Adrenaline Powerboats Follows Its Buyers to Medley

Adrenaline Powerboats signed a seven-year lease on 50,000 square feet in Medley, Fla., and said it would hire about 60 people to run a new South Florida build shop. The factory is the late piece of a move that started with buyers, paint, interiors, and a Coconut Grove dock.

The Georgia company, long based at 1110 Commerce Drive in Lincolnton, is taking space at Palmetto Station Logistics Center, 7410 N.W. 79th Avenue. It also said it would open a sales office in Coconut Grove. The phone on its own site already carried a 954 area code.

Palmetto Station Takes a Seven-Year Boat Factory

The address is Building B of a two-building Link Logistics project that Colliers brought to market as a Class A park built in 2024. The park totals about 250,000 square feet. Building B is listed at 100,234 square feet, with 36-foot clear height and Palmetto Expressway frontage.

Colliers puts the site 13.5 miles from downtown Miami, 3.8 miles from Miami International Airport, and 4 miles from Florida’s Turnpike. Erin Byers, Lauren Pace, and Frankie Castellanos of Colliers represent the landlord. Byers said the team had already leased Building A and was working through the rest of the park.

The 50,000 square feet in the June 2026 announcement lines up with unit 0100, a 50,117-square-foot bay with 12 docks, 3,100 square feet of office, one drive-in door, and a 180-foot truck court. That is a logistics box first, a boat plant second. For a custom shop, the draw is the submarket, not the dock count.

PALMETTO STATION BUILDING B

Link Logistics, the Blackstone-backed industrial owner, still marketed the bay as a warehouse unit after the boat news landed. Commercial listings often lag a signed lease, so that page is not proof the deal unwound. It does show Adrenaline is dropping a go-fast line into last-mile Miami industrial stock, not into a purpose-built yard on the river.

First Came the Desk in Coconut Grove

The sales end of the company was already in Miami-Dade. On Oct. 1, 2025, the brand posted demo days at a new sales and service center at Grove Harbour Marina, the Coconut Grove house on Biscayne Bay. Private appointments and sea trials were being sold from that dock months before the Medley lease was announced.

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Grove Harbour’s yard already keeps Mercury Racing technicians in Coconut Grove, which matches the engines on the 47 Reaper. The June 2026 note about a Coconut Grove sales office reads less like a new idea than like paperwork catching a desk that was already taking clients.

Even the boats built in Lincolnton were not a closed Georgia loop. Michael Layton, who founded the company with his wife, Elizabeth, in 2000, sent Reaper cabins and cockpits to Miami Prestige Interiors and the paint to Doug Harrell Design in DeLand, Fla. A 954 number on the website was the tell hiding in plain sight.

HOW THE MOVE STACKED UP

1. 2000: Michael and Elizabeth Layton found Adrenaline Powerboats, in his telling, after earlier work on fishing boats and go-fast center consoles.
2. July 10, 2003: Adrenaline Powerboats International, Inc. is formed as a Georgia domestic profit corporation, with its principal office in Lincolnton.
3. 2022: The 47 Reaper becomes the first production center console; Layton adds 70,000 square feet in Georgia to build it.
4. Oct. 1, 2025: The company stages demo days at Grove Harbour Marina in Coconut Grove.
5. June 2, 2026: It announces the seven-year Medley lease and a plan to hire about 60 people in South Florida.

The factory is following a trail of invoices and appointments, not discovering Florida on a map. Rural floor space was never the bottleneck. The buyers, the show circuit, and the finish trades were already south.

Lincoln County Is Left With the Empty Shop

Lincolnton is the seat of Lincoln County, a lake town on Clarks Hill Lake about 40 miles from Augusta. The shop at 1110 Commerce Drive was a small, specialized plant in a county where the median household income is $47,841, about 36% below Georgia’s $74,664.

Directory counts around the 2026 move put the Georgia workforce near a dozen people. NAICS listings in May 2026 cited about 12 employees. Dun & Bradstreet’s band for the site was 1 to 24. The Florida plan of about 60 jobs is about five times that shop. If Medley is staffed on those terms, the center of gravity leaves Lincoln County even if a few people stay on the books.

WHAT WE KNOW

• The lease: Seven years, 50,000 square feet at Palmetto Station in Medley, announced June 2, 2026.
• The hires: About 60 South Florida jobs for the new build operation, plus a Coconut Grove sales office.
• The Georgia file: The company is still an active Georgia corporation, with Michael Layton as CEO, Elizabeth R. Layton as CFO and secretary, and a last annual registration year of 2027.

WHAT IS UNCONFIRMED

• A full shutdown: No public notice has spelled out a closing date for 1110 Commerce Drive or how many Lincolnton workers will transfer.
• Occupancy day: The announcement did not give a first-hull date in the Medley bay.
• A split plant: Marine electrician ads have listed both Medley and Atlanta at $18 to $35 an hour, which leaves open a dual-site period.

Cheap Georgia labor was not the prize they were protecting. They are walking toward higher industrial rents and a harder hiring market because that is where the boats are sold, finished, and run.

Why the 47 Reaper Needs Miami Water

The hull that justifies the lease is the 47 Reaper, a 47-foot center console with a 12-foot beam and 24 degrees of deadrise at the transom. Fuel is 416 gallons. Base power is quad or quint Mercury Racing 450R outboards. Layton said that package runs in the mid-80-mph range, and that a speed-first setup could see the upper 80s or 90 mph, though the boats are trimmed for rough water.

