In recent months, Pender Commerce Park has been a hub of activity as park occupant Amazon broke ground on a massive robotics fulfillment center, Polyhose completed an addition that nearly doubles the size of its facility and tenant One Banana began upfitting its first U.S. facility.

The projects mark ongoing growth and investment in the Pender County-owned business park and the broader U.S. 421 corridor. The idea for the park, which occupies about 400 acres near the county line between New Hanover and Pender counties, emerged in the mid-2000s as a way to bring an economic driver to Pender County’s largely rural west side.

Acme Smoked Fish became the park’s first tenant in 2015, followed by other tenants including Empire Distributors, FedEx Freight, Coastal Beverage and Colony Tire, among others.

One Banana North America, a company that grows and ripens bananas and plantains, is one of the latest businesses to set up shop in the park.

One Banana opened its 19,800-square-foot, temperature-controlled facility in Pender Commerce Park in June, according to the company’s president Robert Adams. The space serves as the company’s first U.S. facility to support One Banana’s growing American market.

“Our new facility in Pender Commerce Park is only 12 miles from the Port of Wilmington and will allow us to ripen, store and deliver to retail clients along the East Coast and the mid-Atlantic,” Adams wrote in an email.

One Banana’s new space is inside a 145,000-square-foot industrial building completed in 2023. The building, which also houses Home Depot and Lansing Building Products, recently changed hands in a $23.5 million transaction.

The family-owned One Banana sources fruit from the company’s farms in Guatemala, Ecuador and Peru and ships it to retailers in the U.S. and around the world. The local facility has seven ripening rooms with the “most modern European style ripening technology,” according to Adams.

“Each room has a reversible fan in order to push and pull the perfect amount of air through the fruit boxes, which will ultimately produce a better and more consistent product for our clients,” Adams wrote. “The facility also has climate-controlled warehouse space to hold up to 360 pallets of bananas, avocados, cantaloupes, pears, potatoes, citrus or apples.”

While focused on One Banana, the facility can also ripen and store products for other companies. Adams said One Banana selected Pender Commerce Park because of the chance to upfit a new building and the proximity to the Port of Wilmington and the East Coast.

Adams declined to provide details on how much the company invested in upfitting the building or how many people will be hired at the facility.

Nearby, India-based industrial hose and tubing manufacturer Polyhose has continued to invest in its Pender Commerce Park facility. The company recently wrapped up an expansion that nearly doubled the size of its local building.

In 2021, Polyhose completed its original 52,500-square-foot facility in the park and began hiring its first local employees. The building serves as the North American base for Polyhose’s assembly and logistics operations.

Now, roughly four years later, the company has completed a 50,000-square-foot addition after acquiring more acreage in the park. Company officials have said the expansion will allow Polyhose to do more of its production work locally and enhance service and delivery to customers throughout the Southeastern U.S.

McKinley Building Corp. constructed the Polyhose expansion, which received its certificate of completion in mid-June, McKinley officials said.

Construction continues for Amazon’s proposed robotics fulfillment center. The facility, which is set to have a footprint of more than 650,000 square feet, sits on a more than 170-acre tract that straddles the county line between New Hanover and Pender counties – a site once home to the former BASF vitamin plant. According to county officials, the company purchased the land from Pender County late last summer for more than $8 million.

Construction began on the facility in October. Greg Rios, a public relations specialist with Amazon, said recently that the facility’s construction is “going according to schedule,” but he declined to provide additional details about its progress. Amazon officials have said the construction of a fulfillment center typically takes between 18 and 24 months.

The project is expected to create more than 1,000 full- and part-time jobs, making it one of the largest economic development announcements in recent memory. Nearby, Amazon has plans to develop a delivery station facility on another 54 acres inside Pender Commerce Park.

Officials with Wilmington Business Development have said the two Amazon projects would fill up all available space in Pender Commerce Park.

At the time of the Amazon announcement this spring, Wilmington Business Development CEO Scott Satterfield said the park, once complete, will have created about 3,000 jobs, 4.5 million square feet of industrial space and more than one billion dollars in private economic investment.