Loading
Coffee Talk
+ For Sale:
Fort Myers City Hall
City Hall is for sale.
Fort Myers Mayor Jim Humphrey told a gathering of commercial real estate brokers that City Hall is sitting on downtown land that's too valuable for government use.
Hizzoner's idea is to sell City Hall to a private developer and relocate the city offices in a part of town where land is less valuable. A sale would help boost the finances of the city at a time it really needs new revenue to shore up shrinking coffers and put the valuable land and building back on the tax roll.
"We need to act like business people instead of bureaucrats," Humphrey says.
+ Broker goes 'green' with incentives
Diane Lawson, a commercial real estate broker and developer with Sarasota-based Abbey Realty & Management, is especially keen on green for St. Patrick's Day this year.
So much so that she's using the color as the backdrop for a trio of lucrative incentives the firm is offering to Realtors who close on a sale or a lease deal for space at University Professional Park, an 85,000-square-foot Class A office complex in North Sarasota, about a mile west of Interstate 75.
Realtor incentives, to be sure, are nothing unusual for the troubled residential sector, but in commercial, especially in office space, it's been uncommon so far.
And these incentives, offered in conjunction with the developer of the property, Burton-Katzman Development, are enough to make even a Leprechaun envious enough to match a certain color. The incentives start with straight-up cash: For a lease or a sale up to 4,999 square feet, a Realtor can earn a cash bonus of $1 a square-foot, past the standard commission.
The next incentive, promised to a Realtor behind a sale or lease of 5,000 square feet through 9, 999 square feet, is worth a nine-night trip to Ireland. Round-trip airfare and a private tour guide are included. And for the cash-inclined, the trip award can be traded in for a $2 a square-foot bonus.
The third incentive is thoroughly green, considering the meaning of the color when it comes to most things business these days. That is, a Realtor who closes on a deal of 10,000 square feet or more of space can drive away with a two-year, 30,000-mile lease on a Lexus RX Hybrid. This incentive can be swapped with a $3 a square-foot bonus.
Lawson says the incentives, unusual as they might be for office space, are necessary to give the building a boost in the slumping market. She cites the location and the fact that the offices have private, ground floor entrances, as a few key selling points. The available space, spread out through two buildings, can be sold or leased in a full floor or in 1,500-square-foot increments.
Lawson and her colleagues came up with the plan a few weeks ago and she plans to officially unveil it at an open house for the property on March 20 from 4 to 7 p.m. "We were just trying to generate some activity on it," Lawson tells Coffee Talk. "I don't think anything like this has ever been done before in the commercial here."
+ Tribridge grows
through acquisition
Tampa-based Tribridge started 10 years ago as a firm that helped companies make better use of technology. While that aim has not changed, the company has refined its marketing message, stressing its work with Microsoft customer relationship management products, known as CRM.
CRM products have many customer service applications, including helping hospitals manage information about patients. Tribridge has provided its product to more than 700 customers nationally.
Like other Gulf Coast companies, Tribridge is expanding by buying a competitor, Productive Gap, a provider of CRM services and products.
Now up to 150 employees, the company is evaluating companies that are in line with its vision, Tony DiBenedetto, CEO of Tribridge, told Coffee Talk.
It's a matter of geographic coverage for clients and gaining more market share. "We've been actively talking to companies for quite some time," DiBenedetto says.
About half of Tribridge's business is from existing clients.
"All come back for another thing," DiBenedetto says. "Sometimes it's the plumbing. Security's not good enough. We've found CEOs who say, 'We hate dealing with multiple companies.' As a result, over 50% of the business comes from existing clients."
During the past 10 years, business has grown 40% annually. Despite the economy, that figure could rise.
Tribridge now operates offices in Atlanta, Austin, Charlotte, Dallas, Orlando, South Florida and the Gulf Coast. The acquisition of Productive Gap provides Tribridge with additional capabilities and intellectual property experts.
"At times like this, it's more difficult to gain business, so we can gain market share by beating competitors or merging with them," DiBenedetto says.
+ Chico's new blame:
Foreclosures in key states
Chico's FAS executives have taken the blame for many missteps they've made recently, so it's hard to be tough on those guys.
But blaming foreclosures for poor sales performance is a new excuse for the Fort Myers-based women's retailer, which recently reported a $21 million net loss on a 7.9% drop in sales in the fourth quarter.
Here's a partial transcript of Chico's Chairman, CEO and President Scott Edmonds responding to a question about regional sales trends from Cowan & Co. analyst Lauren Levitan recently and posted at Seekingalpha.com:
"... if you look at the concentration of stores we have in Florida, California and Arizona and you sort of overlay the foreclosure rate in those markets, there is no question it is having an impact on our company to the tune in February of almost four points in just a couple of key states. So there is no question that the higher the foreclosure rate and the higher the concentration of stores we have in that state it is a tremendous challenge for us."
+ Gold Coast
taps another beer
One of the Gulf Coast's largest beer distributors has won a small victory in the area's beer battles by buying the rights to sell Rolling Rock beer in Sarasota and Manatee counties from a competitor.
