2011 June-July Issue of 850 Business Magazine

THE BUSINESS OF WATER

Two old friends bottle and sell what they call the purest water in Florida — from the springs

of Econfina Creek in Bay County

Mentors can foster Major business success

2010 census: Meet your neighbors

how nwfL business fared in the 2011 LegisLature

850 speciaL report:northwest fLorida coMMerciaL reaL estate

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4 | june – july 2011 | 850businessmagazine.com

FLORIDA BUSINESS PRODUCTSTallahassee, Florida

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Any way you slice itthe Xerox ColorQube® 8570makes COLOR easy.The Xerox ColorQube® 8570 is easy on the offi ce. Whether for graphic arts or business charts, present your company message with style and impact. And with no toner cartridges, no plastic casings to trash, nothing to

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850 Business Magazine | june – july 2011 | 5

I N T H I S I S S U E

850 Magazine June – July 2011

850 FEATURES

On the COver: Longtime friends Johnny Patronis (right) and Jay Trumbull enjoy an afternoon at Econfina Creek. PhOtO by Scott Holstein

20 Mentors Help Launch Executive Careers Behind many great business executives are mentors who helped them along the way. They’re people like Ed Roberts, Rajeev Matwoni and Ben Graham, who were mentors to some of the most brilliant business minds in America. The benefits of mentoring aren’t easy to pin down, but research shows that executives who have had mentors earned more money at a younger age and are often happier in their careers. By Lilly Rockwell

26 2011 Legislative Wrap-Up A look at what the Legislature accomplished for business during the two months it was in town. By Linda Kleindienst

35 The State of Commercial Real Estate Despite an unrelenting onslaught of manmade and natural disasters over the past several years, Northwest Florida is showing its resilience as the commercial real estate market begins to rebound slowly, but surely. From Tallahassee to Pensacola, from office buildings to industrial parks to vacant land that’s been set aside for commercial use, 850 provides a snapshot of what is happening across the region and a glimpse into the future. By Linda Kleindienst

CAREERCATALYSTVeteran business-man and entre-preneur Lane Rees (left) also serves as mentor and cheerleader for protégée Toby Williams. Read more about the unique influence of business men-tors in our story on page 20.

FLORIDA BUSINESS PRODUCTSTallahassee, Florida

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An 850 Special Report ⊲

THE BUSINESS MAGAZINE OF NORTHWEST FLORIDA

850

CommerCial real estate

From industrial parks to vacant land to office buildings, we provide a snapshot of what is happening across Northwest Florida — and a glimpse into the future.

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THE 850 lifE 13 Greg Donovan has been working in overdrive to get more flights and more respect for his airport. By Zandra Wolfgram

iT’S THE lAW 14 Thinking about a sweepstakes to help promote your business? A former statewide prosecutor clues you in on what to do but, more importantly, what not to do. By Melanie Ann Hines

HUMAN ElEMENT 17 With college graduation here and graduates unable to get full time jobs, many are turning to unpaid internships to at least get some experience. But, are those internships legal? By Buddy Nevins

I N T H I S I S S U E

850 Magazine June – July 2011

In This Issue 09 From the Publisher

11 By the Numbers

82 The Last Word from the Editor

Corridors

CAPiTAl 29 Hunter & Harp has almost single-handedly revived some of Tallahassee’s most overlooked neighborhoods. They are the brains behind Hotel Duval and helped revive the capital’s old Midtown.

fORGOTTEN COAST 67 Using her expertise from WORKFORCE Plus, Kimberley Moore helped develop new business in Wakulla County as head of the Chamber of Commerce.

BAY 69 Johnny Patronis and Jay Trumbull mine a natural resource to quench the thirst of Northwest Florida.

EMERAlD COAST 73 A century ago, Charles Lamar lost a coin toss and ended up with one of the country’s largest outdoor advertising companies. It’s still in the family, being run by descendants like Robert “Bobby” Lamar.

i-10 79 Angie Hill leaves the big city behind, returning home to Northwest Florida to fuel her entrepreneurial spirit.

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Books-A-Million, Borders and Barnes and Noble in Tallahassee, Destin, Ft. Walton

Beach, Pensacola and Panama City and at our Tallahassee office.

Publisher brian e. Rowland

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Contributing Writers Jason Dehart, Wendy o. Dixon, Ana goni-lessan, lee gordon, linda Kleindienst, Ann McQueen, buddy nevins, lilly Rockwell, Zandra Wolfgram, Kimberley yablonski

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JUNE – JUlY 2011 Vol. 3, No. 5


850

850 Magazine is published bi-monthly by Rowland Publishing, Inc. 1932 Miccosukee Road, Tallahassee, FL 32308. 850/878-0554. 850 Magazine and Rowland Publishing, Inc. are not responsible for unso-licited manuscripts, photography or artwork. Editorial contributions are welcomed and encouraged but will not be returned. 850 Maga-zine reserves the right to publish any letters to the editor. Copyright June 2011 850 Magazine, Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or part without written permission is prohibited. Member, Florida Magazine Association and seven Chambers of Commerce throughout the region.

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ThIs TIme lasT year, all one hearD abouT was The never-enDIng Doom and gloom over the oil gushing from bP’s Deepwater horizon well and how it was affecting the beaches and wildlife along the gulf Coast, including northwest Florida.

Turning on the Tv, one would see the same oil-coated bird over and over again — along with the constant commentary about the oil heading toward the beaches and the expected tainting of the sea-food supply.

In the end, other than a slight dusting of oil on the far western edges of the Florida coast, our area was mostly unaffected by the oil it-

self. yet the perception that Florida’s beaches were cov-ered with tar balls caused the bottom to fall out of our tourism-based economy. Phones rang off the hook with summer cancella-tions of resort and charter boat bookings and billions of dollars were lost during what is considered “the sea-son” for our region.

by the end of summer, many coastal community businesses that directly rely on tourism for their survival were destroyed or suffered major economic setbacks. and there was a trickle down effect that impacted many other busi-

nesses throughout northwest Florida.The good news is that bP has stepped up in a big way over the past

year, pouring billions into the region’s economic and environmental recovery efforts. and I have seen first-hand that it is working.

spring break was strong this year and many area resorts are posting double digit increases over their projections for summer reservations. Clearly, the public wants to come to our beaches to relax and escape from their everyday stresses.

but now we’re facing another media onslaught. not over the oil threatening our beaches, but by high gas prices. a recent New York Times article proclaimed that skyrocketing gas prices would prevent

americans from their annual ritual of loading up the family for a summer vacation. The same theme has been repeatedly echoed in other publications and on Tv.

here we go again. The majority of tourists that visit our area in the summer drive here — and the last thing our region needs is another damper on what appears to be a recovering economy.

Instead of inducing fear in american families that a driving vaca-tion will plummet them into bankruptcy, can we take a moment and put this into perspective?

let’s do a little math. For an example, let’s take a family that lives 750 miles from northwest Florida’s beaches or our beautiful capital city. If they drive a car that gets 15 miles per gallon, they would use 100 gallons for a roundtrip.

In the summer of 2010, retail gas prices hovered around $2.76 a gal-lon. For 100 gallons, the cost would be $276. In the summer of 2011, the price for a gallon is now around $4. For 100 gallons, the tab would be $400.

The difference: $124. For a one-week vacation, that amounts to $17.71 a day.

Is that really going to keep the average american family home, shuddering in fear under their beds? I don’t think so. If the budget is tight, eating a modest-priced dinner or lunch would even it out. or buy one less T-shirt for each kid.

It’s unfortunate that national media attention focuses so much on the negative when americans, more than ever, need to hear some good news and be encouraged to become part of our nation’s — and our region’s — economic recovery.

The message I’d like to see? It’s time to go on a summer vacation. get away from it all, even for a little while. refresh your spirit and give your neighbors a little economic boost.

Brian [email protected]

Here They Go Again

From the Publisher


Our region is a vibrant, diverse mix of companies with a wide range of economic infl uences. Our award-winning 850 Magazine tells the dynamic story of Northwest Florida’s exciting emergence in state, national and international marketplaces through insightful features, in-depth corridor spotlight stories and comprehensive articles on trends and perspectives that truly embodies the mantra: Our region’s business is our business. To put 850 Magazine to work for you, call (850) 878-0554 or visit 850businessmagazine.com today.

11850_JJ_TheySawUsInPrint_Lawyer.indd 1 6/1/11 2:56:03 PM


By the Numbers the 2010 census redefines the 850

Compiled by Linda Kleindienst

At long last, the numbers are in.This spring, The U.s. CensUs BUreaU released the results of its 2010 survey of america, giving us a new look at who we are and how we’ve changed since april 1 of 2000. Despite some rough hurricane seasons and a poor economy, Florida experienced double-digit growth through april 1, 2010 — and so did 11 of the 18 counties that make up the 850 area code.

statewide, only Monroe and pinellas saw their population drop during the decade. Of Florida’s 67 counties, four grew by more than 50 percent. another eight, including Walton and Wakulla counties, grew between 30 and 50 percent. Only six counties, includ-ing escambia and gadsden, grew by less than 5 percent. Miami-Dade is Florida’s most popu-lated county, with nearly 2.5 million residents. The smallest is northwest Florida’s Liberty County, with 8,365.

here is a snapshot of Florida — and a look at your 1,452,724 neighbors, who make their home in the 850 and represent close to 8 per-cent of the sunshine state’s population.

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BAY 148,217 168,852 13.9 50 50 40 79 5 11

CALHOUN 13,017 14,625 12.3 54 46 40 78 5 14

ESCAMBIA 294,410 297,619 1.1 49 51 38 66 5 23

FRANKLIN 9,829 11,549 17.5 58 42 42 80 5 14

GADSDEN 45,087 46,389 2.9 49 51 39 33 10 56

GULF 14,560 15,863 9 60 40 43 75 4 19

HOLMES 18,564 19,927 7 53 47 41 89 2 6

JACKSON 46,755 49,746 6.4 55 45 41 67 4 26

JEFFERSON 12,902 14,761 14.4 52 48 44 59 4 36

LEON 239,452 275,487 15 48 52 30 59 6 30

LIBERTY 7,021 8,365 19 61 39 37 74 6 18

MADISON* 18,733 19,224 2.6 52 48 40 55 5 39

OKALOOSA 170,498 180,822 6.1 50 50 38 77 9 7

SANTA ROSA 117,743 151,372 28.6 50 50 39 85 4 5

TAYLOR* 19,256 22,570 17.2 56 44 41 73 3 21

WAKULLA 22,863 30,776 35 55 45 39 80 3 14

WALTON 40,601 55,043 35.6 51 49 42 85 5 6

WASHINGTON 20,973 24,896 18.7 55 45 40 79 3 15

*Madison and Taylor counties are part of the 850 area code and were added for additional comparison. Source: U.S. Census Bureau, 2010 Census

COUNTY 200

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STATEWIDE POPULATION STATS:

Fastest growing county (by percent:)

FLAGLER (89.8%)

Fastest growing county (in numbers:)MIAMI-DADE (214,756)

Flagler

Miami-Dade39

4041FLORIDA’SMEDIAN

AGE

WHITE58%BLACK23%HISPANIC15%

15,982,824 (in 2000) + 17.6% = 18,801,310 (in 2010)

49%51%

Note: Race percentages do not include those identifying as Asian, multi-racial, Hawaiian, Pacific Islander or Native American, and thus do not add up to 100%.


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The (850) Life survive and thrive

WingManGreG Donovan, Gulf BreezeOkaloosa County Airports Director

Greg Donovan always knew he wanted to fly. At 42, this pilot-turned-executive serves as

the director of three Okaloosa County airports: northwest Florida Regional Airport, Destin Airport and the Bob Sikes/Crestview Airport.

After bringing Vision Airlines to nest at the Valparaiso-based north-west Florida Regional Airport (situat-ed on eglin Air Force Base) and while overseeing $19 million in airport en-hancements, Donovan is flying high with hope that the emerald Coast is finally more firmly placed on “the map.” now, he says, it’s up to local businesses to get the word out to their networks about the new service.

A native of Tulsa, Okla., Donovan and his wife traversed the country from Wisconsin to Texas while he racked up 22 years of airport manage-ment experience. Once his family be-gan to grow (he has two boys — Ryan, 9, and Kyle, 7), he and his wife, jenni-fer, were happy to land in Gulf Breeze.

Donovan spoke to us from his office on the jetway not only about Vision, but about his passion for flying and a new love — fishing with his kids.

— Zandra Wolfgram

1. Career aspirations: My great uncle took me up in a Lockheed once. I dreamed of flying it one day myself. There’s something so beautiful about an airplane.

2. Airport smart: Look for online specials. Pack lightly, figure out what you’re going to do and don’t second-guess it.

3. Gratification: Service members being reunited with their family and children every single day. The human element of what aviation accomplishes is one of the purest things in business.

4. Thoughts on Vision Airlines: They are planting their flag here. They’re going to package flights in a creative way that is not seen in the industry today.

5. Self description: I am dedicated to a bigger cause than just individual gain. I take on leadership as a major responsibility. Leadership is what you do when people aren’t looking. I take it seriously.

6. On piloting: It’s always on my “to do” list. I want to get back to flying. Year’s resolutions. It’s therapeutic. The Blackberry doesn’t work at 8,000 feet.

7. Green Bay Packers and San Diego Padres? I’m the only guy not wrapped around an SEC team. I guess I love root-ing for the underdog.

8. Downtime: My kids have gotten me into fishing. We fish from bridges, inlets and some-times on a boat. Whether you’re 7 or 42, that thrill when you get a fish on is good stuff.

9. Lives by: I really do believe things are meant to be, but you have to work for them. I put my-self through school and I work hard. It’s a work ethic I hope I can pass to my kids.

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Before you set up a give-away event, be sure you’re not legally

shooting yourself in the foot

By Melanie ann Hines

ne of the most unsettling things that can happen to a legitimate business

owner is to learn that the conduct of their company is alleged to be criminal in nature. In many cases, entrepreneurs unwittingly stumble over business regulations that have been upgraded to criminal violations. There are a large number of such rules, so it can be easy to do.

The financial and reputational consequences of such missteps can be enormous. Such dark chapters in the life of a company can often be prevented by studying the rules, seeking legal advice and imple-menting appropriate risk reduction strategies before embarking on an unknown path.

To illustrate the point, take a look at a classic marketing and branding tool: promotional events that are de-signed to generate excitement about a company’s products. Consumer games, contests or sweepstakes can be run as small local affairs at a festi-val or other local public event, or they can be broadcast around the world from a company’s Internet website. Some may require a bit of skill, some may be more like a random drawing, but all of them result in a prize for one or more participants.

Whether small or large, such con-tests give business owners a chance to be creative and create a sense of fun for the consumer. Hopefully, they increase brand name recogni-tion. However, such promotions contain hidden dangers for the un-informed. If run without proper le-gal guidance, such promotions can become nightmares and result in unwanted, negative name recogni-tion. If these promotions run afoul of the law, heavy fines can be imposed, criminal charges can be filed and all associated events become a matter of public record.

Consider a hypothetical promo-tion. Imagine that a northwest Flor-ida waterfront luxury resort wants to modernize its advertising with a catchy new slogan summing up its

Rules of Promotion

It’s the Law customer give-aways

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chief attractions. A contest is announced: The person who submits the best five-word description of the resort will win “an all expense paid romantic weekend getaway package,” including golf and spa privileges, a champagne reception and room service for all meals. The second place prize is a golf course pass and one golf lesson, and the third place prize is a Saturday spa package. The prizes have a total value of $5,500.

Marketing promotions with total prize packages over $5,000 are regulated by the Florida Department of Agriculture and Con-sumer Services. To comply with the law, the resort in the above hypothetical must first register the game with the Agriculture De-partment and pay an application fee of $100, at least seven days before the contest begins.

And there are many more steps to follow in order to stay on the right side of the law.

All the rules of the game must be conspic-uously posted at the resort. Advertisements about the game must contain all mate-rial terms and may not be misleading in any way. A trust account (or a bond) in the total amount of the prize package must be estab-lished and maintained throughout the term of the game. The bank or insurance company must notify the Department of the terms of the account or bond at least seven days be-fore the contest begins. (The trust account and bonding requirements can be waived by the Department after a five consecutive year track record of lawful contest promotions.)

