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Coffee Talk
+ IT folks, others, make
a show of force
Where did all these techies come from?
The Gulf Coast is well known for its housing and tourism businesses, but a recent tech gathering in Fort Myers shows how technology cuts across all industries.
More than 150 people showed up at the Southwest Florida Regional Technology Partnership's inaugural meeting in Fort Myers recently. One of the speakers, Tony DiBenedeto, president of Tribridge and founder of the Tampa Bay Technology Forum, exhorted the group to make sure entrepreneurs lead the organization.
These entrepreneurs don't all have to be pure tech, as the audience consisted of many real estate related businesses. Among the attendees: John Pinholster, president of Kraft Construction; Brian Lucas of the residential development company Bonita Bay Group; and the Web wizards of residential real estate Chad and Cassandra Engeldinger of CyberSunshine.
+ Federal legislators
try to control gas prices
Even for a legislative body known more for photo ops than passing bills with actual substance, a recent vote in the U.S. House of Representatives was a true head-scratcher. And the six Gulf Coast-based representatives did little to defeat the cause, officially known as the Gas Price Relief for Consumers Act.
The legislation was aimed at solving the economic crisis du jour: Gas prices. A bevy of co-sponsors, including Kathy Castor, D-Tampa, crafted a bill that allows the U.S. Justice Department to sue OPEC members for limiting oil supplies. The bill, which passed by an overwhelming 324-84 vote May 20, would also subject oil-producing nations such as Saudi Arabia, Iran and Venezuela to the same antitrust laws as U.S. companies.
But in the their zeal to do something, anything, to look like they can lower gas prices for their constituents, the representatives forgot one key factor: Legislating prices in any industry is a recipe for failure. Just look to Tallahassee and the property insurance debacle for proof of what can go wrong when populist minded politicians try to interfere with supply and demand forces.
President Bush, citing similar economic reasons, has promised to veto the bill, despite the large majority of supporters. The U.S. Senate passed similar legislation as part of its energy bill earlier this year.
The president has little support for a veto on the Gulf Coast. In addition to Castor, three other representatives voted for the bill, listed as H.R. 6074: Gus Bilirakis, R-Palm Harbor; C.W. Bill Young, R-Indian Shores; and Vern Buchanan, R-Longboat Key.
Adam Putnam, an up-and-coming Republican legislator from Bartow, whose 12th district includes parts of Hillsborough County, didn't register any vote for the bill, according the official House roll call. And Connie Mack, R-Fort Myers, took it one step further: He was the only Gulf Coast legislator to vote no on the bill.
+ Going green from
Dallas to Tampa
Tampa Heights, the redeveloping urban area just north of downtown Tampa, will be getting a new corporate tenant at the end of the month: The Beck Group, a Dallas-based construction company.
Beck is moving its Florida headquarters office to a new three-story "green" building it designed and plans to construct on the Hillsborough River across from Blake High School, which it also built.
The $6 million building, which will take 10 to 12 months to finish, will have environmentally friendly features, such as a "green screen" with ivy and jasmine to provide natural insulation and rainwater collectors. Until then, Beck will operate out of 15 trailers across the street.
It hopes to start construction in late summer, Mark House, Beck's managing director, told Coffee Talk.
The new digs will be about 40% bigger than Beck's current home in Westshore. Beck will actually be a tenant in the new building, using about half the office space, or about 15,000 square feet.
"We got very favorable, good terms" on the lease, House says. The building's owner is a developer called The Heights Group, which put together the land parcels to make the project happen.
Beck has been doing building projects in Tampa since the 1940s and established a permanent home in Tampa in 1983.
The new building will be brick and concrete, modern, but reflective of the historic district, House says. And it will be environmentally friendly, with plants on the roof, skylights and a park next door facing the riverwalk, he says.
Coffee Talk asked House about green building: Level with us. Is it marketing glitz, or does it really make business sense?
"It's not a fad," House says. "It's here to stay. If you start out building a green building, there are marginal increased costs. But at the end of the day, you have a 30% energy savings over conventional building. You have a more valuable building. Employee retention is 15% higher."
