## How We Made These Calculations

**The data.** We used the City of Palm Coast's own geographic parcel and zoning records — the same public land-use data the city maintains for planning purposes — covering every parcel currently zoned for industrial use (zoning categories IND-1 and IND-2). That's 175 parcels across the city.

**Vacant vs. built.** Every parcel in the county's property records carries a land-use classification set by the property appraiser — codes like "VACANT INDUSTRIAL" or "VACANT COMMERCIAL" versus classifications indicating an actual structure or active use. We used those official classifications, not a visual guess, to sort the 175 industrial parcels into 140 already built out (326.2 acres) and 35 vacant (210.3 acres).

**Why 210 acres isn't the real number.** Vacant land scattered across 35 different, disconnected parcels isn't the same as 210 usable acres — a developer needs contiguous land, not a scattering of small lots miles apart. So we ran a contiguity analysis: grouping any vacant industrial parcels that physically touch or sit immediately adjacent to one another (allowing for a narrow road, ditch, or utility easement between them, which shouldn't break an otherwise-connected piece of land) into single combined sites. That produced 13 distinct assemblages out of the 35 parcels.

**How we judged which sites are actually viable.** We measured each assemblage against acreage benchmarks commonly used in industrial-development planning: roughly 20–25 acres as a floor for a workable industrial park (a threshold comparable to standards used by other jurisdictions, such as Prince George's County, Maryland's zoning code), 50-plus acres for a real multi-tenant business park, and 100-plus acres for the larger "business park" tier used by some state economic-development incentive programs. Only 3 of the 13 assemblages clear even the 20–25 acre floor; none reach the 100-acre tier.

**What this doesn't account for.** This is a land-records analysis, not a site-suitability study. It doesn't factor in wetlands, environmental permitting, access/road capacity, utility availability, market demand, or a property owner's willingness to sell or develop — any of which could make a qualifying site harder to build on in practice, or make a smaller site more viable than acreage alone suggests. Parcel boundaries and land-use classifications reflect the most current county records available at the time of this analysis and can change with a sale, subdivision, or rezoning.

*Analysis conducted July 2026 using City of Palm Coast and Flagler County public GIS parcel and zoning records.*