A certified list of winners must be pro-vided to the Department within 60 days af-ter the winners are named. The list must be made available without charge to anyone who requests it. Advertisement of the win-ners can be made in the newspaper and a copy must be provided to the Department. All winning entries must be held by the re-sort for 90 days after completion of the game. The rules of the game cannot be changed at any time after they are published. The resort cannot arbitrarily reject any entry, cannot predetermine that the contest winner will come from a particular geographic area and cannot require that contestants be actual guests of the resort or have purchased any item at the resort. There can be no entry fee. The resort cannot fail to award the actual prizes offered.

The above contest rules sound simple; the registration process does as well. But let’s take

a look at the issues that a novice might not think about. What does “all expense paid” mean? Does it include air transportation? Does it cover long distance telephone calls from the room? All TV movie charges? end-less bar tabs? Does it cover medical expenses incurred by the guests? How does the resort protect against exorbitant “expenses” in this scenario, without being misleading?

It should be clear by now that a lot of at-tention must be given to the drafting of the game promotion rules and the information about prizes — these must be very specific, citing what is included, what is excluded and setting forth maximum allowances where necessary.

What about the start date and end date of the contest? Sounds easy enough. just come up with the dates on the calendar and in-clude them in the rules, right? not so easy!

If hand delivered or email submissions are allowed, then a time deadline is neces-sary as well. But what happens if the resort’s computer goes on the blink or the Internet is very slow on the deadline day? How does the resort make the contest fair to those contes-tants who relied on the usual speed of the In-ternet? Should the resort accept late entries due to computer glitches or bad weather that grounds the delivery driver, or should the re-sort specifically exclude anyone from partici-pating who does not strictly comply with the date and time deadlines?

Again, all rules must be clearly spelled out and must be as fair as reasonably pos-sible. Fairness must extend to all those who enter the contest as well as to all those who want to enter the contest and who make legitimate and appropriate efforts to do so as set forth in the rules. If the rules aren’t clear about the deadline and how it will be calculated, then excluded contestants could argue that their reliance on the Internet was reasonable and that with proper proof of a “sent mail” time, they should have access to the contest. In the end, the resort may have bought a lawsuit instead of a new market-ing and branding opportunity.

There are many other issues to consider. As examples: whether the “catchy new slogan” must meet certain standards of de-corum, whether the participants must be a certain age to play and to win, whether the resort wants to exclude all employees’ family members from participating, and,

To keep illegal operations out of our state, the Florida Legislature charged the Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, Division of Consumer Services, with the responsibility to oversee game pro-motions according to Section 849.094, F.S.

Game promotions offering prizes totaling more than $5,000 must file with the Division 7 days prior to commencement. Even game promotions based in other states must be filed if they are conducted in Florida and/or are open to Florida residents and have prizes valued at more than $5,000.

In addition, a surety bond or statement of trust is required from the operator unless they have conducted game promotions in Florida for at least 5 consecutive years and they have had no civil, criminal or adminis-trative actions instituted against them for a violation of s. 849.049 F.S. during that 5-year period. This protects citizens who partici-pate by ensuring compensation if the game operator is unable to award prizes offered in the promotion.

The material terms of the rules must be published in all advertising copy. Full rules must be conspicuously posted in all outlets. Game operators must give, at no charge, a list of winners to those who request it.

A violation of the game promotion law can result in a civil penalty of up to $1,000 per violation, an injunction and, in some cases if appropriate, referral for criminal prosecution. The law does not provide for restitution if a consumer has paid money to the operator.

WhAt iS A GAme Promotion?

>> A contest, game of chance or gift enterprise

>> Is conducted in connection with the sale of consumer products or services

>> Has the element of chance and prize

WhAt mAkeS A GAme Promotion illeGAl?

>> Failure to file with the Division of Con-sumer Services, if required

>> The game is manipulated for winners to be predetermined

>> Businesses sponsoring game promo-tions are pre-selected to receive winning games

>> The game is manipulated for winners to be determined during a particular time period or geographic area

>> Arbitrarily removing, disqualifying, disal-lowing or rejecting entries

>> Failure to award prizes

>> Printing or circulating false, deceptive or misleading game promotion literature

>> Requiring an entry fee, payment or proof of purchase to enter

Playing By the Rules


finally, how the resort will make the determi-nation that the participant and the submission meet the resort’s standards. Then there’s the issue of when the contestant must collect the prize. How will the resort describe the deadline for “cashing in” on the awards, and how will it deal with exigent circumstances preventing the winner from collecting?

exigent circumstances beyond the control of the resort must also be anticipated on the front end. Imagine that a hurricane floods the golf course and a complete renovation is necessary. The renovation will take two years, well beyond the deadline for the second prize winner to use their golf pass or to take their one free golf lesson. Can the resort substitute a tennis package for the golf package? If so, does that decision adversely affect those individuals who might have entered the contest to receive a tennis lesson but not a golf lesson? The game promotion rules must ad-dress these considerations. The consequences for taking these issues lightly are severe.

The laws related to marketing promotions and sweepstakes are designed to keep the un-scrupulous from soliciting money with false promises of a gift or reward. The laws are aimed at Florida entities as well as those out of state entities that advertise their game promotions in

this state. Promotional games run in violation of these rules can be shut down by court order on petition of the Agriculture Department. The Department can also sue the entity, seeking fines of $1,000 for each violation. Any person or busi-ness, or their agents or employees, who violate these laws can be prosecuted for criminal misde-meanors, punishable by up to 60 days in jail and a $500 fine. Florida’s Attorney General also has

authority to investigate game promotions for any instances of unfair and deceptive trade prac-tices. Federal law also applies to the use of the In-ternet and the mail-in gaming promotions.

Sound legal advice on the front end is a key component of a marketing campaign involv-ing a game promotion or sweepstakes. Consult a lawyer who has administrative law experience and familiarity with the rules in this area. you may also wish to consult the website of the De-partment of Agriculture and Consumer Services, where you can download forms, FAQ’s and a copy of the laws and regulations regarding gam-ing promotions. n

Melanie Ann Hines practices in the Tallahassee of-fice of the business law firm of Berger Singerman. She served as Florida’s Statewide Prosecutor from 1991–2003 and has more than 30 years of experience in Florida’s courts. She currently practices adminis-trative law and white-collar criminal defense, with an emphasis on corporate compliance and corporate crime prevention.

IT’S THE LAW

If run without proper legal

guidance, such promotions can

become nightmares and result

in unwanted, negative name

recognition. If these promotions

run afoul of the law, heavy fines

can be imposed, criminal charges

can be filed and all associated

events become a matter of

public record.

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Human Element ins and outs of unpaid internships

For almost a year before he graduated, Florida State uni-versity student Dan Daley left his stuffy political science classroom and his dry textbook behind. He interned for the Re-

publican Party of Florida in Tallahassee an-swering telephones, finally working his way up to meeting some of the best and brightest GOP campaign operatives. After his intern-ship with the Republicans was done, he took a second internship with a Democratic legis-lator in the state Capitol.

“It was a dream come true for somebody interested in politics,” Daley said. “I learned sooo much.”

Daley had the perfect intern experience. He and his employers benefitted — and he learned so much about grassroots politics that he is now running for office himself.

Tens of thousands of u. S. students work at a kaleidoscopic variety of internships ev-ery year.

In the past two decades, interning has be-come as important a part of higher education as the old apprentice system once was in the

trades. In 2008, the national Association of Colleges and employers found that 50 per-cent of graduating students had internships at one time during their studies.

Students in the M. e. Rinker School of Building Construction at the university of Florida have worked alongside professionals helping build roads and government build-ings throughout the state. Students at the university of north Florida’s Department of Criminology and Criminal justice take jobs with 60 agencies, from the u. S. Marshal’s to the jacksonville Mayor’s Office. Florida State university’s english Department has a 13-week internship writing for non-profit agen-cies, government, public relations firms, the media, the university and other businesses across north Florida.

lauren loeffler, director of career services for the university of West Florida in Pensa-cola and Fort Walton Beach, said becoming an intern is one of the most valuable parts of higher education. She helps match hundreds of students with employers every year.

“It’s a tremendous learning experience. It provides direction in life. We consider it a success if a student comes back and hated the job or if the student loved the job. either way, the student is getting some direction for the future,” loeffler said.

Unpaid internships used to be standard fare in many professions. These days, it pays to take a closer look at the opportunities you’re providing the new work force — because the IRS sure is. By Buddy nevins

All Work and No Pay

In 2010, amid the recession, there was an increase in interns not being paid for work. Employers looking to save money hired interns for nothing rather than a regular employee. In response and to ensure interns are not being abused, the U. S. Labor Department issued six rules that had to be met to avoid violating labor laws.


HUMAN ELEMENT

What’s in it for employers? One benefit is self-fulfillment. “Many supervisors simply enjoy sharing their expertise and savvy in their roles as professional mentors,” said Michael True, di-rector of the Intern Center at Messiah College in Grantham, Penn. True is a nationally-recognized expert on interns who has written guides and operates international websites on the subject.

Perhaps the no. 1 reason employers hire in-terns is that it’s an easy way to recruit and evalu-ate potential employees, according to True. “em-ployer respondents to a national survey reported higher retention rates for those with internship experience, compared to those who had none,” he said.

“It’s a great opportunity for employers to try before they buy,” loeffler agreed.

That’s what happened to Daley. His boss at his second internship, state Rep. Ari Porth, D-Coral Springs, liked him so much he hired him as his full-time aide when he graduated FSu in june 2009.

“He was enthusiastic and very helpful,” Porth said. “I saw he was an asset to have around.”

employers hiring an intern also get a highly motivated student with the latest skills. For in-stance, an employer approached uWF last year with a request. They wanted an intern who could help them set up a social media market-ing program.

“The student had experience with social me-dia and they could teach the student about their business. Both sides benefitted,” loeffler said.

The downside of internships is that successful programs take time and effort by managers, who must both supervise the interns and follow rules set up by the colleges and universities. Some schools even send officials to the work site to check on the interns.

True recommended that the most important place for a business to start is with a written plan. The plan should map exactly what is ex-pected from the intern. Managers need to fol-low the plan. Since intern programs are usually no more than three months, resources must be ready for the incoming student. A work area should be set aside and the necessary equip-ment such as computers need to be reserved.

CBS TV affiliate WCTV in Tallahassee has a carefully developed blueprint for students who intern in its news department. The day-by-day guide prepares interns for everything they may face and what they are required to learn during the month-long program. each day is filled with very exhaustive learning, much of it from pre-pared handouts the station has developed.

It starts the first day with interns learning

DECODING INTErNShIPS ACCORDING TO THE FAIR LABOR STANDARDS ACT (FSLA)

“Similar to an Education Environment” and “Primary Beneficiary of the Activity” In general, the more an internship program is structured around a classroom or academic experience as opposed to the employer’s actual operations, the more likely the internship will be viewed as an extension of the individual’s educational experience (this often occurs where a college or university exercises oversight over the internship program and provides educa-tional credit). The more the internship provides the individual with skills that can be used in multiple employment settings, as opposed to skills particular to one employer’s operation, the more likely the intern would be viewed as receiving training. Under these circumstances the intern does not perform the routine work

of the business on a regular and recurring basis, and the business is not dependent upon the work of the intern. On the other hand, if the interns are engaged in the opera-tions of the employer or are performing productive work (for example, filing, performing other clerical work or assisting customers), then the fact that they may be receiving some benefits in the form of a new skill or improved work habits will not exclude them from the FLSA’s minimum wage and overtime requirements because the employer benefits from the interns’ work.

Displacement and Supervision Issues If an employer uses interns as substitutes for regular workers or to augment its exist-ing workforce during specific time periods, these interns should be paid at least the minimum wage and overtime compensation for hours worked over 40 in a work-week. If the employer would have hired additional employees or required existing staff to work additional hours had the interns not performed the work, then the interns will be viewed as employees and entitled compensation under the FLSA. Conversely, if the employer is providing job shadowing opportunities that allow an intern to learn certain functions under the close and constant supervision of regular employees, but the intern performs no or minimal work, the activity is more likely to be viewed as a bona fide edu-cation experience. On the other hand, if the intern receives the same level of supervision as the employer’s regular workforce, this would suggest an employment relationship, rather than training.

The FLSA makes a special exception under certain circumstances for individuals who volunteer to perform services for a state or local government agency and for individuals who volunteer for humanitarian purposes for private non-profit food banks. The Depart-ment of Labor (DOL) also recognizes an exception for individuals who volunteer their time, freely and without anticipation of compensation for religious, charitable, civic or humanitarian purposes to non-profit organizations. Unpaid internships in the public sector and for non-profit charitable organizations, where the intern volunteers without expecta-tion of compensation, are generally permissible.

— U.S. Department of Labor Fact Sheet #71


what clothes to wear, newsroom etiquette, some legal training and WCTV’s overall philosophy. On other days, interns are helped with writing broadcast scripts and copy for the Internet. They are taught how to operate the equipment and pull footage from the archives. They are given instruction on how to prepare the five stories they are required to complete during internship. On the 30th day, interns tape a mini-newscast of them at the anchor desk, which they will put on a DVD to take back to college.

A key decision for every employer is whether or not to pay an intern.

In 2010, amid the recession, there was an in-crease in interns not being paid for work. employ-ers looking to save money hired interns for noth-ing rather than a regular employee. “With the recent economy, we have seen a surge in unpaid intern requests,” uWF’s loeffler said. In response and to insure interns are not being abused, the u. S. labor Department issued six rules that had to be met to avoid violating labor laws.

According to the u. S. labor Department in 2010, any unpaid intern program must:

>> Be run for the benefit of the intern.

>> Allow the intern to work under close supervi-sion and not displace regular employees.

>> not provide the employer with a competitive advantage.

>> emphasize that the intern is not automati-cally entitled to a job after the internship.

>> Make it crystal clear that that the intern will not be paid.

>> Be “similar to training which would be given in an educational environment ... the more an internship program is structured around a classroom or academic experience as op-posed to the employer’s actual operations, the more likely the internship will be viewed as an extension of the individual’s educational experience.”

uWF carefully vets each request for an un-paid internship. “They have to meet the labor Department’s six-prong test,” loeffler said.

Many colleges hold tight on interns to guar-antee that the experience is educational. The university of north Florida’s Department of Criminology and Criminal justice is a typical example. Seniors are given six credits to work in north Florida law enforcement, government and non-profit agencies. They are required to write a paper on their experience and share details with other students and faculty.

Many internships do pay, although students shouldn’t expect more than minimal salaries. The 2010 interns from the Rinker construction

school at the university of Florida averaged $13.76-an-hour, paid by a wide range of business-es from general contractors to subcontractors to residential developers.

David Silverman, who is due to graduate Flor-ida State university in April 2011 with majors in criminology and political science, didn’t get paid. He interned for Broward County judge Gisele Pollack during his junior year, and the court sys-tem had no money available for interns. Pollack introduced Silverman to many aspects of the court system as a way to make his studies come to life and prepare him for law school.

“Rarely did I have to file, make copies or run around the courthouse dropping papers off to other judges. judge Pollack wanted me to get

the most out of my internship,” Silverman said. So he attended court with the judge and spent time with public defenders, private lawyers and prosecutors to understand the process from their point of view. The judge arranged for bailiffs to show Silverman their job inside the courthouse.

Pollack was following the guidelines devel-oped by True. “Care should be taken to make all experiences worthwhile for the student, wheth-er compensated or not,” True said.

That is exactly the kind of experience Silver-man got. “Seeing and being so close with each participant in the courtroom really allowed me to see the many options in the field of law,” the FSu student said. n

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The downside of internships is that successful programs take time and effort by managers, who must both supervise the interns and follow rules set up by the colleges and universities.

20 | april – May 2011 | 850businessmagazine.com

mentoring



Ed RobERts. RajEEv Matwoni. bEn GRahaM. never heard of them? They may not be house-hold names, but their contributions to business are extremely significant.

These men were all mentors to some of the most brilliant business minds in america.

roberts, who created the first personal com-puter, allowed a 20-year-old Bill Gates to write software for that computer. That job, and roberts’ advice, helped launch Microsoft.

