A still-unnamed manufacturer wants to build a 220,000-square-foot production plant on 49.59 acres at Eastport Exchange in North Jacksonville, and the city is now reviewing the civil engineering plans that would make it happen. The project, dubbed Project Keystone, would become the industrial park's largest manufacturer if it moves forward.
The plans, detailed by Jacksonville Daily Record, call for vehicle parking, two separate auto entrances, a dedicated truck entrance, a truck access road and rail access — infrastructure suited to heavy production rather than simple warehousing. Jacksonville-based The Haskell Co. is listed as the project's architect and engineer, according to the same report. A proposed 8.05-acre outparcel also sits at the corner of the site.
What the plans do not reveal is who actually wants to build there. InLight Real Estate Partners managing partner David Burch, who is developing Eastport Exchange, would only confirm what the project is not: it is neither the long-delayed Holon electric vehicle plant nor the unidentified company behind Project Apollo, the Daily Record reported. Burch has said he is bound by a strict nondisclosure agreement, leaving the identity of Eastport Exchange's would-be anchor tenant a genuine open question for now.
A Rezoning Request Tied to the Mystery Project
Separately, InLight has applied to rezone 47.5 acres at the southeast corner of Kraft and Eastport roads from Industrial Business Park to Industrial Heavy, a shift that would clear the way for heavy industrial manufacturing on the site. Per the Daily Record's reporting, that rezoning request would need sign-off from both the Jacksonville Planning Commission and City Council before it could take effect.
Burch described the intended use behind the application as relatively tame by industrial standards, telling the outlet that the project is much cleaner and relatively benign compared to most heavy industrial uses. That characterization offers a hint of what might eventually locate there, even as the company itself stays under wraps.
Eastport Exchange's Bigger Picture
InLight markets Eastport Exchange as a 136-acre development in Jacksonville's port-proximate Northside industrial submarket, according to the company's own project page. The developer's plans describe four Class A logistics buildings alongside 58 cleared and graded acres set aside for a build-to-suit facility of up to 900,000 square feet under one roof. InLight also touts the site's access to JAXPORT's two marine terminals, CSX and Norfolk Southern intermodal rail yards, and Jacksonville International Airport.
Project Keystone is not the only manufacturer recently drawn to the park. The city is also reviewing a roughly $231,171 build-out permit for S+S Industries, a Houston company set to occupy 55,080 square feet at Eastport Exchange, the Daily Record reported separately. InLight senior vice president Trevor Berecz said that company plans to start operations by year-end doing light production, storage and distribution of copper, busbar and other electrical components.
A Northside Market Still Absorbing New Supply
The timing comes as Jacksonville's Northside industrial market works through a wave of recent construction. Vacancy in the submarket sat at about 11% in the second quarter of 2026, running above both the prior quarter and a year earlier, largely due to speculative deliveries, according to a market update from NAI Hallmark. The Northside's roughly 32.5 million square feet of inventory included recent speculative completions like InLight's EastPort project itself and Pan Am's Airport Logistics development, the report notes, while average asking triple-net rents for buildings around 100,000 square feet landed in the mid-$8-per-square-foot range.
Elsewhere in the submarket, nearly 3 million square feet is planned for the NXT Point Logistics project on Pecan Park Road, and Natural Life recently leased 104,000 square feet at Tradeport, per the same market report. JAXPORT, meanwhile, handled about 1.39 million twenty-foot equivalent container units in fiscal year 2025 — a throughput figure that underscores why port-adjacent sites like Eastport Exchange keep drawing manufacturing interest, named or not.
