Charlotte County's industrial market entered 2026 with a problem most markets would love to have: there isn't enough available space to meet active tenant demand. Warehouse rents in the county now run roughly $6 to $11 per square foot on a triple-net basis, with the I-75/Kings Highway interchange and the Punta Gorda Airport corridor commanding the upper end of that range.

The drivers behind this tightening are structural rather than cyclical. Lee and Sarasota counties have seen industrial land prices climb to levels that have priced out a meaningful share of regional users — the small-bay tenants, the contractors, the e-commerce fulfillment operators, the equipment dealers, the trades. Those users still need to be somewhere, and increasingly, that somewhere is Charlotte County.

The supply response is finally arriving. The Punta Gorda Airport corridor is on track to potentially house close to four million square feet of commercial distribution centers, warehouses, and manufacturing facilities at full buildout, and several projects are now under construction or in advanced planning. Curry Commerce Center at Babcock Ranch is delivering its first Class A flex/light industrial product into the western Charlotte County market, with eight buildings totaling 255,000 square feet — a project that will fill a long-standing gap in the county's small-tenant industrial inventory.

For tenants currently in the market, the practical implication is straightforward: lock in space sooner rather than later, and don't assume rates will hold. The owner-user buyer pool is also unusually active, with many small business owners deciding that purchasing makes more sense than renewing at projected rates.

For investors and developers, Charlotte County's industrial story is now a multi-year thesis. The fundamentals — limited local supply, regional pricing pressure, expanding aviation activity at PGD, and a workforce pipeline being shaped by initiatives like Charlotte County's Careers on the Coast program — point toward sustained absorption. The next 18 months will tell us whether new supply can keep up.

Image credit: Photo by Petrebels on Unsplash (via Unsplash). Reporting in this article draws on coverage from Cushman & Wakefield, LSI Companies, SVN Commercial Partners, Suncoast Searchlight, WUSF Public Media, FOX 4 Now, the Gulfshore Business Market Trends event, the Eshenbaugh Land Company, Charlotte County Economic Development, the City of Arcadia, the DeSoto County Board of County Commissioners, and public listings on LoopNet and Crexi. Specific transaction details and quotations are attributed in-text.