Matwoni was a Stanford professor who men-tored college students Sergey Brin and larry page on their ambitious project to catalogue web pag-es, which morphed into Google.

Graham hired a 24-year-old Warren Buffett to work as an analyst for his firm and taught Buffett his value investing philosophy, which investor Buffett credits for his success.

The lesson is simple. Behind many great busi-nesses are great mentors.

But the benefits of mentorship aren’t easy to pin down, like, say, the return on investment after a shoe retailer begins offering online shop-ping to customers.

Gerard roche of recruiting firm Heidrick and Struggles told Forbes magazine that executives

who have had mentors earned more money at a younger age, and that his research shows people who had mentors are happier in their careers.

There is plenty of anecdotal evidence that supports the value of having a mentor.

“Mentoring, in my opinion, is one of the most undervalued assets that are available to entrepreneurs and business people,” said jerry Oster young, the director of outreach for the jim Moran institute for Global entrepreneurship at Florida State university. “By undervalued, i mean in terms of cost and entrepreneurs not ap-preciating the value.”

A Mentor Is ...The definition of a mentor varies. For some, a

mentor is simply someone to turn to for advice about their job or career, either within or outside their company.

For others, it is a more formal arrangement done within the parameters of a company-sponsored program with a prescribed number of meetings.

and for some businesses, the term mentor is used interchangeably with consultant and refers to people who are brought in to help guide the founder or CeO.

Those who have been a mentor or protégé speak enthusiastically about how it has pro-vided tangible benefits to their career. Some

credit their mentors with helping them land their first jobs, obtain raises or learn a new skill. Others say their mentors have acted like work therapists, dispensing advice and providing encouragement.

Many young professionals say it was a mentor that helped them launch their careers.

Krystin Olinski was a 23-year-old Florida State university student getting a master’s de-gree in integrated marketing communications who needed work experience and guidance if she had any hope of landing a full-time job in the worst economic recession in her lifetime. So she applied for, and got, an internship at Moore Con-sulting Group, a public relations and marketing firm in Tallahassee that has clients such as Coca-Cola Co. and the american lung association.

That single internship made a huge impact on her burgeoning public relations career, Olin-ski said, thanks to her boss and mentor, Fernan-do Senra.

a former high school teacher, Senra says he loves guiding young public relations profession-als as they begin their careers and insists on chal-lenging them with tough assignments. a few weeks into her job, Olinski was writing opinion editorials for Moore clients that were eventually published in major daily newspapers.

“i didn’t know if i was doing it right, i had never done one before,” Olinski said. “i thought

once only for career newbies, mentors can help you — no matter your pay grade — along the path to business success

By LiLLy RockweLL

Photos by SCOTT HOLSTEIN and KAY MEYER

A Helping Hand



our younger folks and help them be successful,” said ron jackson, president of Saltmarsh, Cleve-land and Gun.

new hires tend to have the technical skills to do their job, jackson said, but do not know how to market the firm or themselves and had never worked in teams before.

“Those are some of the things that aren’t par-ticularly taught in college,” jackson said.

even though their mentorship program is just two years old, jackson said it has yielded re-sults. “it has allowed our older folks to talk to our younger folks about the history of the firm, our culture, why we do what we do,” jackson said. “That transfer of knowledge is really important.” He believes their mentorship program will help improve retention.

The Walton area Chamber of Commerce matches mentors and protégés through its lead-ership program. a mentor and protégé must meet at least once a month for a year.

lane rees is a Santa rosa Beach-based human resources consultant who frequently mentors through the Walton area Chamber of Com-merce’s leadership program.

He’s passionate about the topic because of a mentor that helped him in his own career. in the early 1980s, rees worked for an oil and gas

company called arCO. His boss urged him to move to alaska to further his career. “it was tak-ing a risk,” rees said, in part because his Florida-born wife wasn’t thrilled with the idea of moving to such a cold climate.

But that single career change allowed him to move quickly up the ladder at arCO, enabling him to retire early in 1999 and move to Florida.

“a mentor is a person who can challenge you and help you dream bigger,” rees said.

Toby Williams, the principal for special servic-es at rocky Bayou Christian School, is rees’s pro-tégé through the Chamber’s leadership program.

“i love what i am doing. i see the difference it makes in children’s lives,” Williams said. “With having a big family of my own, i got my eighth grandchild this year, i wanted to make sure i was keeping my priorities right.”

She said rees urged her to think about her long-term goals in her career and in life, even 10 years out. They discussed what steps needed to happen to reach those goals.

“To be able to mentor (faculty) i need to have a mentor,” Williams said.

”i am growing in my leadership abilities, and

mentoring

it was way beyond my skill level.”Senra also helped Olinski think about her

long-term career plans. “i went into his office six or seven times to

ask for his opinion on my résumé,” Olinski said. When she applied to work at Tampa-based Tan-go Marketing after her graduation, Senra helped her secure glowing references.

“(Senra) is the best mentor because when i had doubts about myself, when i was figuring out where to apply for jobs upon graduation, when i had boyfriend trouble, he was there for me,” Olinski said. like many successful protégés, Olinski wants to pay it forward by starting an in-ternship program at her current job. This time, she’ll be the mentor.

Long Term BenefitsSome businesses have formal mentorship

programs that match young hires with senior managers in the company. Many business orga-nizations, like the Chamber of Commerce, also offer mentorship programs that match mentors with protégés.

at pensacola accounting firm Saltmarsh, Cleveland and Gun, newly hired employees are paired with employees that have worked at the firm for longer than five years.

“We had some people here that had moved up in the firm and are very successful, and we wanted to transfer that knowledge to some of

“�Mentoring�...�is�one�of�the�most�undervalued�assets�that�are�available�to�entrepreneurs�and�business�people.�By�undervalued,�I�mean�in�terms�of�cost�and�entrepreneurs�not�appreciating�the�value.”�Jerry�Osteryoung


you can’t give what you are not receiving.”john russell, president of Sandestin invest-

ments, remembers how valuable a mentor was to him early in his career. at 23, russell was working at his first hotel, a Hyatt. The director of human resources took russell under his wing.

“i had never worked for a large corporation be-fore,” russell said. “i had to go on corporate travel trips, and he would coach me — ‘This is what you wear and how you behave and watch out for the guys who want to stay out all night.’ ”

russell said he could have easily stumbled and damaged his reputation but instead he rose quickly in the hospitality industry and became a general manager of his first hotel at age 32. He has since worked for ritz Carlton and other ma-jor hotel chains.

now russell has decided to give back by par-ticipating in the Walton Chamber’s mentorship program. For a year, he has mentored Wendy radke, the director of marketing and communi-cations for the Chamber.

“i’ve learned a lot from him so far in identify-ing my strengths and weaknesses,” radke said. russell has encouraged radke to be more aggres-sive in pursuing projects she is passionate about. He also urges her to discuss with him her long-term career goals.

radke said russell helped her conquer a fear of public speaking.

“The first time i stood up in front of 300 people i could not tell you one thing i said because of the roar of my head.” He told her, “you didn’t look nervous, i couldn’t even tell.” She said he also isn’t afraid to be honest about areas of improvement.

TroubleshootersSometimes mentors are brought in to help

guide a company through a transition or trou-bled time.

nolia Brandt and her husband Bill Brandt had reached a critical point in the life of their Talla-hassee-based information technology company, Brandt information Services, 10 years ago.

Their industry was dramatically changing and in order to stay competitive, the company had to diversify its client base beyond state government agencies. The company needed to secure federal contracts and obtain more private sector clients. To cope, the firm itself had to expand, from 10 to 60 employees, in a short period of time.

“We knew nothing about doing business with the federal government,” nolia Brandt said. “We had never asked our employees to travel to do business from other locations.”

The Brandts turned to Osteryoung at Florida State university. Osteryoung is one of the godfa-thers of mentorship in Tallahassee, along with Steve evans, a retired iBM executive. Osteryoung has likely mentored, at one time or another, half

the businesses in Tallahassee as part of his du-ties at the jim Moran institute.

“He’s brilliant,” nolia Brandt said of Ostery-oung. “not only is he one of the best financial analysts i know, but he is so humane and pas-sionate. What a lot of people don’t know when they are looking for a mentor is you really need someone who listens well and is compassion-ate, because sometimes all you really need is moral support.”

Osteryoung also had plenty of practical ad-vice. He told the Brandts how to structure their company so that it could handle a quadrupling of its workforce. He urged nolia Brandt to out-source several key functions, such as human resources and accounting, rather than hiring someone dedicated to that task. He also told the Brandts to develop an advisory group of diverse mentors who could help guide them through their growth phase.

Osteryoung’s advice worked. The Brandts went from $500,000 in annual revenue to $5 million in annual revenue in just a few years. They were able to sell the company in 2007 for an undisclosed sum and retire, which had been their goal all along.

another Osteryoung mentee is pam Butler, co-owner and CeO of Tallahassee-based aegis Business Technologies, which helps small busi-nesses outsource their information technology

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Fernando Senra and Krystin olinski


departments. “When i started my company, i did it all by myself and made a tremendous amount of mistakes,” Butler said. She was reticent to approach someone for help because she didn’t want to reveal the tricks of her trade. Finally, she got up the nerve to ask for Osteryoung’s help.

“He kept asking me all these financial ques-tions and i was being evasive,” Butler said. “He asked if he could take a look at my Quickbooks, and i thought, ‘That is like asking somebody if they can look in your underwear drawer.’ ”

Osteryoung did eventually coax Butler into showing him aegis’ profit and loss statements and from there he made suggestions on how to spend less money, such as eliminating costly and unnecessary insurance. “He would take my (profit and loss statement) and look at it and in two seconds point and say, ‘This one is not right and this one is not right. When i come back, i want this to be taken care of.’ ”

Having a mentor like Osteryoung provided the accountability Butler said she was lacking be-cause she had no boss. He also introduced her to other entrepreneurs who could share their own struggles. She began working with evans, the re-tired iBM executive, who helped her restructure the company and add seven new positions.

Osteryoung could also be remarkably pre-scient. “jerry came to me in early 2007 and said

‘Clean up your expenses. Get them down to the bottom line because i see something bad com-ing.’ ” Butler did and she said it helped her sur-vive the economic crisis. “i believe in mentors. i would never be without one.”

Sometimes a mentor is also your boss, though experts usually caution against such an arrange-ment. in Tallahassee, 26-year-old nate long found a mentor in his boss, jay Schleuning, at Visit Florida. it was long’s first full-time job in public relations.

“(Schleuning) gave me unusually large and challenging projects and responsibilities that al-lowed me to grow a lot more than my position would have warranted,” long said. “Within my first few months he allowed me to lead some of our media missions.”

This meant traveling to a city like Birming-ham or Chicago and pitching magazines and newspapers as to why they should do travel sto-ries on Florida.

Besides giving long challenging assignments, Schleuning gave him tips on how to dress and behave. “He taught me to be early for every-thing,” long said.

long said he could be candid with Schleuning about his long-term career goals, which include opening his own public relations firm.

“you don’t always feel comfortable with

everyone you work with,” long said. “not every-one can be a mentor. Some of the qualities that set mentors apart have to do with forcing you out of your comfort zone and finding skills you can’t see.”

Though Schleuning has left Visit Florida for the Florida Chamber of Commerce, long stays in touch. Meanwhile, long’s career is on a fast track. He’s already been promoted to industry relations manager and has become a mentor himself to college interns. n

mentoring

nolia Brant (center) with gloria and Dean Pugh

John russell with Wendee radke and nikki Berry


How�to�Pick�a�MentorDetermine what you are looking for in a mentor. Do you want someone within your company to act as your advocate, or someone outside your company who can guide you toward your long-term career or business goals? Experts say, ideally, you want both. When seeking a mentor, look for:

Prior�experience.�Ask your colleagues and business associates if they have a mentor and whether they enjoyed working with him or her.

A�person�you�admire�that seems to do his or her job well.

The�job�you�want�someday. Someone who has the job you want will have great advice about how to end up in his or her shoes.

A�nurturing�attitude and willingness to answer questions.

Trust.�Whether that person is inside or outside your industry, you must feel comfortable spilling your ambitions and business secrets.

Skills. Look for someone that understands a skill that you would like to learn.

A�person�who�provides�support but also challenges you to learn new things or find areas of improvement. You want someone who can provide critical feedback.

So�how�does�one�go�about�finding�a�mentor?>��If you own a company, try the Jim Moran Institute at Florida State

University. Not only is Jerry Osteryoung, its outreach director, a great resource, but he can suggest appropriate mentors for you, both inside and outside of Tallahassee.

>��Go to your accountant, banker or other professionals and ask for recommendations.

>��If your company has a mentoring program, sign up. If not, con-sider starting one, or join programs that organizations like the Chamber of Commerce sponsor.

>��Attend networking events and don’t hesitate to approach someone there you click with.

>��Online. MicroMentor matches mentors with protégés online for free. Most advice is given through email, the phone, Skype and occasionally in person.

“�I�was�blessed�throughout�my�entire�career.�I�had�people�rooting�for�me.�When�I�was�a�young�lawyer,�there�were�other�women�and�men�in�the�firm�who�took�me�under�their�wing.�Look�for�those�mentors,�because�sometimes�mentors�don’t�find�you�—�sometimes�you�seek�them�out.”�Michelle�Obama,�speaking�to�Katie�Couric;�Source:�Glamour�magazine

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2011 Legislature hands major victories to Gov. Rick Scott — and business

By Linda kLeindienst

DiD you know?2011 Legislative Session

Bills Filed: 2,186 (1,110 in the House, 1,076 in the Senate)

Bills Passed: 285

Session: 2011

850 Business Magazine | june – july 2011 | 27Photo by SCOTT HOLSTEIN

Corporate InCome tax Lawmakers boosted from $5,000 to $25,000 the amount of corpo-rate income exempt from the state

tax. That amounts to a cut of about $1,100 per business. The move effectively eliminates the corporate tax for nearly half of the roughly 30,000 businesses that now pay it. Estimated to cost the state about $30 million in lost tax revenues. The tax rate remains at 5.5 percent. Scott campaigned to eliminate the corporate income tax and plans to push for more cuts next year.

Corporate tax CredIt A tweak in the corporate tax credit scholarship allows companies that donate to a scholarship organiza-

tion to now claim 100 percent of that as a credit. (Current law only permits a credit of 75 percent.) The scholarships are used to help low-income students attend private schools.

eConomIC development Established a secretary of com-merce, who will have an office down the hall from the governor,

as the single point of contact for streamlining Florida’s economic development processes.

Growth manaGement Anyone challenging a developer’s environmental permit will have the burden of proving damage to the

environment to get the development stopped. Current law puts the burden on the developer to show the growth wouldn’t harm the environ-ment. At Scott’s behest, lawmakers virtually eliminated the state agency that regulates growth, the Department of Community Affairs. Lawmakers also killed a law that now requires developers help pay for new roads, schools and parks.

ImmIGratIon An appeal from big business, especially agri-busi-ness, helped kill an immigration bill over concerns that it would send

the wrong message to immigrant laborers who are key to the state’s tourism, agricultural and construction industries.

InsuranCe A sweeping property insurance rewrite includes several industry-backed changes, including reduced deadlines for filing sinkhole

and windstorm claims and allowing insurers to raise rates by up to 15 percent to cover in-creases in reinsurance costs. (The increases still must be approved by the Office of Insurance Regulation, but would be in addition to any other rate increases.)

professIons Workers will be allowed to get certain occupational licenses even if, as ex-felons, they have not had their civil rights re-

stored. The Senate, however, killed a measure that would have deregulated a handful of professions — including interior design and auctioneering — that are currently licensed by the state.

property taxes Businesses could see some tax relief if voters in 2012 approve a measure that would reduce from 10 percent to 5

percent the cap on assessment increases on commercial property.

sales tax holIday Sought by retailers hoping to boost the turnout for back-to-school shopping, con-sumers will get a three-day sales

tax holiday Aug. 12–14 for clothing and shoes priced under $75.

seaports Eliminates the duplica-tive requirements that enforce statewide seaport security stan-dards in addition to federal rules.

