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Coffee Talk
+ Company, family leaves
little time for politics
Turns out Laura Benson won't be in for a primary fight after all in the race to be the Republican nominee for the District 69 State House seat in 2008.
Alex Miller, Benson's main opponent - and a Review 2006 40 under 40 recipient - has withdrawn her candidacy. Miller says lack of time to devote to the campaign is the chief culprit.
Unlike many who have used that explanation to pull out of a race, Miller's list of responsibilities is indeed impressive, even daunting. She is chief executive of Sarasota-based medical supply firm Mercedes Medical, the mother of two young children, and, oh yeah, she is also taking classes towards her MBA.
"I had to analyze my priorities," Miller told supporters in an e-mail, "and in doing so realized that the time commitment the campaign would take was more than I could fit into my life today."
Benson, a former Sarasota School Board member, lost the 2006 election for the seat to Keith Fitzgerald, a Democrat. The district covers north Sarasota County and a small part of southern Manatee County.
+ Chamber bill dies,
then resurrected
A bill to make it a crime for a for-profit business to use the words "chamber of commerce" died in the Florida House of Representatives' economic development committee back on May 4.
But it was later sneaked into an agriculture bill and is now awaiting the governor's signature or veto after both the Florida House and Senate approved it.
If enacted, the bill makes it a first-degree misdemeanor for any for-profit business to use the words "chamber of commerce" and lets nonprofits sue any for-profit business for using that term.
Executives at for-profit chambers say they're ready for any changes. "I'll convert to nonprofit status," says Armando Nargi, founder and CEO of the for-profit Lee County Chamber of Commerce in Fort Myers. "I'll be competing for state-grant money just like the other nonprofit chambers."
+ Get ready for
some good eats
Hungry entrepreneurs interested in owning a fast food restaurant with an old Southern feel - all-day breakfast including country ham and buttermilk biscuits anyone? - will have their chance when Bojangles' Restaurants returns to Florida.
The expanding Charlotte, N.C.-based chain has pegged the Sunshine State as its growth epicenter, with plans to open up to 65 restaurants between the Tampa-St. Pete and the Sarasota-Bradenton markets in the next six to 18 months. If those openings go well, the chain could expand as far south as Bonita Springs and Cape Coral, Chris Bailey, Bojangles' franchise development executive, tells Coffee Talk.
"We want to grow in the best markets," says Bailey, "but we don't want to overstep."
The chain is well known in North Carolina and Georgia and currently has one store in Florida, in Jacksonville. In addition to the Gulf Coast, franchise executives are planning to open stores in Pensacola and expand in Jacksonville over the next two years.
Bojangles' had a bigger presence in Florida, and the Gulf Coast, in the 1980s under different owners with a strategy that focused on the locations over the owners, says Bailey. The current philosophy, he says, is to find a group of local and established entrepreneurs and grow through the operations side.
Bojangles' was founded in 1977 and has 375 restaurants in 11 states along the East Coast, as well as five in Honduras and one in Mexico. About 236 of those stores are franchises, and the rest are corporate owned.
+ Medicare payments
threaten radiation company
Medicare, the government's health-insurance system for older people, is examining how it reimburses for the use of equipment and that could hurt Fort Myers-based Radiation Therapy Services, the country's largest publicly traded operator of radiation treatment centers.
Radiation Therapy uses expensive machines to treat people with cancer and earnings are dependent in part on reimbursement for their use.
As a result, Wachovia Securities recently downgraded the company's stock (symbol RTSX). The stock dropped 6% on news of the downgrade to $25.50 on May 16. But the stock has since recovered and closed recently at $27 still below its $34.94 52-week high.
However, Wachovia's analysis cautions that Radiation Therapy's stock could surge to the mid- to high-$30s if Medicare doesn't lower equipment reimbursements, allowing the company to post 20% annual increases in earnings.
+ Lennar staying put
in Southwest Florida
As homebuilders flee Southwest Florida's moribund homebuilding market, one national builder plans to be here for at least another five years.
Lennar Homes recently renewed a five-year lease for about 33,000 square feet at Six Mile Cypress Office Park near Colonial Boulevard and Interstate 75 in Fort Myers, according to Terri Dawson, owner of Florida Investors, the park's developer.
