HUNTSVILLE – Freedom Real Estate & Capital cranked a new engine in north Huntsville this morning with a ground-breaking for its massive Freedom Industrial Park
The five-building park, across from the Toyota Motor Manufacturing plant on Pulaski Pike, will provide 600,000 square feet of leasable industrial space.
Mayor Tommy Battle said the new park is a spark plug of development for north Huntsville.
In 2019, Battle talked about how he could stand in Huntsville’s City center looking out in any direction and he saw no boundaries in any direction, just potential corridors of growth east, north, south and west.
“For the longest, we haven’t seen any growth in North Huntsville, and it has been one of the last parts of the city to show expansion,” said Battle. “But today, Freedom became the catalyst or should I say spark plug that will finally change that.
“Development is already beginning to move further north a little at a time and we have people planning residential developments in north Huntsville which hasn’t been done in a long time. And we have people doing some retail here too.
“And it is happening because of jobs produced right here in this planned industrial park. And it will continue to produce jobs for generations to come.”
When finished, Freedom Industrial Park will be five buildings.
The first building will be 104,000 square feet and is already 50% leased. The second building will be 145,000 square feet, and building 3 will be just shy of 200,000 square feet.
There will be two more buildings to bring Freedom Industrial Park to a total of over 600,000 square feet of leasable industrial space.
It is Freedom Real Estate’s first industrial park development according to Bill Roark, CEO of Starfish Holdings, who founded Freedom and Torch Technologies.
“This is a big project for us, and I consider it the beginning of a new journey for us too,” Roark said. “I find creating things for the first time is the most enjoyable part of doing business.
“It is also an historic day for us. We are starting a new element of our company with this project. It is the first construction project Freedom has built themselves.
“When it is finished, Freedom Real Estate will have quite a bit more than 1 million square feet of space under management.”
Roark also said Freedom purchased the farmland after walking away from the purchase eight times since 2021; it was tied up as part of a complicated family estate for several years.
Madison County Commission Chairman and former Speaker of the House Mac McCutcheon shared his experience growing up in north Huntsville and farming the very land where the new industrial park and Toyota plant are today.
“As a schoolboy, we farmed what we called the ‘Old Mitchell Place’, which is where the Toyota plant is now – they used to raise cotton and corn over there, and now they raise cars,” he said. “Up on this hill behind us, we rented a place to raise corn and I remember plowing with the tractor and that stinking kudzu would wrap around my cultivator and I had to stop every 100 feet to clean it off!
“So here we are right in the middle of that kudzu and I am now watching something very special come out of this piece of land.”
He closed by promising Madison County will work with the Freedom team and Huntsville to ensure county access ways are fixed in such a way that promote growth.
“Because at the end of the day, it is a partnership,” McCutcheon said. “We are all working together to support good jobs for our community and good quality of life for people who live here.”
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