Supporters say that Florida seaports have been at a competitive disadvantage by having to adhere to both sets of security standards.

state revenue Cap A consti-tutional “Smart Cap” amendment to be placed before state voters in 2012 would replace the existing constitutional limit on state rev-

enues, which is pegged to personal income growth, with a limit based on inflation and changes in population.

unemployment The tax paid by businesses to cover unemploy-ment will be cut by 10 percent, sav-ing the average employer $18 per worker when the law takes effect

in 2012. And the maximum number of weeks that unemployed workers can receive state benefits is reduced from 26 to 23 weeks if the employment rate stays above 10.5 percent. (Weeks could be cut to as low as 12 or added, depending on the unemployment rate.) It will also be easier for businesses to show that an employee was fired for cause, meaning the worker would not get benefits. The maximum benefit will remain at $275 a week, one of the lowest in the country.

The News Service of Florida contributed to this report.

Gov. Rick Scott went into his first leg-islative session imploring lawmak-ers to focus laser-like on creating jobs, helping business and eliminat-

ing bureaucratic red tape. He emerged getting at least a piece of most everything he — and Flori-da’s business interests — asked for.

The legislature pulled a corporate income tax cut out of the hat at the end of the session, reduced government regulations, particularly on the environmental and growth management front, provided more money for economic devel-opment and set the stage for loosening the state’s grip on businesses that say they want to expand but have been stymied by red tape.

“This session, the Florida legislature passed five years of common sense reforms in two months,” said Mark Wilson, president and CeO of the Florida Chamber of Commerce. “Florida now has the opportunity to once again lead the nation in private sector job creation.”

As the session ended, the new governor called his first encounter with the legislature a “mem-orable one.”

“We’re on the path to turning the economy around … to making this the state where people want to start their business, grow their business or move their business to,” Scott said.

The highlights include $210 million in prop-erty tax relief, a reorganization of state agencies “with an eye toward economic development” and a change in the corporate income tax that will drop about half the businesses from the tax rolls.

jose Gonzalez, vice president of governmen-tal affairs for Associated Industries of Florida, said the change in Florida’s corporate income tax structure will entice capital investment in the state.

“Gov. Scott established some clear goals for making Florida the most business-friendly state,” he said. “And the Republican majority in the legislature delivered some key victories for his administration.”

Political and business leaders insist that what the legislature did this spring will entice busi-nesses to grow and whittle down Florida’s dou-ble-digit jobless rate.

“While many other states are raising taxes to balance their budgets, Florida’s legislature focused on job creation,” said Allan Bense of Panama City, chair of the Florida Chamber Board of Directors and a former speaker of the Florida House. “Florida sent a clear message that we are open for business.”

Here’s a look at some of the business issues tackled by the legislature during its 9-week spring session, which ended in the early morn-ing hours of May 7:

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850 Business Magazine | June – July 2011 | 29Photos by SCOTT HOLSTEIN and LAWRENCE DAVIDSON

n opening night in October 2009, Talla-hassee’s Hotel Duval, which had under-gone a major $15 million renovation,

transformed itself into Cirque du Soleil.There were drummers hanging from the hotel’s car-

port ceiling accompanied by ear-splitting music. exoti-cally dressed contortionists in silver body paint draped themselves around the hotel lobby and meeting rooms. And there was a fireworks display that could be viewed from the hotel’s swanky rooftop lounge.

The 1,000-person guest list was a veritable who’s who of Tallahassee notables.

That memorable grand opening party marked the beginning of Hotel Duval’s unprecedented popularity. It has become the go-to spot for events in Tallahassee

and its South Beach-inspired rooftop lounge is a favor-ite destination among young professionals.

not a bad start for two young men in their early 30s with no college degrees and no experience running hotels. What Hotel Duval developers James “Chad” Kittrell, 32, and John Thomas “J.T.” Burnette, 34, did have going for them was a hunger and willingness to bet big, an uncanny ability to recognize and deliver what their hometown lacks, and the capacity to fi-nance an ambitious multi-million dollar project in the middle of a severe recession.

Friends and business partners Kittrell and Burnette teamed up with a third partner, Frank Whitley, on the development of Hotel Duval. Many of Kittrell and Bur-nette’s real estate development projects are done under

Capital CorridorGadsden, Jefferson + Leon Counties

Redefining a CityYoung financiers at Hunter & Harp are the developers of Hotel Duval and the backers of many soon-to-be iconic Tallahassee locales by lilly rockwell

SOU N D BY T E S what’s new >> ed west has assumed the role of Leon County president for the 115-year-old Capital City Bank. Formerly executive vice presi-dent of sales leadership, West now oversees operations of the 15 offices located in Tallahassee, Capital City Bank’s headquarters.>> Veteran Tallahassee insiders Bob sparks and Rich Ramos have formed the Ramos and Sparks Group, a con-sulting firm that will specialize in com-munications and strategic planning.>> Long-time Tallahassee public rela-tions firm RB Oppenheim associates has ventured deeper into the digital pool with the launch of its new inte-grated digital marketing division, “Dig-ital Opps.” The firm recently merged with Catalyst Consultant Group LLC. Catalyst’s CEO and “chief ideation of-ficer,” Michael winn, serves in a dual role as chief digital officer at Digital

GAME CHANGERSJ.T. Burnett (left) and Chad Kittrell head up one of the most prolific — and imaginative — investment firms in the region.

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the name of Hunter & Harp Holdings, though they do business under many other names, such as Capital City Partners.

Quietly, over a span of a half-dozen years, Kittrell and Burnette have become a driving force behind many new development projects and businesses in the city, with ownership in compa-nies employing more than 600 people.

Besides Hotel Duval, this under-the-radar com-pany owns trendy restaurant Midtown Filling Station, and before that the Winery and Tapas restaurant in the same location. They opened Genghis Grill on Apalachee Parkway last year. They own Tallahassee-based Ol’ Man Treestands, which makes and sells hunting equipment. Burnette is also a part-owner in the IT company Brandt Information Services.

What most people don’t realize is that the bread and butter of their business is actually federal contracting work done under the name SheltonDean. Dating back to 2005, according to a federal database of contractors, SheltonDean re-ceived more than $64 million to repair and main-tain federal buildings.

“Our core business is federal contracting,” Bur-nette said. “everything you see and touch is really just an investment. It is funny that everybody thinks of us as Hotel Duval.”

nevertheless, their success at Hotel Duval has opened doors for them to do other major devel-opment projects that have the potential to revive overlooked parts of Tallahassee.

“They are visionary, you’ve got to give them that,” said Tallahassee Mayor John Marks, who met with Kittrell before hotel renovations were complete. “I like people who have vision and can see the potential in something. I don’t know that

anybody would have thought that (Hotel Duval) would be able to transform into what it is today.”

Young EntrepreneursHunter & Harp’s offices are located off South Monroe, near dingy car repair shops and modest strip malls. Their 13,000-square foot offices are renovated and modern.

Kittrell has a stubbled chin and the good looks of a tanned baseball player. He wears a suit with no tie. Interviewed by phone, Burnette is confi-dent, with a relaxed Southern drawl.

Both Kittrell and Burnette grew up in modest, middle-class homes and shared an early entrepre-neurial drive that continues to this day.

Opps and digital marketing manager at Oppenheim.>> A new Four Points by sheraton — formerly known

as Tallahassee’s “round hotel” on Tennessee Street — is slated to open this summer and become Tallahassee’s first LEED Certified hotel through the U.S. Green Building Coun-cil. Bo schmitz will be general manager and Cheryl hatcher, director of sales.>> The Red hills surgical Center, a joint venture between Tallahassee Memorial Hospital and 35 local physicians from sev-eral area practices, is open for business. The 17,000-square-foot multi-specialty ambula-tory surgery center features five operating rooms and several pre-op and recovery rooms. The facility is creating approximately 30 immediate new jobs.

>> The Gadsden County tourism Development Council has launched a new website and tourism cam-paign, highlighting the county’s top activities and attrac-tions. The newly designed website, eGadsden.com, includes an extensive list of places to stay and things to do, an events calendar, an easy-to-use itinerary-builder and an interactive blog written by Gadsden residents spotlighting local attractions.>> Veteran attorney R. terry Rigsby has joined the Tallahassee office of the Pennington, Moore, Wilkin-son, Bell & Dunbar law firm. Rigsby has more than 30 years experience in administrative law.>> Jim saunders has joined The News Service of Flor-ida. Saunders has written for Health News Florida and was the Tallahassee correspondent for the Daytona Beach News-Journal and the Florida Times-Union.>> CenturyLink and Qwest Communications have merged to create the nation’s third largest telecom-munications company. CenturyLink has also bought out information technology firm Savvis, giving it the op-portunity to expand its data storage services as more companies turn to cloud-computing. >> The March of Dimes has named Melissa K. Joiner as the Florida chapter’s state director of public af-fairs. She will be based out of the Big Bend Division in Tallahassee.>> hotel Duval, the first and only boutique hotel in Tallahassee, recently announced multiple promotions within its food and beverage team. steven adams has been promoted from Head Coach of Shula’s 347 Grill to director of Food & Beverage of Hotel Duval. John Mc-Carroll is the new Head Coach of Shula’s 347 Grill and Paul Maraist has been promoted to Assistant HeadCoach. Jasmine Clemons has been hired as business development manager of Shula’s 347.>> The Florida Justice association (formerly the Acad-emy of Florida Trial Lawyers) launched its newsroom, the FJA Newswire, in early spring, going live during the heart of the 2011 legislative session. The Newswire will focus on new legislation, defective products and other issues affecting Florida’s consumers and patients.>> Florida entrepreneur and Enterprise Florida Board Member Digivay “Danny” Gaekwad has acquired Tallahassee-based ISOCORP, Inc., which will become a subsidiary of NDS USA Inc. Founded in 2001, ISO-CORP is an IT staffing firm that works in the public and private sector.

COLLeGe COnneCtiOns >> talbot “sandy” D’alemberte, president emeritus of Florida State Uni-versity, and steven L. evans, an entrepreneur and IBM executive of 30 years prior to his retirement, were re-cently honored by the Florida State University College of Business with Sunshine State Ethics in Leadership Awards. The awards honor two individuals each year — one in the private sector and one in the public sec-tor — who have demonstrated a deep and unwavering commitment to the highest levels of integrity, ethical behavior and principled leadership.>> Longtime Florida State University supporters have made a $4.25 million gift that will expand the interna-tional reach of the Jim Moran institute for Global

quietly, over a span of a half-dozen years, kittrell and burnette have become a driving force behind many new developments and businesses in the city.

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REINVENTIONBurnette and Kitrell helped transform an old part of Tallahassee into a bustling “MidTown” that beckons young profes-sionals and influential people from all walks of life to its lively night life, shopping and eats. The Winery was what kickstarted the commercial development project.

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850 Business Magazine | June – July 2011 | 31

Kittrell’s parents divorced when he was young, and his mother lived in a tiny 800-square-foot home across from Kate Sullivan elementary, which he also shared with two brothers.

His mother worked in state government, and his father owned a fence-building company. Kittrell said he split his time between both of his parents.

up the road in Monticello, Burnette’s mother was a nurse and his father was an accountant. early on, Burnette had entrepreneurial leanings, with his first job raising chickens at age 14. A few years later he started an IT temp staffing business and also began working as a contractor and later got his roofing license.

“At 16, when Burnette Construction origi-nally started, I got a $200,000 contract in Quincy to rehab HuD housing,” Burnette said. Then he got a series of lucky breaks. One of his first roofing assignments was in Panama City just after a hurricane blew through. A $40,000 assignment turned into $1 million worth of repair work.

“luck has a lot to do with it,” Burnette said. Meanwhile, at leon High School, Kittrell

played on the baseball team and was hopeful he might be able to parlay that into a career. After high school, he went to Tallahassee Community College and played for their baseball team.

“I lived in a house with four guys and my Dad paid all my expenses,” Kittrell said. “It was a very easy life, and there wasn’t a whole lot to worry about.”

Kittrell decided he want to quit baseball and “party” instead, he said. So his father cut him off financially, explaining that he had made a grown-up decision with grown-up consequences. Kittrell called up old baseball coaches to inquire about job opportunities.

He landed a part-time job making minimum wage at the Department of Revenue and contin-ued going to school at TCC. not long after, he learned of an opening for an administrative as-sistant position in the marketing department at SunTrust Bank.

There was only one catch — it was full-time. With bills to pay, Kittrell jumped at the chance to make a full salary. A few months later SunTrust announced it was consolidating its marketing de-partment. Kittrell was told to move to Orlando, or seek employment elsewhere. Kittrell, who was then 19 or 20, reached out to Jimmy Alford, who was working in a SunTrust office that catered to highly paid doctors and surgeons.

“He had a position come open where I would be underneath him, and he would serve as my mentor,” Kittrell said. On his first day, he was asked to amortize a 30-year mortgage.

By hand. no calculator allowed.“I had no banking experience,” Kittrell said.

“I had worked in the marketing department, I understood a little bit, but not enough to be dangerous.”

It took him several tries, but eventually he learned how to do it.

“He taught me from the ground up, and then that grew into how the banking industry works and how banks worked,” Kittrell said. “He served as a great mentor to me.”

early on, Alford said Kittrell had a knack for mixing in the world of SunTrust’s wealthy clien-tele. “The thing I remember most about Chad was how well-liked he was,” Alford said. “How well he got along with other people. everyone at the bank liked him, he was good at nurturing relationships with customers, and at that time we were doing a private banking function for the medical com-munity; these were high-end people.”

Money to Play WithSoon Kittrell rose to the position of vice presi-dent and moved to Wakulla Bank, where he was vice president of commercial lending at age 24. Kittrell learned, just as he had at SunTrust, that banking wasn’t just number crunching. “It was about building relationships,” Kittrell said. Be-cause of his youth, he was entrusted with many clients under age 40 who had found similar suc-cess at a young age.

Kittrell was making what he called “decent money” for his age. Perhaps it was his exposure to financially savvy bankers, but Kittrell chose not to spend it on a nice car, clothes or nights out with friends. Instead, he pooled his money with some of his similarly financially blessed friends from high school and became a landlord.

“I bought my first house when I was 20 or 21,” Kittrell said. Records show in March of 2000, Kittrell bought one side of a duplex in Richview Park Circle, near Park and Capital Circle, for

entrepreneurship based in the College of Business.>> Ron Frazier has been named The Jim Moran In-stitute’s second entrepreneur-in-residence. He will oversee the Student Business Incubator and Busi-ness Plan Competition in addition to teaching courses in the undergraduate entrepreneurship curriculum.>> The Greater tallahassee Chamber of Com-merce has partnered with Tallahassee Community College and the Small Business Development Center at FAMU to help counsel local businesses and better train their workers. TCC will provide a professional development training series and the Small Business Development Center will provide free counseling services and workshops from a satellite location within the Chamber’s downtown office. >> Recent graduates of the Florida State University College of Motion Picture arts topped all other film schools in the nation at the 32nd Annual College Television Awards by bringing home four trophies.

hOnORs >> The Florida Association of Insurance Agents has awarded Bill Gunter its prestigious Mc-Kay Cup, presented to members demonstrating ex-ceptional legislative policy and fundraising prowess. Gunter, a former congressman and state insurance commissioner, is chairman of the board of Rogers, Gunter, Vaughn Insurance, Inc., of Tallahassee, and CEO of Bill Gunter & Associates, a financial and in-surance consulting practice.>> ashley anderson, Pe, an engineer in the Talla-hassee office of Atkins (formerly PBS&J), was named 2010 Young Engineer of the Year by the Big Bend Chapter of the Florida Engineering Society.>> Kathy Baughman McLeod of Bryant Miller Ol-ive has been accepted to Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business Global Executive MBA program, which is designed to enhance the international busi-ness acumen of senior level executives.>> CoreMessage recently received multiple honors at the Florida Public Relations Association Capital Chapter 2011 Image Awards ceremony, including the highest honor, the Grand All Image Award, for the Florida Transportation Builders’ Association’s 2010 Legislative Session Campaign. The initiative was also recognized with an Image Award in the public affairs division.>> Performing Arts Center of Tallahassee has an-nounced that amy s. Lowe, owner and artistic di-rector, has been designated as an ABT® Certified Teacher for American Ballet Theatre’s National Train-ing Curriculum.

