With local governmental and business leaders on hand, Buffalo Rock Company celebrated the grand opening Wednesday of its new Santa Rosa Campus in East Milton.
Located off I-10 in the Northwest Florida Industrial Park, the 47-acre site includes a state-of-the art facility encompassing more than 350,000 square feet, nearly 90% of which is warehouse space.
“The Santa Rosa Campus represents Buffalo Rock’s long-term commitment to the Gulf Coast,” said Trent Davidson, Buffalo Rock’s vice president for the Gulf Region. “This facility gives us a centralized scalable home for our Gulf region, and it strengthens our distribution networks and allows us to better serve our Dothan, Mobile, Pensacola and Panama City franchise sale centers. “
Most importantly, Davidson said choosing Santa Rosa County for its new campus positions the company for continued growth in one of the area’s fastest growing regions.
“Obviously, with location and running the analytics and how we could best serve our customers across the gulf, this is a centralized spot with easy access to I-10,” Davidson said. “But also, the way the community just opened up from the beginning and had such a great relationship there with economic development with the chamber, with the communities around, and just the growth between Navarre, Milton, Pace, Crestview — just everywhere around here is exploding, as we know.”
Construction of the Santa Rosa Campus, which began in September 2023, is part of Buffalo Rock’s effort to expand infrastructure to support the company’s growing portfolio and long-term growth strategy. Over the past five years, the business has added 1,300,000 square feet and invested $230 million in facilities.
Davidson adds that their newest facility in East Milton was designed with growth in mind.
“So we’re set up for expansion...we purposely built this to where when the time is right, we can knock out the back wall, add 150,000-square-feet more of facility,” he stated.
Buffalo Rock’s new campus, which includes 63 truck bays, has been operating for about a month, servicing 4,000 customers and expecting to run about 21,000 different routes per year out of the new location.
In his remarks, Colten Wright, chairman of the Santa Rosa County Commission, applauded the leadership and vision that led to this project that he believes will have a positive impact on the entire region.
“Many years ago, previous commissioners and the economic development team had a vision and an idea for a thriving industrial complex on this very property,” Wright began. “They made some very difficult decisions in the face of much opposition, but they took action and today we see proof that big ideas have really big results.”
Buffalo Rock’s new campus will create 150-200 new jobs and relocate 200 positions, with wages above the current area average.
“This has become quite the landing spot,” said Commissioner Kerry Smith, who represents District 2 where the new facility is located, suggesting that the Buffalo Rock project is representative of the economic development explosion that’s taking place in Santa Rosa County.
“There’s stuff that’s coming in here that we still have under NDA (non-disclosure agreement), I mean we can’t even tell you the names of. But I know Cheney Brothers is about to start breaking dirt. That’s gonna be right over there,” said Smith, referencing the nearby site where the Florida-based food manufacturing and distribution company will build in the industrial complex.
Cheney Brothers, Inc. is expected to employ 400 people.
“It’s quite a lot of jobs coming in,” Smith declared. “We’re looking at probably, by the time it’s all done, it’s gonna be about 1,500 jobs in here and if we were to get the land swap with the Navy, that’s another 2,000 jobs coming into this area.”
Smith said he’s hopeful that the kind of economic growth that’s now happening in the county will entice the area’s young people to stay here because they’re going to have opportunities here.