House says there is a real possibility that the government may regulate the way buildings are built and the equipment used.
"So if you go old school and put in old school heating and air conditioning and other equipment now, 10 years later, the government may ask you to replace all of it," House says.
+ On demand flying
expands on Gulf Coast
Airlines big and small have been fleeing the Gulf Coast, another facet of the economic slowdown. Suburban Philadelphia-based USA 3000, which had run 21 flights a week out of St. Petersburg-Clearwater International Airport, was the latest to announce cutbacks, announcing it will be canceling service from the airport as of Aug. 18.
But one airline, albeit on a smaller scale, is looking at Florida, and specifically the Gulf Coast as a growth market. Boca Raton-based DayJet recently announced it is bringing its "per-seat, on-demand" service to the Sarasota-Bradenton International Airport.
The company flies Eclipse 500 small private jets to 45 community airports across the Southeast U.S., including ones in Columbia, S.C., Montgomery, Ala. and Savannah, Ga.
The per-seat, on-demand service is exactly as it sounds: Customers only pay for the seats they need on the plane, not the entire aircraft. And on-demand allows customers to fly at previously arranged times.
With the addition of Sarasota-Bradenton, DayJet now has flights out of nine Florida airports, including Naples, St. Petersburg-Clearwater and Lakeland. The company says 62% of the state's population lives within 35 miles of a DayJet airport.
+ Let's go this summer
to Camp CEO
Forget canoeing or archery.
High school juniors and seniors will have an opportunity to be chief executive officers at Florida Gulf Coast University in Fort Myers this summer.
The program is a pilot by Junior Achievement of Southwest Florida, a nonprofit organization whose mission is to educate children in the schools about economics. If it's successful, the program may be replicated in other areas.
Students will be paired with business executives and will work in small groups to create a plan for a small business. On the last day of camp, each group will present its business plan and determine whether it's viable for funding.
The weeklong program will be held from June 16 to June 20 and students from Charlotte, Collier and Lee counties are invited to participate.
+ Evos wants faster growth,
hires Chipolte exec
The Review profiled Evos, a growing a Tampa-based restaurant chain, in July, and now comes word that the company is preparing to make a major leap in growth.
Evos comes from the word evolve, where Evos is fast food evolved. The company offers a healthier alternative to fast food chains by cooking food with hot air ovens, not deep fryers, broilers and gas grills, and using healthier ingredients. The result: 50% to 70% less fat and calories than other restaurants and no trans fats. But prices are also higher than the regular hamburger chains.
The company, which started with a test restaurant in 1994, has four locations in Tampa, St. Petersburg and Las Vegas. In recent months, Evos has signed area rep and franchise agreements in 15 states for more than 200 stores in the next 10 years.
Recently, it has made a move to speed up that expansion.
Evos hired Erich Overhardt to serve as strategic advisor. Overhardt is a former development director with Chipotle, which has more than 500 locations. One of Overhardt's tasks: Taking the business plan and helping Evos raise more capital through investors and venture capital firms.
Evos plans to open a Chapel Hill, N.C. location in early July as well as locations in Las Vegas and California this summer.
However, the company is focusing on growing in Florida first because Florida residents more likely have heard about or have been to an Evos location.
Evos has targeted Tampa Bay, Sarasota, Naples, Orlando, Miami/Dade, Broward, West Palm Beach and Palm Beach County as expansion locations. Currently, there are ongoing conversations with two groups in Orlando and one in Miami.
"We've spent very little money marketing the franchise opportunities," Dino Lambridis, one of the founders, told Coffee Talk.
The cost of an Evos franchise is $35,000, plus 5.5% royalties.
+ John Sykes gives
to University of Tampa again
Tampa businessman John Sykes, whose name is on the University of Tampa's School of Business building, has made another sizable gift to the university, which sits on the edge of downtown.
SYKES, based in downtown Tampa, provides customer contact management solutions to businesses around the world.