Capital Corridor

A NEW DIMENSIONHotel Duval’s swanky “Level 8” rooftop lounge instantly became the place to see and be seen in the capital city.

$68,000. Three years later, in 2003, he bought the other side of that duplex for $86,000. Records show he sold both in 2005 for $150,000 each, a profit of $146,000.

“We were able to gain some cash and some assets and we were doing OK, and then we had our real jobs, too,” Kittrell said. “So we were in good shape.”

Through his work at Wakulla Bank, Kittrell met Burnette, who by then had done very well with his construction company and was starting to pick up more federal contracts.

“Both of us went to a couple years of college and dropped out,” Kittrell said.

The two became friends and one day decided to become business partners. “He and I formed a company,” Kittrell said. At first, it had a different name, but eventually they settled on Hunter & Harp — their mothers’ maiden names.


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The men were involved in one project to build condominiums in Alabama that went bust and taught them a big lesson, though Burnette said their involvement in it was minimal.

“During the boom … anybody can get financ-ing. It was a lot easier for projects like that,” Kittrell said. By contrast, today, if “a bunch of 25-year-olds” tried to get a multi-million loan to build a condominium “they would throw you out the door.”

Early Success at MidtownThough they were doing well from Shelton-Dean contracting work, Kittrell and Burnette were looking for investment opportunities. They started small, such as purchasing a ware-house with a tenant or a small office building. The idea was to generate cash flow to sustain them while they searched for bigger projects with more payoff.

The first project that garnered media atten-tion was The Winery and Tapas restaurant in Midtown. Opened in 2007, it helped lure young professionals to Midtown.

Jon Gardner, a wine aficionado, was brought in to run the bar and restaurant.

The Winery, with its extensive wine list and modern décor, quickly became a favorite happy hour spot and the Tapas restaurant got rave re-views for its food.

“We saw a desire of young professionals to have somewhere to go where they didn’t have to go down to Tennessee Street and socialize with 19-year-olds,” Kittrell said. “The entire Midtown district really made a lot of sense to us.”

Soon after, the sleepy Midtown district be-came a dining and shopping destination, with new neighboring businesses, including clothing boutique Cole Couture, rival wine bar The Wine loft and cupcake shop lucy and leo’s Cupcakery, which was featured on the Food network.

“We’d go anywhere and we knew what we were good at, which was financing,” Kittrell said. He insists their expertise in financing doesn’t only come from his banking background. “I learned a great deal from my mentors on how to navigate the system, but the real juice on what we do now we learned on our own.”

Kittrell and Burnette spent a lot of time figur-ing out how to secure big bank loans when banks were reluctant to loan money. They eventually began using a combination of u.S. Small Business Administration and conventional loans.

For instance, the SBA gave Hunter & Harp, under the name Duval Partners, a total of $5.25 million in loans to develop Hotel Duval. “A lot of that stuff we know (about SBA loans) are the keys to the kingdom, so we don’t really give that information out,” Kittrell said. “It has cost us a lot of money to learn those lessons.”

Going BoutiqueHotel Duval was first built in 1951 and later be-came an FSu dormitory and offices. In the 1980s it was bought by Radisson and later became a Park Plaza hotel.

Hunter & Harp bought the hotel as a “real es-tate play,” Burnette said.

“Hotel Duval took on a life of its own,” Burnette said. “In the middle of that purchase you had a market that took a turn in the wrong direction. At that point you have to rethink your decision. We knew the hotel had to be the best of breed.”

Before construction even began, Kittrell and Burnette hired Marc Bauer, who had gone to Flori-da State and had experience opening new hotels.

“I was incredibly impressed by their knowl-edge and business acumen at their age,” Bauer said. “They are sharp and entrepreneurial.”

Though Kittrell and Burnette had spent most of their lives here, they had a good sense of what Tallahassee lacked. “We go out and listen to the market. We do a lot of listening,” Kittrell said. Many people in their 20s told him they would like to stay in Tallahassee, but felt there weren’t

enough jobs and entertainment choices.They set out to research other hip boutique

hotels, traveling to new york and Miami’s South Beach hotels, especially taking a liking to the sleek Gansevoort Hotel in new york. “A lot of our concept and our vision came from new york.”

Catherine Baker, Burnette’s wife, is Hunter & Harp’s in-house interior designer and helped bring that vision to life, selecting the furniture, flooring and lighting.

The risk they were taking wasn’t lost on them, Kittrell said. “We were all at a point in our lives, where J.T. and I weren’t married, we didn’t have kids, so if we were going to take a risk like that, we were at a point to take it,” Kittrell said.

Two years later, the success of Hotel Duval is undisputed. It has simultaneously become a pop-ular place for visitors to stay, but also a hotspot for locals with its rooftop lounge, ground-floor

Capital Corridor

WINNING TEAMBurnette and Kittrell rely on a team of seasoned professionals as business partners to make their (investment) dreams a reality. From left: Jamie Langley (Genghis Grill), Marc Bauer (Hotel Duval), Burnette, Kittrell, Richard Wise (Brandt Information Services) and Alex Beltrami (Midtown Filling Station).

“a lot of that stuff we know (about sba loans) are the keys to the kingdom, so we don’t really give that information out. it has cost us a lot of money to learn those lessons.” chad kittrell


lunch and breakfast bistro and upscale Shula’s 347 restaurant.

Thirty percent of the hotel’s guests live with-in two hours of Tallahassee, and 45 percent of the hotel’s revenue comes from hotel book-ings — meaning the majority of Hotel Duval’s income comes from its food and beverage ser-vices, Bauer said.

The owners of Hunter & Harp are seen as the men with the Midas touch, able to transform buildings or even entire parts of town into some-thing hip and trendy.

“Before that project we kind of flew under the radar,” Kittrell said. “We didn’t really want to be out there. And we are still not those type of guys.”

RestaurateursHunter & Harp is increasingly moving into the restaurant business. The Winery and Tapas res-taurant has been transformed into the Midtown Filling Station. It is run by managing partner Alex Beltrami, who used to own Fusion and Tan-tra lounge.

Beltrami said he was about to leave Tallahas-see and move to Austin when he was persuaded by Kittrell and Burnette to stay and open a new restaurant.

The Filling Station became an instant hit, with a garage theme and bar food done in a gourmet style. For instance, they have tater tots smothered in a three-cheese fondue and bacon. “A good CeO can’t wear all the hats and do everything, but they recognize talent and put it in the right spot. It’s been a great relationship,” Beltrami said.

Jamie langley is another restaurateur who ended up in business with Hunter & Harp.

The owner of the Beef ‘O’ Brady’s franchises in Tallahassee was working on opening a Genghis Grill in Tallahassee last year. Genghis is a res-taurant franchise offering build-your-own Mon-golian stir fry. langley was told by his business partners one morning by email that they were not interested in investing in Genghis.

Sitting in a hotel room in Clearwater, langley panicked. He had already told the Genghis Grill headquarters to green-light the project, but he needed more than $1 million to get the Genghis Grill up and running in Tallahassee.

He racked his brain to see if he could think of someone with the cash and interest to help him out. He remembered a nice guy named J.T. who used to come to the Beef ‘O’ Brady’s on Thomas-ville Road and shoot the breeze with him about the restaurant business.

“I thought, ‘Hell, this guy, maybe he has res-taurants that I don’t even know about,’ ” langley said. “I remembered he had a Hotel Duval hat on and I knew his initials were J.T.” He called Hotel Duval that morning and asked to speak with J.T.

langley spent 10 minutes explaining his di-lemma. He told Burnette what the development

Brandt Information Services in 2007 from nolia and Bill Brandt. They now own it in partnership with Burnette and employ more than 100 people. “John Thomas and I are the day-to-day operators and J.T. Burnette is our third partner that helps us at the 30,000-foot level,” Wise said. “He is a great entrepreneur and a great financier … . J.T. is a guy that has the big idea and understands technol-ogy and business and can keep us pushed toward growing and new markets.”

Wise said he is impressed with Hunter & Harp’s efforts to revive Tallahassee. “(Hotel Du-val) was something the city definitely needed,” Wise said. When he recruits people to come work at Brandt, he said having amenities like Hotel Duval and the Midtown area helps.

“everything we do is about bringing some-thing new to Tallahassee, or something new to the market,” Kittrell said. “If it’s a new experience, people take hold of that.”

What Hunter & Harp invest in may seem like a mixed bag, but Burnette said there are lessons learned at each business than can be applied to the other.

“I’ve owned over 14 businesses,” Burnette said. “What happens when you own 14 is you get to see this full spectrum across all these different industries and all the similarities.”

Though they did not disclose the company’s revenue or profit, it’s clear Kittrell and Burnette have had enormous success. But both take pains to behave modestly.

Property records indicate Kittrell doesn’t even own a house. Burnette’s wife is listed as the owner of a home purchased for $1.5 million in 2009.

“I’ve never in my life spent more than 10 per-cent of my income to live off,” Burnette said. When asked why he chose to use his money to make in-vestments, he said the answer was simple.

“It doesn’t matter who you are, if it costs you only $100,000 to live, what in the world are you going to do with the rest of it?” Burnette said. “This is what makes the most sense to me — en-abling people to meet that goal of ‘We are going to produce something.’ ”

To that end, Burnette said they are now working with Florida State university to help them commercialize some of their solar energy technology, a direction he’s excited about tak-ing and the reason for a recent trip to China to conduct research.

Kittrell said he appreciates the unique capac-ity Hunter & Harp has to make Tallahassee a bet-ter place to live.

“Right now we’ve got a reputation of being the capital, driven by state government and Florida State university and FAMu and TCC,” Kittrell said. “If I had an overall vision, hope-fully we build a city that one day can hold the talent that we produce — and that is when the city will grow.” n

“ we like to identify people with experience and determine what they are qualified to do and enable them to pursue their dreams,” j.t. burnette

costs would be and promised to use his own money first.

He was shocked when after only a few min-utes Burnette told him: I’m in.

Did a stranger just agree to help finance a $1 million project?

“I said, ‘Do you understand that this is a big deal?’ and he said, ‘I get it, you just tell me how much stock you want and we’ll take the rest,’ ” langley said.

later, Burnette told langley that he agreed to help finance the project, because in his talks with him at Beef ‘O’ Brady’s he had seemed like a nice guy.

“We like to identify people with experience and determine what they are qualified to do and enable them to pursue their dreams,” Burnette explained. In that way, Hunter & Harp is closer to a venture capital firm that invests in start-ups.

“Genghis has gross sales in excess of $4 million,” Burnette said. “Three to four stores will open this year and within a two-year time Genghis will have gross revenues in excess of $10 million.” He said his decision wasn’t based on the Genghis concept.

“I only believed in Jamie,” Burnette said.

From Stir Fry to ComputersHunter & Harp has other businesses that most Tallahasseans never interact with.

Burnette is also a part-owner in Brandt Infor-mation Services, which provides information technology services to governments. For in-stance, Brandt has found a niche providing labor market research and mobile solutions to the state of Florida and the federal government.

Richard Wise, 34, and John Thomas, bought


850

CommerCial real estate

From industrial parks and vacant land to office buildings and retail, we provide a snapshot of what is happening across

Northwest Florida — and a glimpse into the future.

S p e c i a l R e p o R t

2 | S P E C I A L R E P O R T | 850 commercial real estate outlook 2011

COMMERCIAL REAL ESTATE IN THE (850)

Northwest Florida’s com-mercial real estate has tak-en a devastating financial punch the last few years, a victim of the Great Reces-sion and, in some parts of

the region, last year’s Gulf oil spill.Many businesses shuttered their doors. Emp-

ty offices, retail outlets and restaurants were scattered across the landscape from Pensacola to Monticello.

But experts say the times they are now a-changin’. This year, as the national and state economies struggle to right themselves, so too is the 850 region’s commercial real estate market.

“It’s nowhere near recovery, but it’s headed that way,” said Ed Murray, president and co-founder of Tallahassee-based TALCOR Commer-cial Real Estate Services and a 27-year veteran of the industry. “It’s substantially better than two years ago.”

Companies that have been tightening their belts since the bottom dropped out of the econ-omy are starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel, said Jim Hizer, president of the Pensacola Bay Area Chamber of Commerce. “More and more companies, large and small, are consider-ing investments.”

Malls are being transformed. Commercial parks are expanding. The surplus of office space

is beginning to dwindle. Empty apartments are being filled, growing the need for more multi-family dwellings. “Big Box” stores like Walmart and Best Buy are looking for scaled-down prop-erties to expand their presence in new, smaller markets. Out-of-state retailers are again looking to move into growing markets — and property owners are ready to make them a deal.

“Landlords are being very aggressive,” said Daniel Wagnon, a shareholder with Structure Commercial Real Estate in Tallahassee. “The deals we’re seeing are (priced up to) 30 percent below 2006 levels.”

Change is coming faster in some parts of the region than in others. But the certainty is that the population of Northwest Florida is growing, in some of our counties by double digits. Between 2000 and 2010, Leon County grew by 15 percent, Bay County by nearly 14 percent and Santa Rosa County by 28.6 percent.

Those new residents need services and goods. And more will be coming — retiring boomers for certain, as well as thousands connected to changes at local military bases. The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter and the Army’s 7th Special Forces are moving to Eglin Air Force Base — a change that by itself is expected to bring about 10,000 troops and dependents into the region.

“Eglin is one of two bases getting the F-35 and that’s going to bring a lot of jobs to the area.

We’re already working with several defense contractors who will be moving big numbers of people here when the plane gets here,” said Craig Barrett, CEO of NBI, which has offices in Fort Walton Beach and South Florida and plans to open one soon in Panama City.

Meanwhile, he added, prices are just right for savvy investors who have been waiting for this market.

“Pricing is at the bottom,” Barrett said. “Right now is the worst time to sell and the best time to buy.”

Capital RegionFishing tournaments for employee’s families. Soapbox derbies. Green technology. Unlimited broadband width.

Summit East is a 117-acre high-tech campus in Tallahassee where 27 companies employ up to 550 workers — and that’s just in Phase One, which is now built out. Phase Two’s 60 acres have 15 parcels that will be ready to build this summer. Two parcels were sold even before the launch of a new marketing campaign for the park, which is located east of downtown and has easy access to Interstate 10.

“When other parks have 15 percent vacan-cies, we’re 95 percent leased up,” said George Banks, broker and managing member of Sum-mit Group Commercial Properties. “A lot of it

There are bargains to be found as Northwest Florida’s once-sinking commercial real estate market slowly recovers


TheTitanicTurns




850 commercial real estate outlook 2011 | S P E C I A L R E P O R T | 3


MODEL CITIZENThe glossy new corporate headquarters of Tallahassee-based Florida Commerce Credit Union is located near several other mid- to small-size businesses that are thriving in the vibrant, employee-friendly environment of Summit East, an office park in the Capital City.



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has to do with identifying the businesses you are trying to attract.”

The technology alone has helped attract com-panies like Florida Commerce Credit Union, IBM, URS Engineering, Mainline, Megas Soft-ware and United Technologies.

While Summit East may have a unique suc-cess story, local realtors say that Tallahassee has not been as hard hit on the commercial real es-tate front as counties to the west.

Carlton Dean, managing director for Sperry Van Ness/Southland Commercial Real Estate Advisors in North Florida, said the local market has been partly protected by its universities and public sector jobs.

“Tallahassee has few retail properties that are distressed (other than the Tallahassee Mall) ... . Restaurant demand is as strong as it has ever been,” Dean said. “Many of the businesses that are already located here have used this economic downturn as a time to re-evaluate their real estate occupancy costs and take advantage of lower pric-es by negotiating restructured or new leases.”

While a few pockets of retail have held up, like in Midtown, rents in the city’s northeast sec-tor that were averaging as high as $25 per square foot are now down to $15. Many local businesses have used those kind of financial breaks to downsize their office space and save money.

“They were happy to get the deal, but that’s not good for the economy,” said Jim Bettinger, managing director and broker of Regional Real Estate Group. “But I think that has stopped. We’re starting to see signs that it’s loosening up. Right now we’re working with users for a total of 55,000 square feet. That’s a good chunk. A couple of (local) businesses are expanding; two are new.”

