Jacksonville & St. Johns County Are Booming — And Commercial Cleaning Can't Keep Up

Something big happened in Jacksonville last year. The U.S. Census Bureau confirmed what people driving through town already suspected: Jacksonville officially crossed the one million resident mark, landing at 1,009,833 people and earning its spot as the 10th most populous city in America. Only two cities in the entire country hit that milestone in the latest estimates. Jacksonville was one of them.

Meanwhile, right next door, St. Johns County quietly kept doing what it's been doing for a decade: growing faster than nearly every county in the state. With a 4.54% annualized growth rate, St. Johns County now leads all of Florida in population expansion. Its population has climbed 82% since 2010 and currently sits at roughly 348,000 residents, with projections suggesting it could double by 2050.

Together, these two markets form the core of a Northeast Florida growth engine that's attracting national attention. The Wall Street Journal and Moody's Analytics ranked Jacksonville as having the second strongest job market in the nation. U.S. News & World Report named it the #7 Best Big U.S. City to Live In. The metro area's GDP hit $130 billion in 2023, and Oxford Economics projects the economy expanded another 3.6% in 2024, with an expected annual growth pace of 4.6% from 2025 through 2029.

For anyone in commercial facility services, those numbers tell a very specific story. More people means more businesses. More businesses means more square footage. And more square footage means a lot more floors to clean.

Jacksonville's Construction Pipeline Is Staggering

Downtown Jacksonville alone has $8.8 billion in its active development pipeline. That's not a projection or a wish list. That's cranes in the air, crews on site, steel going up. The Four Seasons waterfront development on the Northbank, a $321 million project backed by Jaguars owner Shad Khan, is on track for 2026 completion. It'll bring a luxury hotel and private residences to the riverfront.

Right next to it, One Shipyards Place is going up as a 137,000-square-foot Class A office tower, the first new office building downtown in over a decade. On the Southbank, Toll Brothers is building RiversEdge, a $693 million mixed-use development that'll eventually include 1,170 residential units, 200 hotel rooms, 200,000 square feet of office space, and 121,400 square feet of retail. RISE Doro is adding another 247 apartment units with ground-floor retail. The University of Florida is building a graduate campus in La Villa.

Every single one of those buildings will need daily cleaning, floor maintenance, window service, restroom sanitation, and ongoing facility management the moment they open. That's the part people forget when they talk about development booms. Construction creates the building. But someone has to keep it running after the ribbon gets cut.

St. Johns County: Florida's Growth Capital

If Jacksonville is the headline, St. Johns County is the story underneath it that keeps getting bigger. The county currently has over 350 housing developments in either the construction or planning phase. That's not a typo. Three hundred and fifty active residential projects in a single county, each one generating the kind of surrounding commercial development that follows rooftops wherever they go.

The numbers behind this growth are remarkable. St. Johns County's median household income sits at $106,169, and the poverty rate is just 6.71%, both figures that rank among the strongest in the state. Home values have appreciated 150% since 2013. The school system is consistently rated among Florida's best, which continues to pull families from across the country who bring their businesses, their spending power, and their demand for professional services with them.

Nocatee, the master-planned community straddling St. Johns and Duval counties, has sold 96% of its residential inventory and is entering its final development phases. But the commercial side of Nocatee is still expanding. The Town Center continues adding retail, restaurants, medical offices, and professional service space. Every one of those new businesses needs facility cleaning from day one.

The county government isn't sitting back either. St. Johns County recently detailed an $820 million infrastructure program, with 61 capital projects completed in 2025 and 59 more scheduled for construction or completion in 2026. Roads, utilities, public facilities. All of it designed to support the continued growth that shows no signs of slowing. And the county's Comprehensive Plan, which previously extended to 2025, is now being updated with a planning horizon through 2050.

World Golf Village, Ponte Vedra, Julington Creek, the CR 210 corridor. These areas are producing new medical offices, dental practices, retail plazas, fitness centers, restaurants, and professional service buildings at a pace that matches the residential growth feeding into them. Each one represents ongoing cleaning and maintenance needs that didn't exist five years ago.