Construction of the $19.5 million Sykes Chapel and Center for Faith and Values, which will be built in the center of the UT campus, will begin this summer. The project includes a 250-seat main hall, meeting and meditation rooms, pipe organ, a plaza and 60-bell musical sculpture/fountain.
Survey highlights possible reasons for optimism
The economic doldrums across the region have produced plenty of bad news. But even in a survey of Sarasota-Bradenton business owners and executives that's relatively gloomy, there is still a glimmer of hope: Almost 60% of executives who responded to the survey by Sarasota-based Progressive Employer Services report they could be in a hiring mode over the next nine months.
The survey was commissioned exclusively for the Review and was sent to 372 Progressive clients in the Sarasota-Bradenton market, the majority of which are construction firms. Progressive is a professional employer organization (PEO) that focuses on providing services such as payroll, benefits and worker's compensation plans for other businesses.
Even more remarkable than the hiring question in the survey though, was the one that preceded it: Has the number of employees in your company increased or decreased over the past three months? An overwhelming majority, 85%, of respondents to that question reported that the number of employees in their business has in fact decreased.
Yet 58% of the executives plan to increase their hiring base by early 2009. "It looks like a positive aspect, considering all the other negative responses," says Carlos Cardenas, Progressive's senior director of marketing and business development.
Other parts of the survey weren't much of a surprise. First, 82% of the respondents reported that company revenues are down over the same time last year, with 41 businesses reporting a drop of as much as 20% and 16 business reporting a drop of more than 51%.
And there's this: More than 90% of the respondents said the federal government's stimulus package will have no impact on the company's future revenues.
GULF COAST BUSINESS SURVEY
Responses Percent
1. What is your company's primary business?
Construction 55 56%
Services 16 16%
Professional 8 8%
Landscaping 6 6%
Manufacturing 5 5%
Retail 3 3%
Other 6 6%
2. What has been your biggest challenge?
Economy /No Work 70 74%
FGood Employees 6 6%
Collecting 4 4%
Other 15 16%
3. Has your number of employees increased or
decreased over the past 3 months?
Increased 11 15%
Decreased 63 85%
4. Do you plan in increasing or decreasing the
number of employees working for your
company over the next 9 months?
Increase 39 58%
Decrease 28 42%
5. Are your revenues up or down over the last
year at this time? By what percent?
Up 17 18%
10% or less 9 10%
11 - 20% 4 4%
More than 20% 2 2%
Down 77 82%
20% or less 12 13%
21 - 50% 25 27%
51- 80% 11 12%
More than 80% 5 5%
6. Do you believe the economy is in recession?
Yes 85 87%
No 13 13%
7. Do you believe the government's economic
stimulus package will have any impact on your
company's revenue?
Yes 6 6%
No 87 94%
ECONOMIC SNAPSHOT
GULF COAST HOME PRICES
What the data shows: In the short term, declines in the prices of homes along the Gulf Coast fell by double-digit percentage rates over the past year and first quarter of 2008. Over the last five years, however, homeowners have witnessed considerable home-price appreciation.
What it means: Four out of the five areas on the Gulf Coast ranked in the bottom 20 metro areas in the country with the lowest rates of house appreciation over the past year, including Naples, Fort Myers, Sarasota and Punta Gorda, according to the data from the Office of Federal Housing Oversight. However, as the chart shows, over the longer term house appreciation has been substantial.
Forecast: As prices decline, sales are likely going to pick up as prospective homeowners seek bargains. Already, data in April shows a pickup in the number of existing single-family home sales in some areas of the Gulf Coast, notably Cape Coral-Fort Myers (up 41%), Naples (up 17%), Punta Gorda (up 6%) and Sarasota (up 5%), according to Realtors associations.
Percent Change in Home Prices in 1Q 2008
Area Quarter One Year Five Years
Sarasota-Bradenton - 6.49 - 16.72 48.32
Cape Coral-Fort Myers - 6.14 - 17.45 52.08
Naples-Marco Island - 7.76 - 18.67 60.55
Punta Gorda - 4.80 - 15.05 45.87
Tampa Bay - 3.81 - 8.46 61.44
Source: Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight
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