To help the situation, local brokers say the city and county have become more pro-develop-ment, helping to fast-track new projects.

Said Danny Manausa, a real estate attorney in-volved in projects from drafting contracts to per-mit approval: “They finally realized, you grow or you die.”

emeRald Coast & Bay CountyThe commercial real estate market in Northwest Florida’s coastal communities took a major hit from the recession and oil spill, but improve-ments and new service at local airports, along with changes at local military bases, may be-come part of the answer to local prayers for an expedited recovery.

“Probably one of the hottest markets in com-mercial has been Fort Walton Beach … because

of the ramp-up in military spending,” said John Paul Somers, a broker who handles commer-cial and residential real estate from Pensacola to Panama City. “With the massive migration of personnel and their families, you will have friends, high-tech companies, defense contrac-tors (and) people in support functions coming to this area.”

The region’s focus on the aerospace and avia-tion sector because of the military is also expect-ed to help boost the desirability of local commer-cial and industrial properties. Among the major marketers is The St. Joe Company, which hopes to fill industrial space around the new North-west Florida Beaches International Airport in Bay County with defense-related companies.

New low-cost passenger service by Southwest Airlines at the Bay County airport and Vision Airlines at Northwest Florida Regional Airport (Okaloosa County) is another asset local realtors believe will have a positive impact on the local business economy. Not only do the affordable flights open the region to more visitors who oth-erwise might not have come to the area, giving a boost to the tourist industry, it introduces North-west Florida to potential entrepreneurs and na-tional companies looking to expand.

“The first thing we’re focusing on is site con-sultants — 70 to 80 percent of all projects come through them,” said Neal Wade, senior vice president of economic development for St. Joe, who is working to market the company’s major commercial real estate project, VentureCross-ings, at the airport. “We have found that North-west Florida is a fairly unknown region, so we are working on them as much as we possibly can. We’ve been a somewhat forgotten area, but I think that’s going to change.”

On the retail side, even outlet malls like Silver Sands in Destin experienced some downturn.

“We’ve been flat the last couple of years,” said Art Butterfield, vice president of leasing for

Howard Group, which owns Silver Sands and Grand Boulevard. “To be flat is the new up.”

While some say they feel like they are turn-ing the Titantic, they are beginning to see some change.

Last year Rooms To Go opened a 30,000- square-foot showroom in Destin Commons and later this year Lowe’s Home Improvement will open a new 94,000 square foot store there.

“We do extensive research before consider-ing any site in any community, and we look at hundreds of factors before making a decision … (including) home ownership in the area, popula-tion, access to major roadways … growth in the community,” said Stacey Lentz, a spokesperson for Lowe’s.

Silver Sands has 100 designer factory stores with 465,200 feet of retail space — and only an 8 percent vacancy rate. The stores that bounced back the quickest are the ones selling luxury goods because “the people at the top are loosen-ing their purse strings,” Butterfield said.

Value retailing, he added, remains fairly strong. Consumers have gotten into the mindset of frugality — and with high gas prices they’ll likely continue looking for bargains.

Of course, those looking to sell or lease office and retail space or restaurant locations are also willing to make deals. Rents and sale prices have been cut. Shopping centers are willing to put up better signage or reposition some tenants into more visible locations. Deals are being cut to customize office space for new tenants.

David Lee, general manager of Pier Park in Panama City Beach, said he didn’t lower rent, but worked with his tenants to make sure they could pay their bills.

“It was in all of our best interests to work through those issues during difficult times,” he said.

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has about 1 million square feet of retail and restaurant space. The occupancy rate is “well above” 95 percent and about half the tenants are local entrepreneurs.

“We offer something new,” Lee explained. “We not only have retail, but amusements, res-taurants, the beach. It’s a unique overall experi-ence that isn’t offered anywhere else in North-west Florida.”

pensaCola One of the slowest areas to rebound in the 850 region has been Pensacola, which in March had 10.3 percent unemployment and was one of Northwest Florida’s slowest growing coun-ties over the past decade. What has been selling mostly has been the very low end — property that is distressed, bank-owned land and property people need to turn into cash.

“There have been a couple of commercial building starts around here, but two does not make a trend,” said Mike Mangrum, director of commercial real estate for Coldwell Banker in Pensacola. “Residential real estate has begun to rebound, but not so much in commercial.”

Leasing is what has sustained the local com-mercial real estate market in the toughest times, “it’s what has kept a lot of folks alive,” explained Mangrum, chairman of the Pensacola Associa-tion of Realtors. Some people who owned had to sell and get into rental or had to downsize, so that kept some deal action going, but not what Man-grum would classify as economic development.

Office space remains a soft market — but rates are down, and it’s a good time for businesses to move in.

“In the wake of the oil spill, some companies teetered or went out,” said Hizer of the Pensa-cola Chamber. “We probably hit the high water mark of vacant space last fall, but the market is now recovering. Our tourist numbers have been up four months in a row. In February this year, they were 30 percent higher than Febru-ary of 2010.”

Some new commercial projects are slowly be-ginning to pop up in the region. A $42 million development, which includes a Hyatt Place ho-tel and a mix of office and retail, is underway at the Pensacola Gulf Coast Regional Airport. The construction is expected to employ 500 people and, on completion, the businesses to be located there are expected to create 235 jobs. And im-provement money is being pumped into busi-nesses like the Margaritaville Beach Hotel.

In downtown Pensacola, the old sewage treatment plant has finally been torn down to make way for a community Maritime Park and

technology center — something long sought by the local business community.

Last year the Chamber launched Vision 2015, an economic development campaign designed to create 3,000 new jobs, and this summer it plans to kick off a major marketing campaign to lure new industry and business.

Echoing a theme repeated in other areas of the region, Hizer added, “We need to raise our visibility with the professional site selector com-munity. Northwest Florida has not been on the radar. In the next couple of months we have trips planned to strategic markets like Atlanta, New York City and Chicago to increase our visibility. We’re going to get there.”

RuRal Small towns scattered between the cattle ranch-es, cotton fields and farms of Northwest Florida probably face the biggest challenge when it comes to luring industry and manufacturing plants that will boost their commercial real es-tate market.

Opportunity Florida has won a $23.6 million federal grant to provide a broadband network in eight rural counties — Calhoun, Franklin, Gadsden, Gulf, Holmes, Jackson, Liberty and Washington. Many hope the technology boost will encourage the development of more com-mercial properties.

Another glimmer of hope is the project to turn Port St. Joe into a deepwater port that would then encourage more commercial development in the region, especially around the port and at the Port St. Joe Commercial Park.

For Jackson County, meanwhile, it was a ma-jor victory to win a Love truck stop planned for the interchange at U.S. Highway 231 and I-10.

“I hope it will plant the seed at a sleepy inter-section,” said Robby Roberts, the former Cham-ber of Commerce chairman who runs Prudential Jim Roberts Realty in Marianna.

To put it mildly, he adds, “It’s been kind of dead.” The county suffered a major blow several years ago when it lost Alliance Laundry, which occupied a still-vacant 284,000-square-foot plant that employed 450. Yet it does have the 75-acre Family Dollar distribution center at I-10 and Green Circle Bio Energy, which built the world’s largest wood pellet plant in Cottondale.

“We have the interstate, the rail system, the rivers, the new airport,” Roberts said. “The stars are trying to line up somehow. When they do, there will be great things happening here.” n

Writers Jason Dehart and Ann McQueen contributed to this report.

SaNTa RoSa BEaCh’S WalmaRt ContRoveRsyA 76,727-squAre Foot WAl-mArt superceNter opeNed on U.S. 98 in Santa Rosa Beach last June, but the project was met with debate. Opponents cited environ-mental concerns and worries about the impact on small business. Sup-porters focused on sales tax reve-nue, job creation and below-market prices for a struggling work force.

“I believe our area businesses have expressed mixed feelings through the process of Walmart coming to town. On one hand, many are concerned about commercial-izing our pristine coast and taking away from our local businesses al-ready established here. On the oth-er hand, many are happy to see the economic development our area is experiencing. In any case, it is here and we are resilient and resourceful residents willing to make the best of this change,” said Kitty Whitney, president and CEO of the Walton Area Chamber of Commerce.

The store has hired about 215 as-sociates, 75 percent of whom are new to the company.

— Ann McQueen

haRBoRwalk VillagE phase iiThere’s no doubt that developer Peter Bos of Legendary Inc. is opti-mistic about the future of the Emer-ald Coast, and in particular, Destin’s East Pass.

“What makes the Gulf Coast unique is the East Pass. We have a lot of beach everywhere, but there is only one East Pass,” he said.

This explains his $200 million investment in HarborWalk Village, which includes the Emerald Grande hotel and Destin Harbor-side village with shops, restaurants, condomini-ums and entertainment. The project is about half finished.

Construction on Phase II will be-gin “when the economy stabilizes and improves,” Bos said.

Plans include an additional 100,000 square feet of retail space, for a total of 200,000, and 250 combined hotel/condominium units. No cost estimate is available yet.

— Ann McQueen



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Aptly named, VentureCross-ings is a 1,000-acre commer-cial real estate project that sits at the hub of a transpor-tation network that can open the world to a business.

Under development by The St. Joe Company, it is one of the largest commercial projects in the country and includes plans for office space, retail, restaurants, industrial and manufactur-ing facilities and warehouses. The big plus? It’s got access to a 10,000-foot runway at Northwest Florida Beaches International Airport — and to a nearby seaport, rail lines and a major east-west interstate highway.

“This is new space with so much potential,” said Neal Wade, the former head of the Alabama Development Office who last fall joined St. Joe as senior vice president of economic development.

“Ten years ago this was only pine trees. It was

a white piece of paper and you could do what-ever you want — and with a brand new airport. The key part is that it is an international airport, and I believe we’ll soon be having cargo flights from places like Europe and South America.”

The first 100-acre phase of the project is where St. Joe plans to build its new corporate offices, having recently relocated its headquarters from Jacksonville to Northwest Florida. The second, 300-acre phase is now being marketed, and Wade believes it will end up being used mostly by companies involved in renewable energy and the aerospace sector.

“There are more than 300 aerospace and defense companies in the Northwest Florida region,” Wade said. “The airport and Venture-Crossings sits right in the center of the region’s military bases.”

The third phase, encompassing 600 acres, will have direct “through the fence” access to the

airport runway.Wade said St. Joe is currently focused on

making economic development site consul-tants aware of the project and the region. With Northwest Florida having suffered tourism setbacks the last two years from the Great Re-cession and then the BP oil spill, “the economic challenges have forced leaders in a lot of areas to realize that you can’t live on tourism alone. Economic diversity is a very important thing.” This month the company will be talking up its venture at the Paris Air Show and has Asia, Cen-tral and South America and Cuba in its sights as areas of opportunity.

“We (at St. Joe) have been characterized as the 800-pound gorilla. With that comes responsibil-ity,” Wade said. “Owning about 560,000 acres in this region, we have a responsibility to help grow this economy.” n

at the Crossroadsgiving Northwest Florida business access to air, sea and land







Expanding businesses need room to grow, and new businesses need a place to start. Finding the right spot of commercial land in Northwest Florida takes a savvy developer and a solid business

plan, especially in this day and age.“I know that throughout the 16 counties

there is vacant, shovel-ready land,” said Cindy Anderson, marketing committee chairwoman of Florida’s Great Northwest, the economic devel-opment arm of the Panhandle. “Local economic developers are making a point to ensure that we have product ready for new industries looking to

come into Northwest Florida and for our existing industries that may want to expand.”

In Tallahassee, there are 21 sites in the four counties that make up the capital city’s metro-politan statistical area, according to Beth Kirk-land, executive director of the Economic Devel-opment Council of Tallahassee/Leon County. According to the EDC, these include the Gretna Industrial Park in Gadsden County, which offers 75 acres of available land just two miles north of Interstate 10. Here, the streets are paved and already hooked up to water, sewer and electri-cal services. In Leon County, there is the Airport Commerce Center, which also has 75 total acres

and tracts ranging in size from half-acre up to 16 acres. The area is zoned Planned Unit Develop-ment, which allows for office, light manufactur-ing and distribution with quick access to major roads. Also in Leon County is Northwest Passage on the northwest side of Tallahassee with “easy access” to I-10.

Kirkland said many incentives, programs and service utilities exist to make these tracts, and others, prime for development.

“The EDC will assist companies looking to bring jobs to Florida,” she said, noting that the EDC’s website maintains a list of available prop-erties and acts as sort of an MLS for interested

shovel-readyDepending on where you go, there is a vacant

commercial lot ready for the right owner

By Jason dehart

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commercial developers.“Around (Tallahassee Regional Airport) there

are 1,200 acres of properly zoned land,” Kirkland said. “That is an example of a publicly held op-portunity. On the privately held side there are several opportunities that are entitled through the growth management process. We’ve got Summit East preparing its second phase and will allow an additional 800,000 square feet of com-mercial and light industrial space. Canopy, the (505-acre) Welaunee mixed-use development, is going to be residential, commercial, medical and light industrial.”

In Bay County the biggest challenge is lack of appropriate inventory or desirable inventory, said Janet Watermeier, Bay County Economic Development Alliance executive director. She said there currently is a 20-acre “pad” that’s ready for development in the Intermodal Distribution Center, a 250-acre business park owned by Port Panama City. Port Panama City includes the core 138-acre port located on Dyers Point, just off U.S. Highway 98 at the southwestern boundary of Panama City, and the distribution center, about 10 miles to the northeast on U.S. Highway 231.

“The utilities and dirt are ready. You just have to put the building on it. It has rail access and it’s on Highway 231, and connected to the port by

that in Santa Rosa County there are three indus-trial parks, all of which have property owned by the county. These come with pricing guidelines approved by the county leadership, and the county also provides discounts based on factors such as number of employees a company will be needing, the average wage rate they pay and what type of industry it is.

“So those are shovel-ready with specific pric-es,” Anderson said. “The prices vary from $35,000 an acre up to $75,000 an acre, based on the needs of the company looking for property.”

In that way, Anderson said, land that is public-ly owned has certain advantages over land that’s privately held.

“Private property owners are in the land sale business and economic developers are in the job creation business,” she said. “So, if a company comes with a lot of jobs and has a high wage rate, we can drop the price very low, to (provide incen-tive for) them to come. Whereas, we don’t have as much flexibility with the private sector.”

Anderson said Florida’s Great Northwest, long famous for its military-industrial complex, is always looking to attract more of that high-tech sector.

“We target aerospace and defense across the 16 counties of Northwest Florida as well as

laNDmaRk CENTER FoRT walToN BEaChPlans are still underway to build a hotel at the corner of Miracle Strip Parkway and Perry Avenue in down-town Fort Walton Beach. Developers of landmark Center are ironing out negotiations with possible hotel franchises before finalizing details and beginning construction on the 120,000-square-foot building. The 1.4-acre site is ideal for the three-story hotel with ground-floor retail space, said Gary Wright, a partner in the project. Estimated construction cost ranges from $10 to $12 million. Developers purchased the land for $1.9 million. — Ann McQueen

rail,” she said. But there’s more to come in the near future. A parcel of 1,400 acres around the new Northwest Florida Beaches International Airport will become available once it is permit-ted and approved in about a year, she said. But until then, nothing can be developed there.

“Then there is VentureCrossings at West Bay (site of the planned headquarters for The St. Joe Company), and when that is permitted there will be lots of great industrial and light industrial sites out near the new airport,” Watermeier said.

However, Watermeier said there are other challenges facing Bay County, such as the lack of available vacant buildings. She said 80 percent of the inquiries her office receives want an existing building that meets their criteria. And that’s a tough sale in her neck of the woods.

“Most industrial sites either are small or they’re not yet fully entitled. You’d have to get some approvals to put something in the ground. Or, they’re stand-alone pieces and not in a park. That can be difficult for some customers,” she said.

Ferd Salomon, a commercial realtor who does business in Santa Rosa and Escambia counties, said Santa Rosa County has done a good job of making industrial land available but not so much in Escambia.

“They’d like to have more inventory of coun-ty-owned industrial property for a commercial park, but it doesn’t have to be smoke stacks. I think there is a lot of promise for that. There is a shortage of publicly-owned industrial property, generally,” Salomon said.

