One wouldn’t necessarily think a parking lot would be a sound investment, but a recent Collier County real estate transaction may prove otherwise.
A 10.66-acre parking lot used by Amazon to park delivery vans for its nearby last-mile delivery station in East Naples sold for $9.9 million on Dec. 1. The buyer, JFN 1074 LLC, is owned by Naples philanthropist Jerry F. Nichols, an employee benefits insurance provider and wealth management adviser. Nichols purchased the property from Naples-based Barron Collier Companies, which obtained it under Creekside Tollgate LLC for $4.3 million in June 2020. David J. Stevens of Investment Properties Corp. negotiated both transactions.
“That land is gold,” Stevens said, noting that it is difficult to find a lot of that size in that area now after recent major acquisitions by Uline and Great Wolf Resort.
The lot originally was five platted parcels of industrial land in the Tollgate Commercial Center at Bush Boulevard and Tollhouse Drive, just south of Interstate 75’s Alligator Alley. The parcels were replatted as a single tract in 2020. The tract was developed into a lighted, fenced-in parking lot by Barron Collier Companies’ Peninsula Engineering. The offsite parking lot was completed in March 2021 ahead of the June 2 launch of Amazon’s 104,860-square-foot last-mile delivery station on more than 18 acres on the southwest corner of Davis and Collier boulevards. 
Subject to the completion of improvements, Amazon entered into a long-term lease agreement for the lot. The Seattle-based tech giant reportedly leases the lot for $40,000 monthly for a 10–year term with options to extend the lease for at least another 10 years. Amazon has the right to the property for 25 years, Nichols said, so he does not plan any changes. “That type of usage is going to be hard to replicate,” he said.
Without knowing specific terms, simple multiplication grows $40,000 per month to $480,000 per year to $12 million over the course of a possible 25-year lease. The income stream investment with a fixed income for an extended period of time is what attracted Nichols to the deal. “I think it’s very similar to a bond,” he said.
All 566 parking spaces in the outdoor lot are 11 feet by 27 feet, large enough to store the longer vehicles used by Amazon‘s package delivery service. The vans are secured on the lot overnight and driven each morning about one-half mile to the delivery station at 8760 Davis Blvd. to start a shift.
The new Amazon center in Naples is considered a last-mile distribution facility because orders are prepared for final delivery to customers. Amazon‘s operation workflow has three major components: first mile, where products are warehoused and ready for order; middle mile, where orders are hauled from a distribution or fulfillment center to a delivery facility; and last mile, which delivers products directly to customers’ doors.
