited even longer than Walton County to take the steps necessary to make economic development at the 10,500 acre Shoal River Ranch site what One Okaloosa Economic Development Council director Nathan Sparks terms "a no-brainer."

Sixteen years after KIA rejected the site as a location for its only U.S.-based manufacturing plant due in part to a lack of infrastructure, the county is spending $5 million in local, state and federal dollars to expand and extend roads, rail lines, water, sewer and broadband connectivity onto the now 1,000 acres it owns at the ranch.

Imfeld said he expects Okaloosa will very soon see success in its efforts to market the Shoal River Ranch to business, which lies just east of Crestview and about 7 miles west of the Walton County line.

"I think Nathan (Sparks) is going to have success similar to what we've had when he gets set out there," Imfeld said. "I think it's fabulous. That is going to be a tremendous opportunity not only for Okaloosa to add jobs, but also Walton County."

This article originally appeared on Northwest Florida Daily News: Onicx Group purchases last three parcels at Mossy Head Industrial Park