Anderson at Florida’s Great Northwest said

renewable energy companies, companies associ-ated with human performance and information technology companies,” she said. “We want to develop a Web-based portal to identify all the available industrial property, private or public.”

Helping that along is the fact that the coun-ty’s residential and industrial growth rates have gone up, but commercial is still lagging a bit, she said. However, she’s not worried.

“According to economists, commercial is al-ways the last to pick up. So we are very optimis-tic with our other two growing as much as they are. The residential growth rate is 29 percent in Santa Rosa County, and last year was the most fruitful regarding industrial, growth-wise,” An-derson said.

Salomon said the biggest challenge in Santa

“ if a company comes with a lot of jobs and has a high wage rate, we can drop the price very low, to (provide incentive for) them to come. whereas, we don’t have as much flexibility with the private sector.” cindy anderson, florida’s great northwest

“After three successful years in Grand Boulevard, we have seen our business thrive exponentially to the point that we had to expand. It is truly a great place to work and play!”

Joe Capers, Owner/PartnerInsurance Zone

“Don’t Miss Th is Opportunity to Position Your Company in Grand Boulevard’s Th riving Business Hub”

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--- or [email protected]

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Th e central location of Grand Boulevard’s Town Center at the entrance of Sandestin Golf & Beach Resort provides a vibrant and creative work environment, strikingly beautiful public spaces and state-of-the-art business amenities. With convenient access to fi ne restaurants, national retailers, exclusive boutiques, professional services, two Marriott hotels

and Publix, Grand Boulevard is a complete destination in itself.

“Our recent relocation to Grand Boulevard has already exceeded our expectations. Th e Town Center off ers our fi rm an easily accessible, high profi le location with a multitude of on-site amenities. When we meet clients, we can walk to a number of great restaurants while continuing the business discussion and not lose momentum.”

Tim Fulmer, PartnerCarr, Riggs & Ingram, LLC, Destin/South Walton Offi ce

“Since my relocation to Grand Boulevard, my law practice has grown signifi cantly, requiring a larger staff and expanded offi ces within the Town Center. As I suspected, Grand Boulevard has become the professional business hub for this area.”

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Rosa and Escambia is the shortage of undevel-oped commercial land.

“Even if you can find it, developing it is a chal-lenge because financing is a challenge. Banks are tighter, terms are a little tighter, so if you got a solid business plan you can get financing,” he said. “The biggest challenge is (vacant land) and there are so many vacant buildings available that it is cheaper to buy an existing building than buy a tract and build on it. I think in both counties that’s the case — and regionally. People have op-tions, and unless they are really well financed and have a specific purpose in mind it’s cheaper to buy a building and change it.”

Art Kimbrough, president of the Jackson County Chamber of Commerce, offered a dif-ferent analysis for his county, saying now is the time to grab up undeveloped commercial/in-dustrial land because prices are low and sellers are “very eager” to cut a fair deal. And, he added, building and construction prices have stabilized to a point they are competitive.

“That’s a prescription for success,” he said. “If a business has the need and the long-term vision and financial ability to do it, now is an excellent time to acquire and ‘build to open,’ or acquire and hold for later use. Either of those scenarios is good.

“If there is a motivated buyer, the prices are right,” Kimbrough added. “If you have a high-value location where the owner has no urgency to sell, then some of those prices are still up there because they believe they will find the right cus-tomer to pay for it. Other than that, if it’s not that

kind of property, prices are cheap.”But it’s still not without its challenges, accord-

ing to Bill Stanton, executive director of the Jack-son County Development Council.

“The challenge is hundreds and millions of acres of land that doesn’t have access to infra-structure. The first basic is roads. If it’s land-locked you can’t do anything,” he said.

However, land that is held in timber has prov-en to be a moneymaker. Stanton pointed out that Plum Creek, now the largest private land-holder in Florida, is purposely buying up tracts of timber whereas The St. Joe Company has been selling off its holdings in recent years.

“(Plum Creek) and other companies who are into raw acreage are growing trees, and even trees during the Great Recession are providing income,” he said. “Trees, yellow pine in particu-lar, have been providing income to tree owners in Northwest Florida. This has been traditional because of the price point. Land that is planted in trees prior to the recession was selling for less than $2,000 an acre and as much as $4,000 an acre. Today, that is still selling in that same range. Other land, I don’t care what it is, has been reduc-ing in value.”

The income from timberland comes from selling it for lumber or paper, but lately it’s be-ing sold to renewable energy plants like Green Circle Bio Energy, a project that Stanton helped bring to Cottondale. Green Energy takes timber and turns it into wood pellets, which are then used to supplement coal in “co-fired” power plants. n

hotel viRidian iN SEagRoVE BEaCh

at the corner of Scenic highway 30-a and County Road 395 is what george hartley calls the Boardwalk and Park Place of walton County. it is also the site of the future hotel Viridian.

when complete, it will consist of a four-story private residence club with a rooftop swimming pool, a restau-rant, some retail space and underground parking. The project also includes two home sites across the street that will offer owners more options.

Phase i was completed in march and includes the ground floor, which currently houses the hotel’s restaurant. marketing on Phase ii is well underway, and once 80 to 85 percent of the club is under contract, more construction will begin.

To date, the project has cost “a bazillion dollars,” laughed hartley, a partner in the proj-ect. “Truly, it has, when you consider the original land cost, the carrying cost of the loan, the architectural and legal fees. we got in at the height of the market.”

Despite suggestions to the contrary, he and his partner “held on by their fingernails.” Now, their optimism is as strong as ever.

“we will never find an intersection like this again. we will never have this development order for a project like this again,” he said.

all in all, he expects the total cost to run approximately $32 million. — Ann McQueen

imag

e Vi

a ho

telV

irid

ian.

com

CAPITAL CORRIDORAdvisors Real Estate Group, LLC | Chris M. Keena (850) 222-2373 [email protected] advisorsrealestate.us

Florida Commerce Credit Union | Sherwood Brown (850) 410-3565 [email protected]/business_serices

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Structure | Stewart Proctor(850) [email protected]

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COMMERCIAL REAL ESTATE IN THE (850)The Gulf Coast LeaderReal estate in Bay, Gulf and Franklin Counties is selling at historic lows and in some cases as low as 5% on the dollar. To navigate your way through this market, you need a real estate professional with a wealth of local knowledge and experience. Before you make that decision ask yourself if the professional you want to work with has ...

If these properties interest you or if you are just looking for a real estate professional intoday’s LOCAL market, call or email me today and let’s discuss your real estate needs.

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COMMERCIAL REAL ESTATE IN THE (850)The Gulf Coast LeaderReal estate in Bay, Gulf and Franklin Counties is selling at historic lows and in some cases as low as 5% on the dollar. To navigate your way through this market, you need a real estate professional with a wealth of local knowledge and experience. Before you make that decision ask yourself if the professional you want to work with has ...

If these properties interest you or if you are just looking for a real estate professional intoday’s LOCAL market, call or email me today and let’s discuss your real estate needs.

William J. “Jay” Rish, Jr., Broker» 252 Marina Drive » Port St. Joe, FL 32456

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It’s a shopping center. It’s a lifestyle cen-ter. It’s an office park — and much more. Grand Boulevard in Miramar Beach is one of a kind in Northwest Florida, a commercial property that has it all, from a Publix to a Marriott to a dry cleaner.

With bistros, boutiques and a bank in between.Having all this in one place is why account-

ing firm Carr Riggs & Ingram made the deci-sion to move 50 CPAs into a new office at Grand Boulevard, a location that gives the firm easy access to clients in Destin and Panama City. CRI rents about 13,500 square feet in a space that was built specifically to accommodate the firm and its needs.

“There is absolutely no down side to this,” explained Steve Riggs, CRI’s managing partner. “We had at least five viable competitive options,

but we made this decision because it was our best option.”

Built by the Howard Group, Grand Boulevard opened about three years ago, just as the econo-my was starting to go south. But they got creative on pricing and deal structure to keep tenants in their buildings.

“There is so much excess inventory on the market that, to be successful, your property has to offer a lot of extras to win out in someone’s decision making,” said Dana Hahn, lease admin-istrator for the Howard Group who focuses on retail. “Grand Boulevard has those extras, from retail to office to restaurants.”

The concept has been well received, said Mer-lin Allan, Howard Group’s vice president of real estate, who handles office leasing.

“I’m getting more and more calls from busi-nesses looking to expand,” he said. (This sum-mer, Charter Capital, a private wealth manage-ment company, will move into an expanded 2,500-square-foot office.) “It’s primarily local people, but we’re starting to get some national calls as well.”

About 60 percent of the 200,000 square feet of office space has been leased and close to 90 percent of the 850,000 square feet of retail and restaurant space is also occupied. As soon as the economy recovers, more phases of the project will be developed.

“What we have here is true Class A office space,” said Hahn. “We have the work, play, stay element. You get a lot more than just office space.” n

Grand Boulevardwork. Stay. Play. By Linda kLeindienst



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Historic preservation and commerce will blend to-gether when an old Navy airstrip becomes a new-age business park in the near future.

Saufley Field is an “under-utilized” airstrip, located near the community of Belleview on the northwest side of Pensacola, which consists of about 100 acres of X-shaped airfield and several buildings. But a private-public partnership cur-rently in the works may transform parts of the facility into an office complex with the feel of a college campus.

Greg Clauson, commercial advisor for Cold-well Banker Commercial, said the venture is be-ing administered under the Enhanced Use Lease process, which means the government has put it in the public domain to generate revenue.

“We are negotiating to lease it from the Navy

for fair market value, under specified terms,” Clauson said.

Not all of the facility’s 700,000 square feet of land area will be “developed.” There are four 30,000-square-foot aircraft hangars on site, as well as some desirable environmental features that will be targeted for preservation.

“Some of that will be historical and will be maintained,” Clauson explained. “There are some beautiful specimen trees which will be preserved, and a walk-able campus environ-ment will be created. Much like what you’d see at a campus university, but a business campus of some kind, an office park.”

The airplane hangars have been there since the 1940s and exhibit architecture that is “abso-lutely gorgeous,” he said.

“We are going to replicate that style in some of the new development and renovation of ex-isting buildings,” Clauson added. “The hangars

enhanced Partnership

Saufley Field in Pensacola may see new life as a commerce park

By Jason dehart

for the most part stay as is, not much you can do to a hanger, but some of the other buildings (will be renovated).”

The vision of the new park is simple. It in-volves offering up new executive office suites with all the amenities, such as media room, con-ference room and all the luxury of a built-out Class “A” office space.

“If you were essentially an out-of-town office user you could set up an office here and have a presence in this market,” he said.

Negotiations are expected to be finalized in the second quarter of 2011. Shortly after the ink is dry, Clauson said final building inspections will be done in preparation for renovation work, but it’s unlikely any brand-new buildings will be constructed.

“We probably wouldn’t build a new building … unless we had a tenant who required that,” he said. “We have enough existing space. We have plenty of buildings that (the Navy) is going to be turning over to us.”

The working title for the new park will be the Center for Innovation and Technology at Saufley Field. And, in a region consumed by the military-industrial complex, it wouldn’t be surprising to see that kind of usage take place at Saufley Field.

“Certainly it will have a share of defense con-tactors, but we will seek synergistic uses that share technologies like information tech, lab sci-ences and medical technologies,” he said.

Meanwhile, the Navy will still retain control over the airfield — although it rarely uses the outlying field.

Clauson said he believes the project is in a posi-tion to provide a great economic boost to the local economy. “To have this much land and vertical structure in inventory is a very unique opportu-nity,” he said. “We’ll become the economic driver … and that’s a good thing for the community.” n



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President . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Brian e. rowland editor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . linda kleindienstCreative direCtor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . lawrence davidsonart direCtor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .tisha keller traFFiC Coordinator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . caroline conway

aCCount exeCutives . . . . mary Beth lovingood, lori magee, dan Parisi, linda Powell, rhonda simmons,

chuck simpson, chris st. JohnContributing writers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Jason dehart,

linda kleindienst, ann mcQueencover image of grand Boulevard at sandestin © steven Brooke studios. inset images by scott holstein and lawrence davidson.

reprinted from the June/July 2011 issue of 850 Business magazine, a publication of rowland Publishing, inc. all rights reserved © 2011.

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Why choose to be part of the fastest growing offi ce community in Northwest Florida? Th e central location of Grand Boulevard’s Town Center at the entrance of Sandestin Golf & Beach Resort provides a vibrant and creative work environment, strikingly beautiful public spaces and state-of-the-art business amenities. With convenient access to fi ne restaurants, national retailers, exclusive boutiques, professional services, two Marriott hotels and Publix. Grand Boulevard is a complete destination in itself.

P a i d A d v e r t i s e m e n t

Charter Capital expands to new offi ce space inGrand Boulevard at Sandestin®

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Pictured from (left to right): John Player, Director of Brand Development for Charter Capital; Dana Hahn, Leasing Administrator Howard Group; Steve Bruce Founder and CEO Charter Capital.

For leasing information, contact:Merlin Allan, Vice President of Real Estate --- or [email protected]

GRANDBOULEVARD.COM

Why did Charter Capital chooseto expand their professional offi ceon Grand Boulevard? “We have a growing client base here locally in need of investment management and wealth navigation: Grand Boulevard off ers a holistic approach to the work environment and experience that you can’t fi nd anywhere else in Northwest Florida.”— John Player, Director of Brand

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850 Business Magazine | June – July 2011 | 67Photo by SCOTT HOLSTEIN

W e all know someone who works harder, thinks bigger and strives for greatness everyday. Some would call them overachievers. But those who

know Kimberly Moore call it more of an expectation.even at a young age, it was clear that there was some-

thing different about her, something that set her apart from everyone else. Many young women spend their adolescence following the latest trends; Moore spent her early years crafting out a roadmap for success. And it’s no coincidence that in August 2005, at the age of 32, she became the first female, first African-American and youngest CeO of WORKFORCe Plus.

With the unemployment rate in Florida above 11 percent, it’s up to Moore to play the role of job seeker,

life coach and sometimes psychologist. Her position at WORKFORCe Plus oversees the counties of leon, Wakulla and Gadsden, implementing a strategy for folks desperate to get back into the workforce.

“As early as 9th grade I set a goal of becoming a CeO,” said Moore. “I recall vividly researching lead-ers and their thought processes, specifically related to how they created change and served as a positive influ-ence and contributor. In retrospect, I have always been intrigued with the opportunity to serve as a voice for people, causes and issues.”

The 39-year-old has helped thousands of people find work over the past decade, and that challenge has brought about additional opportunities. In 2009, Moore was nominated and voted in unanimously to

The Talent ConnectionKimberley Moore has worked to match the needs of local workers and Wakulla businesses by lee gordon SOU N D BY T E S

new hires >> Carol Dixon has joined the Port St. Joe branch of Superior Bank as a financial services representative. >> Keith L. Jones, CPA, of Port St. Joe was recently re-elected Region I representative and reappointed to the Florida Institute of CPA’s Board of Gov-ernors for a two-year term.>> Gulf Coast Electric Cooperative has added Lindsay Peak as the new Mem-ber Relations specialist and Jim Vick-ers as Military Affairs liaison.APPointeD by goV. sCott >> James P. norton, 44, of Port St. Joe, the senior vice president and senior trust officer for Vision Bank, to the Dis-trict Board of Trustees, Gulf Coast Com-munity College.

Gulf, Franklin + Wakulla Countiesforgotten coast

corridor

A NATURAL FITHer knowledge of workforce development helped Kimberley Moore boost the Wakulla Chamber of Commerce.


Chamber but in the county, something that can be tough for a fledgling business.”

The Chamber has established an education and Resource Committee that focused specifi-cally on providing real-time resources and educa-tion to support businesses at no cost. Addition-ally, formal partnerships were established to provide tools and resources for the existing busi-ness community. Among the county’s business development partners: the Florida State univer-sity Jim Moran Institute for Global entrepreneur-ship, Florida A&M Small Business Development Center and Tallahassee Community College – Wakulla Center.