Sarasota-based Gold Coast Eagle Distributing, which bought the Rolling Rock rights March 4 from Tampa-based J.J. Taylor Distributing Co., hopes to double the sales of the Western Pennsylvania brew over the next years from 14,000 cases in the two-county market to as much as 30,000 cases. That's a potential $600,000 in extra revenues for the $85 million firm.
"It's a significant brand," Gold Coast spokeswoman Andrea Conklin tells Coffee Talk, "and we are excited to have it."
But even more significant than the brand or any potential short-term sales gain is that Gold Coast is now talking growth of any kind. In addition to Rolling Rock, the distributor plans on looking into purchasing the rights to the beers sold by the InBev line, which includes high-end brands such as Hoegarden, Stella Artois and Beck's.
The company grew revenues just 1.2% in 2007, yet another victim of the economy's downward slide, and President John Saputo has been one of the more outspoken leaders in the Sarasota area on the dangers of the region's unfriendly business climate.
Saputo is a co-chair of the Sarasota Chamber of Commerce's Sarasota Tomorrow campaign, a fund-raising drive to support the Chamber's five-year pro-business campaign that began late last year. Saputo has also spoken out specifically against proposed legislation that could be considered anti-business, such as the supermajority governing rules that Sarasota County voters ultimately approved last year.
Gold Coast is growing in other ways, too. Conklin says work is nearly complete on the company's new 150,000-square-foot facility in Lakewood Ranch and it could move in by June.
+ Laser brings
design into focus
The Tampa office of planning, engineering and surveying firm Wade Trim is betting on the future buy using a high-tech measurement tool that may become an industry norm.
It's called a high-density laser scanner. It sends out a green laser beam, which goes through a telescope and bounces off a building at hundreds of thousands of different points and sends the height, width and depth measurements back to a computer, which produces several three-dimension images.
Unlike hand measurements, the laser scanner can be accurate to within a quarter inch. The newer generation of scanners has taken that down to an eighth of an inch. And the laser doesn't need any light to work.
The scanner produces full-color, 360-degree views of structures and fly-over and cut-away views.
The federal government requires laser scans for all new building construction to keep a record of what has been built.
"We've discussed this and we're wondering if this is going to be an industry trend," Rob Duranczyk, survey manager for Wade Trim in Tampa, told Coffee Talk. "What about airport authorities, port authorities? There are those of us hedging our bets."
The surveyor sets up the parameters for the device, then leaves it alone for one to four hours to get all of its measurements. Some of the applications for the laser include bridges, high-rise office buildings, warehouses and mines.
+ Naples attorney defends
National Century execs
Naples attorney Brian Dickerson has been spending a lot of time in Ohio. He may be there for a while and it's not because he's snowed in.
Dickerson is representing former executives of National Century Financial Enterprises who are accused of orchestrating a $1.9 billion fraud. It's one of the largest securities-fraud cases in the country.
Although National Century is an Ohio company, its top two executives hail from Southwest Florida. They include NCFE Chairman, CEO and President Lance Poulsen of Port Charlotte and Vice Chairman and Chief Operating Officer Donald Ayers of Fort Myers.
Poulsen, Ayers and six other executives were indicted in July 2007 on charges of defrauding investors of NCFE, one of the largest healthcare finance companies in the country until it filed for bankruptcy in November 2002. The trial is expected to last several months.
+ Review to provide
new reprint service
The Review is introducing a new reprint service for readers and subscribers seeking plaques, post cards, posters, hardcopy reprints and other promotional materials of previously published stories. Visual Marketing, a reprint service of Sisti & Others, Inc., a Gulf Coast-based marketing and advertising firm, will provide the service.
For more information, call Sara Sisti at (941) 926-1851.
GULF COAST RETAIL
What the data shows: The index of retail activity is constructed to measure personal consumption and it combines the categories of autos, consumer durables, tourism and consumer nondurables. The index's base equaled 100 in 1988. For example, an index of 300 today would have taxable sales equal to three times the base period in 1988, or a 200% increase. The latest available data from December shows declines in every area of the Gulf Coast when compared with the same month a year ago.
What it means: The data confirms anecdotes of many retailers who complained about poor sales in December. Punta Gorda and Fort Myers suffered the biggest drops in personal consumption, most likely because of the construction downturn there. The wealthy enclave of Naples suffered the least, though all areas of the Gulf Coast showed declines greater than the state average.
Forecast: A relatively strong tourism season may sustain retailers through spring, especially in Sarasota where airport-traffic figures are strong. By contrast, airport passenger counts in Tampa and Fort Myers have been down slightly when compared with December and January of 2007. Sales in January may have picked up as shoppers hunt for holiday bargains and European tourists take advantage of the relative weakness of the U.S. dollar.
DECEMBER Index of Retail Activity
Index of % annual
Area retail activity change
Fort Myers 306.2 ‑9.7%
Naples 343.4 ‑3.7%
Punta Gorda 287.7 ‑9.5%
Sarasota 229.4 ‑7.3%
Tampa 224.6 ‑5.2%
Florida 258.1 ‑3.3%
Source: Florida Legislature Office of Economic & Demographic Research
Your free article limit has been reached this month.
Subscribe now for unlimited digital access to our award-winning business news.
Join thousands of executives who rely on us for insights spanning Tampa Bay to Naples.
