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Coffee Talk
+ No fools here
The list of debtors with claims against Infinium Labs just continues to grow. Earlier this month, The Motley Fool stock folks got into the action with a suit against the former Sarasota-based video game systems company.
According to the suit, Infinium took out three months worth of Phantom Gaming Service advertising on TheMotleyFool.com but has never paid the bill. With a per month cost of $15,000, Infinium is looking at $45,000 plus damages.
Motley Fool is just going to have to get in line. Others suits that have been filed in Florida include ones by Tops Staffing, Oracle USA Inc. Longview Special Finance Inc. and Infinium's former landlord Centerpointe Property. On top of that, since the beginning of the year, two final judgments have been entered in Sarasota County courts against the company in other matters.
The company, what's left of it anyway, moved to Seattle in August.
+ Then there were three
Two companies purchased an 11-acre portion of the much-ballyhooed $65-million Bay Street Village & Towncenter in Osprey. Should there have been three?
That's the provocative charge of a lawsuit filed by a local development group by the name of Florida Potomac Group LLC.
In the suit, Florida Potomac Group accuses Duluth, Ga.–based Crossgate Partners, Sarasota's EndVision Development Group and four of their officers of cutting it out of the deal for the mixed-use development.
On Feb. 22, those two companies, using the joint venture name of Bay Street Partners LLC, acquired the land from Bay Street Village and Town Center LLC, Henry Rodriguez and SDC Communities Inc. for $12.5 million. Shortly afterwards, the joint venture announced plans to develop the land into 69 residential villas, 60,000 square feet of retail and restaurant space, 56,000 square feet of commercial space and a "village green" community area.
The suit alleges that Florida Potomac brought the deal to Crossgate, which eventually brought on EndVision, to secure financial backing for the purchase.
Randy Moore, co-founder and managing partner of Crossgate Partners, says the suit has no merit and that his attorney will be handling the formal response.
+ Big bird could fly
into Fort Myers
Coffee Talk hears rumors that Southwest Florida International Airport in Fort Myers could one day be home to a maintenance and repair facility for the world's biggest passenger aircraft, the Airbus A-380.
The European aircraft manufacturer recently succeeded in a test emergency run, evacuating 873 people in under 90 seconds from the double-decker plane (sans the one person who allegedly broke his leg in the shuffle) and Singapore Airlines will be the first to fly the A-380 by year-end.
The plane is so enormous that most airports don't have big enough runways and ramp space to handle such a big aircraft. Airbus officials say only San Francisco has a big enough hangar to house the giant plane.
But the 12,000-foot runway at Southwest Florida International Airport is long enough, and there will be 75 acres available once the old passenger terminal is torn down. The airport last year opened a new passenger terminal, and it is exploring aviation-related uses for the old terminal site.
Airport officials say they haven't started marketing the old terminal site yet but acknowledge that landing the A-380 would be a coup. "We could handle it on our runway," says Robert Ball, executive director of the Lee County Port Authority.
+ Mad Money's Jim Cramer sides with Chico's
Jim Cramer, the screeching host of the business-news show Mad Money on CNBC, told Chico's Chief Financial Officer Charlie Kleman that he was ready to rip up a recently published J.P. Morgan research report critical of the Fort Myers-based retailer.
"Hey Charlie," Cramer yelled. "What's the deal? This J.P. Morgan guy says the law of large numbers is in the way, you're approaching maturity, you're tapped out. Does this guy have a clue?"
Waving a copy of the J.P. Morgan report in the air, Cramer begged Kleman: "I'd love to tear this up on national TV, but I can't unless you give me the go-ahead."
Kleman didn't take the bait, saying Chico's has been guiding analysts' lofty sales expectations lower since the end of the year and warned of higher operating expenses.
Cramer was visibly disappointed. "I can't rip it up without more information," he said, "but I sure like the brand longer term."
+ Real estate investors
eye State Road 29
Bet you never heard of a small Florida town called Felda. How about the hamlets of Jerome, Sunniland or Rock Island?
If you're a Southwest Florida real estate investor or lender, these towns ought to be on your map. They dot State Road 29, which stretches north from Everglades City to LaBelle, slicing through eastern Collier and south Hendry counties. Real estate speculators hope the two-lane road will one day be widened to become a third north-south corridor that parallels U.S. 41 and Interstate 75.
What makes this two-lane road so promising is that Immokalee lies in its path. That's where the new town of Ave Maria is rising on 5,000 acres. It's slated to have 11,000 homes.
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