Improving Business in the Wilmington Region
ILM Biz Park On The Rise
Jan 22, 2025
Credit: WilmingtonBiz
By Emma Dill
Jeff Bourk likes to use satellite photos from Google Earth to illustrate recent growth at Wilmington International Airport (ILM) and in its adjacent 140-acre business park.
Toggling between images captured over the past five years, Bourk, ILM’s director, points out the airport’s shifting footprint – the result of a $69 million terminal expansion that wrapped up two years ago.
The most recent images show ongoing work, such as a temporary road that will allow access to the airport during the realignment of Airport Boulevard and the installation of a new terminal curb, Bourk said.
Then, just north of the terminal, a blocky white shape has popped up on an empty tract next to ILM’s runway. That, Bourk says, is the foundation of the first facility from Frontier Scientific Solutions, a temperature-controlled storage and transportation company that serves the life sciences industry. At 500,000 square feet, the planned pharmaceutical warehouse will be among the largest industrial buildings in the Wilmington area.
The Frontier Scientific facility is the largest example of several projects under development inside ILM’s business park. For years, officials have eyed the land outside of the airport’s operations to attract businesses and economic development. While the Frontier Scientific project is a significant addition, airport officials continue to look for future projects to fill the park’s roughly 30 undeveloped acres.
In November, Frontier Scientific announced its ILM project and a companion warehouse at Shannon Airport in County Clare, Ireland, would be funded by a $1.5 billion investment from real estate investment firm GID. The company also announced plans for a direct flight providing shipments between the two airports.
Frontier Scientific CEO Steve Uebele said the ILM facility and new flight would help make the company a disruptor in the life sciences supply chain.
The existing supply chain involves various touch points as pharmaceuticals are transferred from production facilities onto trucks and planes. All the while, the pharmaceuticals have to be kept under controlled temperatures.
Uebele said the industry lost $35 billion in 2023 alone due to drug spoilage caused by temperature issues. Building Frontier Scientific’s warehouse alongside ILM’s runway, he said, allows the company to make product transfers more efficient. The facility is the first of a multi-phase development the company has planned for ILM’s business park.
“It’s a massive investment,” Bourk said about the Frontier Scientific project. “When you look at this airport 20 years from now … if it all moves forward the way it’s being talked about, it’s going to dramatically change.”
In 2024, revenues from the park’s ground leases made up 5.4% of the airport’s overall $18.5 million operating revenue.
“That’s an important revenue stream that helps us first diversify our revenues, for one, but also helps us ensure that we can keep our airline rates and charges to the airlines low, which helps grow air service,” Bourk said.
Budget airlines have flocked to ILM in recent years. Avelo Airlines launched its first flights out of Wilmington in June 2022. Today, the low-cost carrier has 11 nonstop flights from ILM, and it announced plans last month to establish a crew base at the airport. Discount carriers Sun Country and Beeze Airways have also launched services at ILM.
ILM also generates revenue through parking, rental cars, food and beverage sales and airline fees, Bourk said.
The business park is currently home to a wide mix of established tenants, ranging from pottery shop Fat Cat Pottery, salon Southern Sass Hair Studio and Battle House laser tag center to Wilmington Business Development’s office and wholesale lumber supplier 84 Lumber, among several others.
ILM’s business park encompasses virtually all of the airport’s property beyond the airport terminal and airside operations, Bourk said. The airport property is owned by New Hanover County and leased by the New Hanover County Airport Authority.
Airports that receive federal funds such as ILM go through a master planning process with the Federal Aviation Administration to designate land to be used for aeronautical and non-aeronautical purposes, Bourk said.
In addition to determining how the land can be used, it sets parameters for the airport’s lease rates. Bourk said ILM is required, for example, to charge market rate rents on tracts designated for non-aeronautical uses.
“I can’t just go to a hotelier and say, ‘Hey, we’re going to give you that land for free if you’ll put a hotel on it,’” he said. “We have to charge them market rate for that land.”
An airport hotel is finally on the horizon at ILM. In 2022, New York City-based developers and brothers Chip and Andrew Weiss announced plans for a 150-room Crowne Plaza hotel not far from ILM’s terminal with a restaurant and rooftop bar.
Rising interest rates put the project on pause for a time, but now developers are preparing to close on the bonds that will finance the $50 million project, Chip Weiss said.
“Interest rates have finally started to come down, so that’s been very helpful,” he said. “The more interest rates come down, the more attractive the project seems to the bond buyers.”
They plan to begin clearing the nearly 5-acre tract slated for the hotel next month to prepare the site for the hotel’s foundation. “We’re back up to date with all our permits,” Chip Weiss said. “We’re ready to start.”
Also in the works is an expansion for 84 Lumber. The company signed a new lease in 2022 for nearly 11 additional acres inside the business park. Initial plans included the addition of an approximately 70,000-square-foot warehouse.
Amy Smiley, 84 Lumber’s vice president of marketing, confirmed the expansion is still in progress, but noted the company is “navigating some delays.”
Frontier Scientific expects to begin vertical construction on its first building later this month with completion slated for this summer. Uebele estimates the initial facility could employ 100 to 120 people with future phases employing an additional 200 or more.
The company has about 100 acres under lease in the business park with initial leases signed in 2021 and 2022 by early-stage capital partner CIL. Frontier Scientific has the potential to grow to 2 million square feet of temperature-controlled cGMP (Current Good Manufacturing Practices) storage facilities, providing a variety of services to the life sciences industry, according to Uebele.
Although Frontier Scientific evaluated other locations in the Wilmington area, the company chose the ILM business park because of the amount of land available for future expansion, but, more importantly, because of the site’s direct access to the tarmac, Uebele said.
The first flights between ILM and Shannon Airport will take place the first quarter of this year, with the transported pharmaceutical products being trucked from ILM to Frontier Scientific’s existing 60,000-square-foot warehouse on North 23rd Street.
If these current projects come to fruition, Bourk said he expects the airport’s business park revenue to climb from its current $1 million to $4 million. Other commercial leases still in due diligence stages include a proposed bank and two private airside hangars.
While ILM’s business park is home to businesses of all kinds, it’s the airport that makes it unique, said Bourk.
“The runway is our waterfront property,” he said. “So, if you have a business that interacts or needs or can benefit from that, like Frontier Scientific, there’s no other place.”
Bourk expects to see the airport continue to grow in the coming years. ILM’s vision plans have identified undeveloped farmland on the northeast side of the current airport property as an area of possible expansion.
Bourk said he believes the recent announcement from Frontier Scientific helps raise the profile of the airport’s business park and sets the stage for future growth.
“By far, they’ll be the biggest tenant,” Bourk said, “and that will drive other support businesses that will ultimately use up the rest of our available land in that area and probably lead to even expansions in and around the area that we don’t necessarily own.”