Lennar will oversee development and sales at eight communities in Southwest Florida from its Fort Myers regional offices, which will house land, homebuilding, multi-family and customer-service divisions. Lennar-affiliated title and mortgage companies also will make their home at the office park.
+ Suffolk plan
for the long haul
Michael Beaumier just smiles patiently as the question is asked. He's heard it dozens of times. Why would Suffolk Construction choose this moment, when the housing market has been torpedoed with overbuilding, to expand into the Sarasota-Bradenton market?
"This is not a decision we made 15 minutes ago," says Beaumier, vice president of West Coast Operations, sitting in the company's new Gulf Coast headquarters in a Lakewood Ranch corporate park.
In fact, this has been in the pipeline since about 2003, when the Boston-based builder realized that its Florida operations were too heavily focused on multi-family construction on the East Coast of Florida - it was 85% residential at that point - and decided to branch out both geographically and in types of construction. It began to diversify into all realms of commercial construction, and is building several schools on the East Coast. Beaumier says other than houses and roads, the company will tackle just about anything.
At the same time, it began to stretch across the state, beginning in Collier County. Suffolk landed a chunk of the huge Ave Maria University project, but was working it from its West Palm Beach offices. It is now building several projects on the Gulf Coast. In the Southwest Florida area, it built the Pelican Preserve Club House, the Marriott on Marco Island, then jumped to Tampa to build Muvico and began creating a base of business relationships there.
A major difference between Suffolk of new and Suffolk of old is that the company no longer does one-shot projects in an area. It now consciously builds a network of subs and contractors and bids projects in a community. It has been steadily moving up the Gulf Coast with this method. The Gulf Coast operations headquarters in Lakewood Ranch was chosen because of its central location to the other markets on this coast, Beaumier says.
"We have built a relationship with subs and contractors," he says. "We're not just going to build a job without being part of the marketplace."
Sounds like Suffolk is here to stay. It will certainly make its presence felt among existing Gulf Coast construction companies. It has $1.3 billion in annual revenues, with offices in California and Massachusetts.
Gulf Coast airport traffic rises
Passenger traffic at airports along Florida's Gulf Coast registered healthy increases this spring over last year. Businesses in industries ranging from tourism to housing closely track airport statistics as an indicator of the region's economic health.
In particular, the airports in Sarasota and Fort Myers registered strong gains through April compared with the first four months of 2006. Airlines have been adding frequency and routes in both markets, boosting traffic. In Tampa, domestic travel notched a small gain but the number of international passengers dropped by about 20%.
BY THE NUMBERS
Here are the total passenger-traffic statistics by airport through April:
Airport 2006 YTD 2007 YTD % Change
Tampa International 6,746,850 6,800,147 0.79%
Sarasota-Bradenton International 603,507 661,102 9.54%
Southwest Florida International 3,345,751 3,631,278 8.53%
+ Robb & Stucky expands west to Texas, Nevada
The housing downturn isn't slowing Robb & Stucky down.
The Fort Myers-based furniture company is opening three locations, though they won't be in Florida. Two locations will be in Texas and another will be in Nevada, two states that are still growing rapidly.
The two new Texas locations will be in the Dallas suburbs and the Nevada location will be in Las Vegas. The 90,000-square-foot Las Vegas showroom will have 9,000 square feet dedicated to outdoor furniture.
The company's geographic expansion to oil-rich Texas in 2000 is paying off as Florida's housing slump affects furniture stores. Taxable sales of consumer durables such as furniture and appliances have been declining along the Gulf Coast.
+ Top star in the
neighborhood
It's OK to toot your own horn when IBM singles you out. Neighborhood America, the Naples-based company that creates Web communities for media companies and government agencies, was the recipient of the IBM Global Public Sector Business Partner "Top Star" award.
The firm works with IBM to provide government agencies with Web-based communications systems that let citizens participate in local decisions.
+ Correction
The stock symbol for Gevity Inc. was incorrect in the story titled Heavy Lifting in the May 25 Review. The correct symbol is GVHR.
+ Clarification
The building in the May 25 Review story titled It's Easy Being Green has not yet been certified as a LEED building by the U.S. Green Building Council. The inside of the building has been built to LEED-CI (Leadership and Energy and Environmental Design-Commercial Interiors) specifications but the architect, Michael Carlson, is still waiting official designation on the certification.
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