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Coffee Talk (Sara/Mana edition)
A-B distributors raise $100,000 for Centcom memorial
Ask a Marine colonel to conquer a mountain, and he'll get it done.
When Gov. Jeb Bush and retired Army Gen. Tommy Franks asked Marine Reserve Col. John Saputo, the owner of Gold Coast Eagle Distributing in Sarasota, to raise $25,000 toward the construction of a memorial to honor the Army's Central Command center in Tampa, Saputo snapped to. But instead of $25,000, Saputo returned to headquarters with $100,000.
Saputo made an impassioned plea for support to his peers at an Anheuser-Busch Distributor meeting. "They all doubled what I asked them for," Saputo says.
Then he turned to St Louis and asked Anheuser-Busch to match the distributors. Jerry Mullane, vice president of government affairs for Anheuser-Busch in the Southeast, went right to the top - August Busch IV - who met the match.
The memorial, to be built near MacDill Air Force Base, will be erected in honor of all Centcom military personnel assigned there since 1980. It also will pay tribute to U.S. military personnel killed in hostile action in Iraq and Afghanistan. The memorial will be oval in shape with the U.S. flag and Centcom shield as focal points. Flags and emblems of all U.S. armed forces will be featured along the perimeter. A wall of honor will contain the names of the soldiers killed in action. A park setting, with palm trees and benches, will provide a place for reflection and remembrance.
For more information: go to www.centcommemorial.org/. Contributions can be made to the U.S. Central Command Memorial Foundation, Box 6095, MacDill Air Force Base, Tampa, 33618.
Shapiro honored
Bradenton attorney Richard M. Shapiro, outgoing president of the Academy of Florida Trial Lawyers, was expected to be honored Friday night at a dinner at The Breakers in Palm Beach. Shapiro, of the Shapiro Law Group, will be replaced as president of the 3,800-member group by Alexander Clem, an attorney with Morgan, Colling & Gilbert, Orlando. Clem says his No. 1 goal this year is to defeat the Florida Medical Association's proposed constitutional amendment that would cap contingency fees in medical malpractice lawsuits.
Help for Manatee
Here comes the Free Market to the rescue. Manatee County's Building Department has outsourced some of its plan reviews to the Bradenton-based real estate consulting firm of Zoller Najjar & Shroyer Inc. In a pilot program, the county is sending all its applications for commercial projects larger than 5,000 square feet, roughly 6% of its workload, to Zoller Najjar.
According to George Davenport, the county building official, the department is still struggling to keep up with the deluge of new real estate filings. "From a timing standpoint, this means the larger commercial buildings get the time and attention they require," he says. "This just takes some of the load off our staff."
Zoller Najjar was selected by the county because the department already had a contract with the firm for professional services, primarily providing as-needed building inspections.
But the pilot, which kicked off in November, has been slow getting started.
Glenn Warburton, assistant vice president for Zoller Najjar, says the firm has completed about six reviews so far. "This requires a great deal of coordination," he says " It took us a little while to work all the kinks out."
Real estate professionals should still anticipate a larger than usual lag time from the building department in the next few weeks. The county typically experiences a huge surge in permit applications prior to any tax or rate increase, and new impact fee rates are scheduled to go into effect Saturday, June 19.
The Boulevard put on hold
Atlanta businessman Wayne Morehead's The Boulevard has officially been taken off the market for the near future. Waterside Realty LLC had been selling the residential portion of the Sarasota condominium development, but it has closed its Fifth Street offices.
Louise M. Guido, sales manager for The Boulevard, says Morehead was concerned there is a glut developing in the upper-end downtown condo market (starting at $489,000 and up). The median condo price for The Boulevard was about $600,000.
"So he decided to concentrate on another parcel across the street," Guido says. "He is now planning to expand the project with more units at a lower price point."
Slow sales were also a strong consideration. Condo sales officially kicked off March 18, but three months later, the project had a mere nine reservations.
"Everybody is going to get their money back," Guido says. "All of the reservation money went into escrow, and they will be refunded their money."
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