PODS set to root headquarters here

Tampa Bay Business Journal
by Alexis Muellner Editor

Pinellas County and PODS, the locally founded personal storage container firm, are in negotiation for a competitive lease rate for a 10-acre chunk of 22 vacant county-owned acres at the southwest corner of St. Petersburg Clearwater International Airport. PODS has outgrown its leased home next to Tech Data in Clearwater.

If the deal can be nailed down, PODS would build a $10 million to $13 million 75,000-square-foot to 90,000-square-foot headquarters, making Pinellas County its permanent home and its landlord.

The privately held portable on-demand storage provider is in cruise control these days.

It anticipates it will crank up revenues 50 percent in 2006 and will be a $300 million company, up from $200 million in 2005, said Peter Warhurst, president and CEO. The company is now in every market in the United States, is expanding internationally for the first time and will add 200 jobs this year to its local workforce of 500. PODS also is talking to economic development executives about tax credits for new jobs.

Permitted frontier land

As negotiations continue with Pinellas County, PODS has a plan B.

Brooksville also has been welcoming and is still in the running, Warhurst said.

But clearly, Pinellas is plan A.

PODS has spoken with the Hernando County Office of Business Development, but it has been a while, said Valerie Pianta, program coordinator.

Pianta's office markets an industrial park, corporate airpark and rail park on 250 and 300 acres of land tenants lease at reasonable prices. Certain environmental permits are already in place, and building permit and impact fee mitigation incentives in addition to state incentives related to jobs and work force training are available.

The corporate park is 98 percent leased now, Pianta said, so PODS would have to build.

Hernando County doesn't aggressively market itself within Tampa Bay, she said, an unwritten rule of among local economic development colleagues.

"Companies within the region contact us," she said. "That said, if someone is going to move rather than stay in the region, we'd rather they come to Hernando than move to Georgia."

If Brooksville is the answer, PODS would move its corporate facilities and manufacturing to a 200,000-square -foot project, larger than what's planned in Pinellas, Warhurst said.

Is that still possible?

"If negotiations don't go well with the county, yeah, well I guess it is," he said.

The company considered other locales too, including Charlotte, N.C., where Warhurst has a home, and Tampa and Hillsborough County, which has lots of space to fill but hasn't been "very energetic," he said.

PODS has land around Tampa Bay including a few buildings in Pinellas Park, a parcel in Tarpon Springs and a warehouse in Tampa -- but none are appropriate as a headquarters site.

Prime parcel

On its land, the St. Petersburg/Clearwater Airport last year began a "request for negotiation," a public process to solicit proposals to develop 22 acres of airport property. Of all the ideas, three were ranked and one included a plan for PODS' headquarters, Airport Director Noah Lagos said.

"There aren't many large tracts of land for new development in Pinellas County, and the location is centrally located," Lagos said.

Warhurst is guessing that construction costs for a new building will be $125-$150 a square foot. The company is also interested in building a corporate hangar.

If a final lease is ironed out, it would need Commission approval and some regulatory issues resolved, including traffic and zoning because the land is slated for a governmental use.

It's early in the process, as no site plans exist yet. But it's looking like 4 acres of the parcel will go for a hotel, 4 acres for office and another 10 to PODS. (Nearly 4 acres are not developable.) So far, a new Cracker Barrel restaurant exists and has been a catalyst there, Lagos said.

"The lynchpin to the development of that site was Cracker Barrel," he said, because it created a point of entry.

Less disruption

Staying close has a lot of benefits, Warhurst said.

"The mechanics of moving the entire operation and people would a nightmare," he said. "We were born and raised here, and I'm a poster child for Pinellas County."

Warhurst credits PODS' Pinellas origins with its success. Combine tourist traffic with "an intuitive product" and organic marketing happens.

"We never advertised for franchises," he said. "People would see [our containers] and interrupt their vacations to come learn more about the opportunity." Anytime PODS opens in a new market, the company gets a flood of calls from would-be entrepreneurs within the first few days, he said.

Despite steady growth and expansion, PODS has been fairly immune to growing pains, Warhurst said, in part because the business is extremely capital intensive.

"The way capital came in, it forced us to grow slowly, but now that all systems are in place certain sectors like our inter-franchise business where we move people from one market to another grew 400 percent," he said.

The company, which began in 1998, had its fourth consecutive year of profit, he said.

PODS beyond the border

PODS just expanded internationally for the first time, opening in Toronto and Australia. The biggest concern internationally has been shipping PODS containers sealed through customs and getting those logistics down.

"It was successfully done in Toronto so we think we've navigated those waters," said Pete Warhurst president and CEO.

The company's growth spurt is unrelenting, Warhurst said.

It opened a call center in Panama to cater to Spanish-speaking clients and another in Dallas. The Panama facility also has cost advantages and is within a four- or five-hour trip from here, he said.

As the company completes its first expansion beyond U.S. borders to Canada and Australia, it is pondering the next phase of capital growth.

"We are exploring all the options," Warhurst said, adding that the company is looking at some long-term financing options including a new debt facility and even an IPO. But it's still too early to get specific.

amuellner@bizjournals.com | 813.342.2472