A version of this article first appeared in the CNBC Property Play newsletter with Diana Olick. Property Play covers new and evolving opportunities for the real estate investor, from individuals to venture capitalists, private equity funds, family offices, institutional investors and large public companies. Sign up to receive future editions, straight to your inbox. More than a decade ago, Carlos Rodriguez Sr., executive chairman of Driftwood Capital, a Miami-based real estate and hospitality investment firm, began acquiring properties in Brevard County, Florida. There wasn’t much demand after the space shuttle program was canceled in 2011, and supply was very limited due to strict environmental regulations. But Rodriguez had a theory about the space race. “I saw a lot of bright futures, and even though bankers told me ‘no’ and a lot of people thought I was crazy, I said, ‘Look, guys, this has the potential to become something big,’” Rodriguez said. He was watching the private space industry boom, with companies like SpaceX and Blue Origin. He also saw the influx of defense industry companies that were part of this space economy. He first purchased a Hilton hotel in Blackstone and completely renovated it. He quickly proves the area’s potential, which then leads him to the International Palms Resort, which has fallen on hard times. “It was the bottom of the bottom, but it had density. It had the number of rooms that we would need if we were to redevelop it. So we bought it as land cover, where we would generate money from this hotel until we were ready to build,” he said. And that is precisely what he did. Construction of the new $420 million Westin Cocoa Beach Resort & Spa began in September 2024. It is scheduled to open next year. Driftwood has also invested in an Element hotel and the Crowne Plaza in Melbourne, Florida. Once the Westin opens, Driftwood will control about 11 percent of the region’s hotel stock and 62 percent of the beachfront hotel stock, according to Rodriguez. “When you have all these high-level executives coming to see their launches, and frankly, a lot of scientists, it made sense to build a luxury hotel,” he said. Adding a conference center to the Westin, he said, “made all the sense in the world when all these companies like Amazon are putting their satellite processing facilities at the Kennedy Space Center, and you have SpaceX, Blue Origin, L3Harris, Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, and I can go on and on.” Rodriguez sees in hospitality what David Steinbach, chief investment officer of global real estate investment, development and management firm Hines, saw in the industrial sector just a few years ago. In an interview with CNBC’s Property Play last summer, Steinbach outlined his strategy of investing in warehouses to support the infrastructure needed to install data centers in the space. A year later, he said he was still optimistic about the play. “Our investment in Space Coast is going well and we’re happy. Since the story came out, I’ve had a lot of contact with different companies doing different things,” Steinbach said in an interview Friday, the same day SpaceX debuted on Nasdaq. “It seems like a lot of hype, and it will definitely die down after the IPO. I try to adopt an investor’s mindset. I still strongly believe in what that future will look like,” he said. “In Florida, these things are going to take time to materialize and roll out.” Meanwhile, Rodriguez said Driftwood continues to look for more land to develop and more opportunities to invest in the space real estate economy. He said he was encouraged by the 2019 creation of the U.S. Space Force and informal discussions among new friends in the space industry. “You thought you were hearing ‘Star Trek’ with all these fantasies about mining asteroids or harvesting solar energy from fields in space, or creating data centers in space,” Rodriguez said. “When you hear all this, you start to wonder: What are these people smoking? But, frankly, it’s becoming a reality faster than anyone would have imagined.”