By Skip Foster, Red Tape Florida
For years, Tallahassee officials have promised big things from a new International Processing Facility and Foreign-Trade Zone at Tallahassee International Airport.
Really big things.
More than 1,600 jobs.
More than $300 million in annual economic impact.
Hundreds of acres opened for development.
A “global gateway” connecting Tallahassee to international markets.
Mayor John Dailey called the City’s 2022 move toward establishing a Foreign-Trade Zone “a huge step forward.”
Four years later, the step apparently wasn’t quite as large as advertised. It’s yet another example of The Capital City of Things That Never Happen that has been a hallmark of Dailey’s regime.
The International Processing Facility that was once supposed to be completed in 2024 still isn’t operational.
The project, originally awarded for $23.5 million plus contingency, is now described by the City as a $35 million investment.
And the federal application required to actually establish Tallahassee’s much-touted Foreign-Trade Zone?
It hasn’t been submitted.
That last part came as something of a surprise to Red Tape Florida.
It may come as an even bigger surprise to Leon County.
About that application
RTF recently asked the City for the formal application submitted to the U.S. Foreign-Trade Zones Board, including the submission date and any federal docket or application number.
“No responsive record exists,” the City replied.
We asked for correspondence between the City, airport and federal FTZ Board concerning the application or its status since 2022.
“No responsive record exists.”
So we asked directly about an apparent discrepancy between City and County documents: Has the application actually been submitted?
“The formal application is being assembled but has not yet been submitted,” the City responded.
Fair enough.
Except that’s not what Leon County has been telling county commissioners — or the public.
In October 2023, County agenda materials accurately described what was supposed to happen next: “Once complete, the City will submit its formal application to the Foreign-Trade Zone Board for approval.”
Somewhere between then and May 2024, however, the County’s version of events changed.
“The City’s formal application was subsequently submitted to the Foreign-Trade Zone Board and is now pending approval,” County agenda materials stated in May 2024.
The County repeated essentially the same claim in June 2024.
As recently as June 9 of this year, County Administrator Vincent Long’s legislative-session report told commissioners that the City “has submitted its formal application to the Foreign-Trade Zone Board.”
It hadn’t.
The City says it still hasn’t.
Apparently Tallahassee and Leon County have spent the past couple of years operating in slightly different foreign-trade zones.
The other delay
So why hasn’t Tallahassee applied?
Back in 2021, Aviation Director David Pollard publicly explained the planned sequence:
“First we build the facility that will house Customs, and once we get Customs in, we make a formal application for the Foreign Trade Zone.”
There’s just one problem with that plan.
They’re still building the facility.
City documents once said the International Processing Facility was slated for completion in the third quarter of 2024.
That became the third quarter of 2025. Then “opening in 2025.”
In March 2025, with construction reportedly 80% complete, officials said it would be finished by the end of that year.
By October, Pollard said substantial completion would occur in early 2026, after which U.S. Customs and Border Protection would still need to install equipment, systems and furniture.
The City’s current materials say the facility will become operational in 2026.
So a facility once expected to be finished in 2024 is still awaiting completion in late 2026.
And because Customs isn’t in, the City’s own stated sequence means the FTZ application hasn’t gone in either.
One delay has effectively become two.
Then there’s the money
In December 2021, the City awarded Whitesell-Green Inc. a $23.476 million contract to build the facility, with a 5% contingency bringing the authorized amount to about $24.6 million.
The project is being funded through a mixture of federal and state grants, airport money and local penny-sales-tax dollars.
In January 2024, the City Commission approved another $878,674 for the project and authorized City Manager Reese Goad or his designee to execute the necessary change orders.
Today, the City describes the International Processing Facility as a $35 million project.
That doesn’t necessarily mean Tallahassee has experienced a $10 million cost overrun. The scope and components included in those various figures may be different.
But we’d certainly like to know.
We’d also like to know why a facility originally expected to be completed in 2024 still isn’t open nearly two years later.
So we’re asking.
Another public-records request
RTF is submitting a narrowly tailored public-records request for approved change orders, contract amendments and time-extension requests involving the construction contract that changed the project’s completion date or document delays.
Those records should tell us whether the delays resulted from design changes, federal requirements, construction problems, expanded scope, supply issues or something else entirely — and what those changes cost.
Maybe there’s a perfectly reasonable explanation.
There often is.
But after years of $300 million economic-impact projections, 1,600-job promises, shifting completion dates and Leon County repeatedly announcing the submission of a federal application that apparently never left Tallahassee, we figure it’s worth asking.
After all, before Tallahassee can become a global gateway, it would probably help if City Hall and the County Courthouse were in the same time zone.