For some time, we’ve been telling you about Destiny, Florida, a 41,000-acre community founded in 2005 in South Central Florida, designed to one day be America’s first eco-sustainable city with 16,000 green tech jobs, including building solar panels (see our Feb. 27, 2009 Domestic Fuel podcast and April 22 post). The project took another step closer to that goal when Destiny officials signed a deal with Dominion Development Partners to create the Alternative Energy Industrial Park at Destiny, which will attract alternative energy technology companies.

The deal was announced in this press release from Anthony V. Pugliese, III, Managing Partner and CEO of Destiny:

The initial 500-acre phase of the Alternative Energy Industrial Park at Destiny is planned to include a Research and Development Campus housing a Technology Incubator, Distribution Center, and an Academic Village and Training Center. The park is projected to ultimately generate thousands of higher paying “green collar” jobs, Pugliese stated.

Future phases will include energy generation assets to power the city, and may include ethanol and biodiesel processing as well as pyrolysis, gasification and other “waste-to-energy” facilities. The “power island” will deliver surplus green energy to the transmission grid utilizing various “smart-grid” technologies.

The Alternative Energy Industrial Park at Destiny is designed to attract companies that are seeking to develop and manufacture new, clean technologies. These businesses will benefit from the synergies of co-location to reduce their start-up and operating costs. Initially, the park is expected to attract alternative energy businesses including solar power and fuel cell companies.

“To prove a true sustainable city can and should be built in America, we have decided to do the hard part first. We have challenged our team to build a state-of-the-art industrial park filled with clean technology tenants, with a small comparable carbon footprint,” Pugliese stated.

Destiny officials says they will start building the Alternative Energy Industrial Park at Destiny in 2012.