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Because of the tract's logistical advantages, marketers expect to sell it for a warehousing and distribution or industrial project by year's end.
The business park accounts for about a third of the 5,000-acre RiverPort owned by the Stratford Co., a Dallas land investment group.
The entire project, which includes planned commercial and residential components, will probably take 20 to 30 years to fully develop, said Chuck Mitchell, a partner in Maloney, Mitchell & Denton, the commercial real estate firm that is marketing the property for Stratford.
The project could radically alter many aspects of life in Jasper County and beyond, Mitchell said.
"RiverPort is forever going to redefine Hardeeville," he said.
To start that process, Mitchell's firm intends to contact the nation's top 80 developers of warehousing, distribution and industrial facilities.
Large enough to accommodate 3.5 million square feet, the first phase is located only 6.5 miles from the Savannah port and has access to U.S. 17 and an inactive rail line.
The property is a long, narrow swath bisected by Interstate 95. It would be ideally located if a proposed port in Jasper County is built, Mitchell said.
In a slow real estate market, those factors should give the park a leg up on competitors who assumed they had to be located in Georgia to win port business, Mitchell said.
Compared with sites 20 or 30 miles away from the Savannah terminal on the other side of the state line, "we really go to the head of the pack," Mitchell said. "I think we have a competitive advantage."
Local officials have long talked of such major developments, Hardeeville economic development director Ted Felder said.
This time, he said, dirt will move.
"The planning we've done lays out an incredible economic footprint," he said. "This is happening."