The Port, the Warehouses, and Everything Between

The growth story extends well beyond residential and office space. JaxPort handled 1.3 million TEUs in 2024, ranking it 10th nationally by container volume and first in the state. The port's $72 million SSA Terminal expansion wraps up this spring, bringing total capacity to nearly 2.5 million TEUs annually. Around the port, warehouse and logistics construction is booming. Eastport Logistics Park is delivering nearly 900,000 square feet of industrial space across four buildings, with a second phase planned for another 900,000 square feet. JAX Airport Logistics Center just permitted two new buildings totaling 425,000 square feet near Jacksonville International.

FlexCold doubled its cold storage warehouse to 350,000 square feet. Sysco is investing $90 million in a new food distribution facility. Otto Aviation is putting $430 million into an advanced manufacturing campus that'll create nearly 400 jobs. Georgia-Pacific is building a 400,000-square-foot warehouse as part of an $83 million investment.

Industrial and logistics facilities have very specific cleaning requirements. Food-grade warehouses need sanitation protocols. Manufacturing floors need specialized maintenance. Office areas within these complexes still need the same professional cleaning as any corporate environment. The demand ripple effect from this kind of industrial expansion is enormous.

Why Florida Keeps Winning

The broader state environment matters here too. Florida was ranked the #1 state to start a business in 2025 by WalletHub, and CNBC placed it #3 overall for business. No state income tax. A regulatory environment that doesn't fight commercial growth. A workforce that's expanding alongside the economy.

Florida's labor force in the Jacksonville metro grew 3.8% recently, adding over 32,000 new workers. Private sector employment grew 1.5% through November 2024, adding 10,600 jobs. The healthcare sector alone added 6,200 jobs last year. Mayo Clinic Jacksonville, which employs 10,000 staff and serves 175,000 patients annually, is in the middle of a $432 million expansion.

Healthcare, finance, logistics, professional services, hospitality. These are all industries with substantial commercial cleaning requirements, and they're all growing simultaneously across both Jacksonville and St. Johns County. That kind of diversified economic expansion creates a commercial cleaning demand base that isn't dependent on any single sector holding up.

What This Means for Commercial Cleaning

The U.S. commercial cleaning industry generates over $110 billion in annual revenue and is projected to reach $142 billion by 2026. Industry reports show 57% of cleaning businesses are projecting revenue increases, with 61% naming new customer acquisition as their top priority for the year.

In a market like Northeast Florida, those national trends are amplified. When you combine a metro area growing at twice the national average with Florida's fastest-growing county right next to it, plus billions of dollars in commercial construction actively delivering new square footage, you get a market where cleaning demand isn't just growing. It's compounding.

New office towers in downtown Jacksonville need daily janitorial service. New medical facilities along CR 210 in St. Johns County need specialized sanitization. New restaurants in Nocatee's Town Center need health-code-compliant kitchen cleaning. New warehouses near JaxPort need floor maintenance and industrial cleaning. New retail centers in Ponte Vedra need presentable customer-facing environments. It all stacks.

And here's the thing that makes this region particularly interesting from a facility services perspective: the growth isn't concentrated in one pocket. It's spread across downtown Jacksonville, the Southside, the Westside industrial corridor, St. Johns County, Nassau County, Ponte Vedra, Nocatee, Fleming Island, Orange Park, and all the way down to Palm Coast. That geographic spread means cleaning providers who understand the regional market and can service multiple areas have a significant operational advantage.

The Bottom Line

Jacksonville and St. Johns County aren't just growing. They're growing in a way that directly multiplies demand for professional facility services. Every crane on the Jacksonville skyline, every warehouse going up near the port, every medical office opening along the CR 210 corridor, every new restaurant in Nocatee's Town Center represents future cleaning contracts that somebody's going to fill.

The businesses moving into these spaces have options when it comes to cleaning. They'll pick the provider that understands their industry, knows the local market, shows up reliably, and maintains the kind of facility standards that match the quality of these new buildings going up across the region.

Northeast Florida's trajectory is clear. The question for facility managers and property owners isn't whether they'll need professional cleaning. It's whether they have a partner who can keep up with the pace of growth.