DeSantis Announces Additional $6 Million for New Road System at Cecil Airport to Serve Boeing and Spaceport

Part of Jacksonville's pathway to the stars got a $6 million boost Thursday from Gov. Ron DeSantis' Job Growth Grant Fund.

The funding will help launch a new 2-mile road that will service a planned Boeing aircraft facility as well as future Cecil Spaceport aerospace businesses at the former U.S. Navy base.

Gathering with city and state officials in a hangar in the shadow of the Jacksonville Aviation Authority's new Dr. Norman Thagard Mission Control Center, DeSantis said the spaceport's growth has been an "economic engine" with aerospace companies moving in. Adding the last piece of funding to open a new access road to the spaceport will help manage its "wave after wave of development," he said.

"That is going to represent a massive expansion of the potential for Cecil," he said. "... They will be able to add this key road and all the utility infrastructure necessary to support the commercial space and business expansion, and Cecil Spaceport will be included. This will allow a significant increase in launch operations at the spaceport at Cecil."

The state funding joins $7 million in JAA money, as well as $4 million from the Florida Department of Transportation and $3 million from Spaceport Florida to fund the road, infrastructure and a taxiway on the northeast side of the 17,000-acre airport and aerospace facility. Planned for years, once the new roadway and its infrastructure is designed, JAA CEO Mark VanLoh said they hope to start on it "as soon as possible."

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"This puts us over the top and brings utilities and a brand-new road to a site that's been unattainable for decades," VanLoh said. "It will be the front door to the space activities here, all the space hangars and payload processing. Everything you have to do to shoot a rocket into space will go to that site."

From Navy base to commerce center and aerospace mecca

The U.S. Navy signed over Naval Air Station Cecil Field in 1999 to the city for development as a business park and commercial airport after shutting the base down.

Since then, the site has become a flight center for aircraft from the U.S. Coast Guard and Immigration and Customs Enforcement Cecil Commerce Center. The JAA's JetPort operates there. Dozens of companies occupy facilities at the former base, from FlightStar aircraft maintenance and Boeing's FA-18 repair operation to SAFT America's high-technology battery plant and Bridgestone Americas Tire Operations.

Cecil was designated in 2010 by the state as a spaceport, preparing the way for commercial industry to set up space-related operations overseen by the JAA and making it one of 13 Federal Aviation Administration-licensed spaceports now in the United States. That includes four in Florida, three of those clustered at or near the Kennedy Space Center.

The former Navy base just saw Boeing break ground for a 370,000-square-foot complex to overhaul F/A-18 and QF-16 fighter jets, plus P8 and C40 support planes. The $156 million maintenance, repair and overhaul site facility should open in a year and a half at the northeast end of the airport's sprawling runways, with the new road planned to access it.

Officials say that new road will be built along the right-of-way of Alcoy Road, which is on 103rd Street just east of the facility's main entrance and across from the Amazon and Wayfair warehouses. The new road, and a taxiway for aircraft going to and from Boeing and other facilities built along it, could begin in fiscal-year 2023.

"We will build as much as we can for as much money as we have and build it as far as we can," VanLoh said. "We think we can get the whole thing done."

The road's impact could see 3,780 jobs added to the facility, bringing the total to more than 6,200, the governor said. It is also expected to double revenue to more than $7 billion annually at Cecil Air and Spaceport, DeSantis said.

"The roadway will also help new companies to locate to the area, and this is obviously a great place to be," DeSantis said. "With the investments we are making, the Cecil Airport is expected to double the number of employees."

And with space-based industries finding no more room to locate in Brevard County near the Kennedy Space Center, better access to Cecil property should be the lure for many more businesses to expand there, added state Rep. Wyman Duggan, R- Jacksonville.

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"There is not a lot of room for development down there," Duggan said of Brevard County's space industries. " Florida, and particularly Northeast Florida, is one of the few places on the planet where you can get to any orbit from a launch here ... They are going to want to come here."

Duggan also said the Jacksonville area has the talent needed to build the new businesses, as well as design and launch spacecraft, all of those "great quality, high-paying jobs."

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