The Chick-fil-A Effect

If you want to understand where industrial values in Polk County are headed, don’t start with a spreadsheet. Start with a chicken sandwich.

Not because Chick-fil-A is magic. And not because one building changes an entire market overnight. But because the new Chick-fil-A Supply distribution center in Winter Haven is a clean, real-world example of how infrastructure creates value. The project is a 244,000-square-foot distribution facility with more than $150 million in capital investment, expected to create more than 180 full-time jobs and begin operations in 2027. More importantly, it is being built in a location with direct rail connectivity inside the Central Florida Integrated Logistics Park. That is the story. The tenant gets attention. The infrastructure creates the value.

Winter Haven is not winning because it is fashionable. It is winning because it sits on top of a logistics platform that has been built deliberately over time. The Central Florida Intermodal Logistics Center in Winter Haven serves Orlando, Tampa, and South Florida. The intermodal terminal covers 318 acres, includes five 3,000-foot loading tracks and two 10,000-foot arrival-and-departure tracks, and has the capacity to process up to 300,000 containers a year. Around it is a large industrial development footprint planned for millions of square feet of warehouse, distribution, and light industrial space. That is not just “good access.” That is the kind of physical infrastructure that changes site selection decisions.

The logistics park itself is described by local economic development sources as 1,500 acres of developable land, capable of accommodating more than 8 million to 12 million square feet of development, with direct access to the CSX intermodal facility and proximity to major highways. It is built to serve food users, cold storage, manufacturers, and statewide distribution operators. That matters because industrial value is highest where the land can serve multiple tenant types without needing a costly reinvention.

A lot of people look at a headline like this and think, “Great, another warehouse.” That misses the point.

Chick-fil-A Supply did not choose Winter Haven by accident. It chose a site where rail access, interstate connectivity, utility capacity, and regional population reach all line up. The new facility will serve around 170 restaurants across Florida. State and local officials tied the project directly to public-private coordination between Chick-fil-A Supply, CSX, the Winter Haven Economic Development Council, and the State of Florida. That is what makes this a case study. It is proof that when infrastructure is in place, serious users show up with serious capital.

That connection becomes even clearer when you look at the rail extension. In March 2025, Governor DeSantis awarded Winter Haven $1.5 million through the Job Growth Grant Fund to extend rail access within the Central Florida Integrated Logistics Park. The state said that investment would help businesses expand, improve shipping capacity along the I-4 corridor, and create jobs. In other words, the public side built more capacity, and the private side responded with a major cold-chain distribution investment. That is infrastructure creating value in plain English.

Industrial values do not rise just because people feel optimistic. They rise when markets gain durable advantages. Polk County is building those advantages.

According to the Q3 2025 Cushman & Wakefield industrial report, Polk County posted a 6.8% vacancy rate, 2.4 million square feet of year-to-date net absorption, and average asking rent of $8.00 per square foot. East Polk was even more telling: vacancy dropped to 5.0%, and average warehouse/distribution asking rents climbed to $8.86 per square foot, up 26.6% year over year. One of the largest drivers was major leasing activity at the Central Florida Integrated Logistics Park. That is the market telling you infrastructure is no longer just a future story. It is already showing up in occupancy and rent growth.

CBRE’s Q1 2025 figures also pointed to the same dynamic. Even as vacancy rose earlier in the year, the firm noted that a pending user purchase of a vacant bulk facility was expected to improve the market, while average asking rents remained up 36% since 2020. Translation: this is not a weak market hoping for momentum. This is a market digesting growth and still retaining pricing strength.

That is why the Chick-fil-A project matters beyond the single parcel it sits on. It helps validate East Polk and Winter Haven as a location for food-grade distribution, cold storage, and logistics operations that need more than four walls and a parking lot. Once a nationally recognized operator plants a flag in a rail-connected site, every similar user starts paying closer attention. So do developers. So do investors. So do lenders. That attention tends to push land values, building values, and rent expectations upward over time.

Here is the straight truth: rail-served industrial is not commodity real estate.

Groups like NAIOP and Site Selection Group make the same point in different ways. Rail matters because it can lower transportation costs, improve reliability, reduce truck dependency, and give industrial users more supply-chain options. Rail also takes planning, engineering, land geometry, and connectivity that many sites simply do not have. That scarcity matters. If a user truly needs direct rail or intermodal access, the list of workable sites shrinks fast. Basic economics take over from there: fewer viable sites usually means stronger pricing power.

Polk County has another advantage here. It is not relying on rail alone. It is a multimodal story. Local economic development data says companies in Polk County can reach 11 million people within a 100-mile radius and 20 million with same-day delivery. The county has more than 330 miles of rail, one international airport, three regional airports, and access to three seaports within 75 miles. That kind of layered connectivity makes industrial real estate more resilient, because the value proposition is not tied to one transportation mode.

This pattern is not unique to Polk County. It shows up anywhere intermodal infrastructure anchors industrial growth.

In South Carolina, Inland Port Greer has become a major force in Upstate industrial development. SC Ports says the Upstate now sees $44 billion in annual economic impact tied to port activity, with 132,000 jobs supported in the region, and it specifically notes that many companies have invested in Upstate facilities to take advantage of the inland port’s direct rail connection to Charleston. Same principle: infrastructure first, industrial value second.

In Kansas, Logistics Park Kansas City tells a similar story. The park combines a major intermodal facility with more than 2,352 acres of developable land and 30 million square feet of building capacity, all aimed at distribution, warehousing, and manufacturing users. BNSF describes the model simply: use an intermodal hub to anchor nearby distribution centers, streamline the supply chain, and cut costs. Again, same formula.

The Chick-fil-A effect is not really about Chick-fil-A.

It is about what happens when infrastructure reduces friction, expands reach, and gives industrial users confidence that a market can perform. In Winter Haven, that means rail connectivity, intermodal capacity, highway access, build-ready land, and utility infrastructure all coming together at the same time. In Polk County, it means the industrial market is getting stronger in ways that are measurable: rent growth, absorption, tenant demand, and broader investor confidence.

So yes, the headline may be a chicken chain. But the real story is this: when the rail spur, the intermodal yard, and the logistics park are already in place, industrial values do not just drift upward. They get pushed.

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