Of the first eight boats in production, only one buyer chose four engines. A 2023 Reaper listed in Lighthouse Point in July 2026 was offered at $1,695,000. This is not a volume skiff. It is a carbon-and-epoxy day boat for people who already keep hours on Biscayne Bay and the Stream.

I believe that if a guy wanted us to really focus on speed, we could get him to the upper 80s or 90 mph, but we’re setting up the boats to take on rough water.

Michael Layton, founder and CEO, on the 47 Reaper

He also said buyers would take the boat to the Bahamas, around South Florida, and onto rough lakes. That is a delivery and demo map with Miami at the center. A longtime company salesman, Caleb, has described the hull as an all-E-glass, carbon-reinforced, epoxy-infused build and said he has not taken green water over the bow in seas larger than 10 feet. Clips of the boat already play as Miami machines. Replies to a widely shared 47 Reaper video treated it as a fast in-and-out boat for that coast, which is the customer the Medley lease is built to sit beside.

WHY THE FACTORY FOLLOWED THE MARKET

• The water: Layton’s own buyer list starts with the Bahamas and South Florida, not Clarks Hill Lake.
• The finish trades: Interiors were already going to Miami and paint to DeLand while hulls still left Lincolnton.
• The engines: Quint Mercury Racing rigs want a service bench that already speaks that language, which Grove Harbour does.
• The dock: Demo days and private appointments were already being sold on Biscayne Bay in 2025.

Layton added 70,000 square feet in Georgia to launch the Reaper as a production boat and still signed for 50,000 square feet in Medley. The Florida bay is smaller than that Georgia expansion. Location, not cubic feet, is what changed.

A Cluster That Sold a Factory and Stayed Put

Medley is already priced as a place boat plants do not leave. In early 2026, SeaVee sold its Medley headquarters and manufacturing campus in a $51 million sale-leaseback to an affiliate of Sagard Real Estate and stayed. The campus is 186,731 square feet on about 9.14 acres and, per company figures, supports about 175 boats a year. Offering papers on that deal put Medley’s industrial vacancy at 5.7%.

Adrenaline is a much smaller line walking into the same submarket. SeaVee’s sale-leaseback is the tell: the land under a Miami-Dade boat plant is an asset investors will buy, and the operator still refuses to move the work. A Georgia shop taking a 50,117-square-foot slice of a 2024 warehouse is the inbound version of that same gravity.

FLORIDA’S MARINE BENCH

• Yards: SelectFlorida counts Florida as the No. 1 U.S. state for ship and boat building, with 590-plus establishments.
• Maritime jobs: The same profile puts the maritime industrial base above 45,000 jobs.
• Recreational impact: It cites $31.3 billion in recreational boating and fishing economic impact and more than 109,000 jobs tied to that spend.
• Boat building payroll: IBISWorld’s Florida boat-building series, updated March 2026, counts 10,253 workers at 200 locations, a narrower factory tally than the statewide marine total.

Engine makers are making the same geography bet. Honda Marine opened a Florida office at its Grant-Valkaria research site to sit closer to U.S. builders, while sales and service for that brand remain in Alpharetta, Ga. Adrenaline is doing the inverse, moving the plant toward the water and leaving the Georgia file open.

Sixty Jobs Against a Tight Marine Labor Market

About 60 hires is a large bite for a shop that recently carried about a dozen people. The work is gelcoat, electrical, rigging, and finish, the same trades South Florida yards already struggle to fill. Broward’s service yards have been running hot; Lauderdale Marine Center was reported at 94% utilization through 2025. Adrenaline will be bidding for the same electricians it advertised at $18 to $35 an hour.

Those ads still named Medley and Atlanta, which is the practical picture four months after the lease news: a Florida factory in motion, a Georgia corporation in good standing, and a hiring list that has not fully picked a state. The 47 Reaper is already a Miami boat in how it is sold, painted, and run. The Medley lease puts the molds next to that market. Filling 60 seats in that market is the part of the move that is not signed and dated.

Frequently Asked Questions

Where is Adrenaline Powerboats moving its headquarters?

The company is taking space at Palmetto Station Logistics Center, 7410 N.W. 79th Avenue, Medley, FL 33166, in Miami-Dade County, and it also flagged a Coconut Grove sales office. Colliers lists the warehouse 3.8 miles from Miami International Airport and 4 miles from Florida’s Turnpike.

How large is the Medley building Adrenaline leased?

The announced lease is 50,000 square feet for seven years inside Building B, a 100,234-square-foot Class A warehouse. Property records on the bay also note LEED Silver certification and 82 parking spaces, details that sit outside the job-count headline.

Who owns Adrenaline Powerboats?

Michael Layton is listed as CEO and Elizabeth R. Layton as CFO, secretary, and registered agent on the Georgia filing, which records a July 10, 2003, formation date and control number 0340471. They have described founding the business in 2000, three years before the state registration.

What boats does Adrenaline Powerboats build?

The current flagship is the 47 Reaper, with a 42 Reaper beside it; both are luxury center consoles, and the company has also spoken of a ZRX 47. The 47 carries a queen berth, a separate head with a rain shower, and a 12,000 BTU cabin air conditioner as standard, with Seakeeper, a generator, and Mercury Skyhook among the published options.