A Meteoric Rise to the TopMoore began her rise to stardom in Greenville, Fla. She graduated from Madison County High School and holds an Associate of Arts degree from Tallahassee Community College and a Bachelor of Science degree in Criminal Justice from Florida State university. In addition, she has an MBA de-gree from Webster university.

Her first job out of college was with the Flori-da Department of Revenue, where she served as a

workforce development arena for Moore. It’s a job that isn’t for the faint of heart. Since the re-cession began in December 2007, there has been a constant demand for the services she and her staff provide.

“I firmly believe that leaders and companies are not defined by their actions in good times, but instead when the pressure is on. you must be able to create solutions while at the same time continue to motivate your team/staff to rise to the occasion,” Moore said.

As the CeO, Moore is a cheerleader and a win-dow of hope; a tireless advocate to ensure that the outcomes desired are achieved, all the while keeping herself motivated to make a difference in her counties.

“I am the first one in my office and the last one to leave because there are so many people depending on our system, and I won’t fail them,” she said.

Taking Wakulla County to New HeightsThe Wakulla County Chamber of Commerce was a natural fit. Moore’s current job allows her to lead the workforce development charge in leon, Gadsden and Wakulla County. With the Chamber, she has been responsible for econom-ic development and business expansion solely in Wakulla County. Her experience and under-standing of the issues offered a perfect segue for working with the stakeholders in Wakulla County as they fought to bounce back from a very unsteady 2010.

As Chamber president, her priorities for the county included establishing a business model for success as the county looks to expand in 2011 and beyond. Her focus was on membership, business retention and economic development, fostering a positive quality of life and providing timely economic and community information.

Jobs, Jobs and More JobsJobs in the Sunshine State was a hot button topic on the campaign trail this past novem-ber. Gov, Rick Scott pledged 700,000 new jobs in seven years. Moore would love to see that type of success.

“I believe that any time a person wants to work and can’t secure employment, there is need for concern,” she said, adding that she is optimistic that Florida will work itself out of the recession over the next few years.

“I believe the most important step that must be taken is ensuring that all stakeholders (edu-cation, workforce, business, and government) are on the same page. (We need to) create a workforce that is prepared to meet the current and future needs of Florida’s next economy,” Moore said. “Without the alignment or coordi-nation, opportunities will be lost and our recov-ery period longer.” n

serve as president of the Wakulla County Cham-ber of Commerce. The post, which she held until January, gave her the unique perspective of work-ing on behalf of workers and employers — and helping to foster new businesses in a recession-ary economy.

“Our workforce system is often viewed as unique based on our primary mission of serving employers and connecting them with the avail-able talent found both in … and outside our re-gion,” said Moore. “By all accounts the two groups are very distinct; however, at the same time what it boils down to is the opportunity to gain greater insight to their combined needs while establish-ing a nexus for the two coming together. The in-teraction … creates a win-win system for everyone in that as we learn the hiring needs of a specific employer our system is able to quickly identify a pool of candidates whose skill sets most align with the needs of the employer.”

The Chamber job, she added, has given her a stronger appreciation of why the small busi-nesses that make up nearly 80 percent of em-ployers need strong community support to survive and thrive.

Another first for Moore: She was the first Wakulla Chamber president not to live in the county.

“Wakulla County is not as parochial as people think we are,” said Steve Brown, a former Cham-ber president and a retired businessman who founded Fortune Group International, a structur-al systems business. “We recognize that our busi-nesses are all rental related and things that affect business in Tallahassee affect Wakulla. If Kim-berley had not been involved locally, she would not have become a member of the Chamber.”

Moore’s efforts worked to help bring in more business to Wakulla County while keeping the current business landscape healthy.

“The current economic downturn has impact-ed the level of growth sought in our area much like the other 66 counties that make up the state,” said Moore, who lives in leon County. “However our efforts to communicate the many assets available in (Wakulla) county have not gone un-noticed. This is due in large part to the focused advocacy created by and through the Chamber’s Government and Commerce Committee. Over the course of last year there were a number of new business start-ups. In terms of existing busi-ness, we have worked aggressively to determine the needs of our employers.”

One of those new startups is owned by Chuck Robinson, who opened The Works Coworking Café in December and said Moore was a welcom-ing presence.

“We are both very passionate about education and so she immediately jumped at a chance for us to work together on an idea I had involving our high school,” Robinson said. “It quickly made me feel welcomed and included in not only the

revenue specialist in the Child Support Division. From there she entered the workforce develop-ment division under the TCC umbrella. Once the school opted not to continue as the provider for workforce services, Moore headed to WORK-FORCe Plus. In three years she rose through the ranks, earning the title of Chief executive Officer and overseeing an $8 million budget.

“In essence, living out the American dream of starting with a company and working my way up the career ladder,” she said of her career path.

This year marks a decade of service in the

850: What are your key elements for being an effective leader?

Lead by example: model the behavior that you would like to see

Make sure everybody counts and everybody knows they count

Know your objectives and have a plan on how to achieve them

Embrace change, as change is inevitable

Follow through on commitments, your word is your bond

Lead with the planned outcome in mind


SOU N D BY T E S MoVing in >> Ajax building Cor-poration, a Tallahassee-based con-struction services firm with more than 53 years in business throughout the Southeast, has opened its first office in Northwest Florida. The Panama City Beach location is at 8033 Highway 79. Ajax recently began construction on Northwest Florida State College’s $25.5 million Student Services Build-ing in Niceville. >> oaseas resorts has purchased the former Beach Financial Center at the corner of Richard Jackson Bou-levard and Middle Beach Road in Panama City Beach and has moved its corporate headquarters there.LoCAL honors >> Coldwell Banker United, REALTORS®, Gulf Coast Re-gion recently presented awards and certificates to the company’s 2010 Panama City Region top sales associ-ates. International Sterling Society, or top 20 percent of all Coldwell Banker sales associates world-wide: Karen branham, Panama City Beach; Joan richard, Lynn Haven. International Diamond Society, the top 15 per-cent of all Coldwell Banker sales as-sociates world-wide: Jan Lambert, Panama City Beach; Dianne gatta, Lynn Haven. International Diamond Society Team, the top 21 percent of all sales teams nationally: the robert ellis team consisting of robert ellis, shirlise hamati, terry Conzelman and John Conzelman of the Panama City Beach office. The International President’s Circle recognizes the top 8 percent of all Coldwell Banker sales associates worldwide: Linda Daniels, Lynn Haven. Specialty award winners included top listing agents: Linda Dan-iels, Lynn Haven, and Libby sipple, Panama City Beach. Top listing team and top customer service team award: the robert ellis team. soMething new >> bookit.com, a Panama City Beach-based online travel agency, is changing the way travelers select and book their vaca-tions, one video at a time. The Word of Mouth program is a review system on the web that features video testimoni-als from guests as they are vacation-ing in 50 different locations around the world. Participating hotels say they have experienced a 121% increase in rooms sold and a 141% increase in nights sold.APPointeD by goV. sCott >> Dr. Merle P. stringer, 68, of Pan-ama City, to the Board of Medicine. He is a neurosurgeon with Brain and Spine Center LLC.>> Joe K. tannehill Jr. to the District Board of Trustees, Gulf Coast Commu-nity College. Tannehill, 43, of Panama City, is the president and chief execu-tive officer of Merrick Industries Inc.

Photos by SCOTT HOLSTEIN

It’s no secret Bay County is home to breathtaking-ly beautiful emerald waters in the Gulf of Mexico. Tourists by the thousands flock to Panama City Beach to bask in the sun and swim in the warm

salt water. But most have no idea that less than an hour away, an equally precious treasure hides — the purest spring water in the world.

This according to Johnny Patronis, co-owner of Pa-tronis Brothers enterprises and Gainer Springs, which is part of econfina Creek in north Bay County. The cascading waterfalls, glorious tree canopies and serene natural beauty make a hidden gem in youngstown.

Brothers Johnny and Jimmy Patronis have been do-ing business together all their lives — opening the Sev-en Seas restaurant in 1953, purchasing Gainer Springs in 1957 and opening Capt. Anderson’s Restaurant & Waterfront Market in 1967. While the younger genera-tion of the Patronis family runs Capt. Anderson’s now,

both Johnny and Jimmy are still active in several joint ventures — including the sale of Bay County’s spring water to Culligan Water Services Inc.

A Rare and Precious Resourceeconfina Creek was first called “natural Bridge” for a natural limestone arch that crossed the pristine creek at the mouth of the spring. During the War of 1812, Gen. Andrew Jackson and his army crossed econfina en route to Pensacola. In 1821, when the territory opened for settlement, one of Jackson’s land surveyors, William Gainer, returned to the sparkling creek and settled there.

The Gainer Springs Group, named after William Gainer, is the most significant group of fresh-water producing underground vents located in the middle section of econfina Creek. They produce 114 million gallons per day, nearly twice the requirement to make

We’ll Drink to ThatOne’s got the water. The other’s got the bottle. A perfect business relationship. by wendy o. dixon

Panama City, Panama City Beach + Bay County

WATERSHED PARTNERSHIPJay Trumbell (left) and Johnny Patro-nis raise a toast to Econfina Creek, the source of their bottled water.

BaY corridor


Road 20, it’s easily accessible for transportation vehicles that draw the water. And the stream is in a protected area, surrounded by 1,800 acres of Patronis family land and bordered by a little more than 39,000 acres of protected land owned by the northwest Florida Water Management District.

The Patronis brothers are the only ones with an individual water use permit within a mile buf-fer of econfina Creek, though there are various users that operate under a general water use per-mit, such as a number of private residences that fall within the buffer.

The seclusion has been a crucial blessing

for the creek, which gets nearly half of its aver-age flow from Floridan Aquifer Springs (water filtered through sand and limestone). The rest comes from rainfall runoff.

“One of the biggest threats to the water qual-ity would be the release of nitrates from septic tanks if there was rural lakefront development,” says William Cleckley, the water management district’s director of the Division of land Man-agement and Acquisition. “We protect the water supply in Bay County by preserving the ground-water recharge area property.”

Sandy soil created a perfect environment for the clear spring water, but not for farming. The absence of industrial centers and large farms with dangerous pesticides, combined with the natural addition of beneficial silica beds and limestone that filter nearby shallow sand ponds, provides one of the purest natural spring waters in the world.

A Partnership Emergeseconfina began working with Panama City-based Culligan Water Services Inc. in 2000, bottling the crystal clear spring water in five-gallon jugs, then eventually single serving bottles.

it a first magnitude spring — one of only five such springs in northwest Florida and 75 in the country.

The creek’s main beneficiaries are the people who drink out of their taps in Bay County. The creek flows into Deer Point lake Reservoir, which supplies Bay County’s drinking water.

Johnny and Jimmy Patronis thought that bot-tling the creek water for sale to the general public just made good business sense.

“When you’ve got a spring, it’s all you ever think about,” Johnny Patronis says.

The icy creek’s location is idyllic. Just off State

NATURE FOR THE MASSESAt the Culligan bottling plant in Panama City, Econfina water is trucked in (top, right), filtered, irridated and bottled (below), before being shipped to area Culligan customers.


Jay n. Trumbull, 50, owns Culligan Water Ser-vices and a 15,000-square-foot bottling plant that each month produces 60,000 five-gallon bottles of econfina water and 120,000 half-liter bottles.

Both the Trumbull family and the Patronis family have been friends for generations. Johnny and Jimmy Patronis’ grandfather, Theo Patronis, first settled in Apalachicola, then Quincy, Patmos, Tallahassee and finally Panama City. Meanwhile, Jay Trumbull’s grandfather, Den A. Trumbull, started the Panama City Culligan dealership in 1950. His son, Den Trumbull, Jr., joined the com-pany in 1955, and Jay Trumbull, current presi-dent of the company, came on in 1985.

Close friends, Den Jr. and Johnny and Jimmy Patronis always talked about bottling the spring water in econfina, and eventually started the per-mitting process by hiring a geologist and getting state approval.

In addition to Bay County, Culligan, now dis-tributes econfina water to Fort Walton Beach, Mobile, Ala., Dothan and Tifton, Ga. and, most recently, Tallahassee.

Water is Water, Right? Well, No.next time you take a sip of water, whether out of

“ One Of the biggest threats tO the water quality [is] the release Of nitrates frOm septic tanks ... we prOtect the water supply ... by preserving the grOundwater recharge area prOperty.” william cleckley

the tap or a bottle, think about the “mouth feel,” a term used by water experts as the primary way to describe the flavor.

“Taste is pretty subjective, but you can tell a difference between hard and soft water,” says Kris Barrios, director of the field services section at the water management district. Rainwater is soft be-cause it has no nutrients whereas ground water is hard. econfina, Barrios explains, is somewhere in the middle.

Water is primarily measured by Total Dis-solved Solids (TDS), a measure of all the dissolved solids or minerals, including calcium, magne-sium and caltrates. The fewer the better. High

levels will affect the taste of water and may also affect toxicity, says James P. McMahon, an ecolo-gist with Sweetwater, llC based in Brookside, utah. Generally, a low TDS is considered by some health practitioners to be more hydrating.

Purified drinking water like Dasani and Aqua-fina is not spring water, Trumbull says. “They take water and strip everything out of it to make it taste like econfina.” What’s so special about econfina, he says, is its low TDS measure. “Some people think you drink bottled water for the min-erals, but you get minerals from food.”

The majority of bottled waters do not contain optimal levels of fluoride, according to the Ameri-can Dental Association, potentially decreasing the decay-preventive effects of optimally fluoridated water. “But the nice thing about econfina is that it’s naturally slightly fluoridated,” Trumbull says.

The tankers extract 6,000 gallons of water at a time and bring it back to the Culligan plant 20 miles away. Then the water is transferred to a 30,000-gallon stainless steel holding tank. From there, the water is pumped through several fil-ters to take out any particles and put through ul-traviolet light to kill organisms. But no change is made to the water itself.

The Ebb and Flow of the Bottled Water BusinessBeginning in the mid-2000s, and until very re-cently, the bottled water industry grew at close to double-digit percentage rates in both volume and sales, according to the Bottled Water Reporter, a publication produced by new york-based Bever-age Marketing Corp., which tracks market trends in the beverage industry.

Despite a movement by some environmental groups encouraging people to abandon single-serving water bottles in an effort to reduce the buildup of the plastic containers in landfills, the per capita consumption in the united States in-creased from 23.2 gallons in 2004 to 29.0 gallons in 2007, then took a slight dip in 2008 and 2009 with a 28.5 gallons and 27.6 gallons per capita consumption, respectively, according to the Reporter.

“It’s interesting because the negative of the small bottles is that they live forever in a land-fill,” Trumbull says. “So the alternative is to use the five-gallon recyclable bottles. While sales in the smaller bottles has been hurt, the five-gallon sales are starting to take off again.”

Patronis says he won’t even think about the creek drying up. He has no worries about run-ning out of supply to keep up with the demand. “We’ve got over 100 million gallons a day coming out of there. We only use 30,000.” n

BaY corridor


TasTe of The region

A GUIDE TO fine Dining in norThWesT fLoriDa

Business luncheons. Celebratory dinners. Deal-making cocktails.A sampling of the best fare the region has to offer.

MagnoliaGrill

TOM & PEGGY RICE, PROPRIETORS

(850) 302-0266 www.magnoliagrillfwb.com

FORT WALTON BEACH

850 Business Magazine | June – July 2011 | 73Photos by SCOTT HOLSTEIN

W ho would have thought the flip of a coin would impact future generations in such a way. That is how lamar Advertising

Company began 108 years ago when then Pensacola business partners Charles W. lamar, Sr., and J.M. Coe decided to dissolve their partnership. lamar actually lost that coin toss and was “stuck” with the part of the holdings that is, today, one of the country’s larg-est outdoor advertising companies.

now a public company, lamar remains a family business under the control of third and fourth genera-tion members of the lamar and Reilly families.

Robert “Bobby” Switzer, the great-grandson of Charles lamar, Sr., is vice-president of operations and has been with the company for 35 years. He

started out in 1969 as a high school student, cut-ting grass underneath the billboards, painting holes, wiring the signs and doing “basically, whatever was asked of me.”

When he set off for college, he vowed, “I would never work for the family company.” But, with a laugh, he quickly adds that in 1976, with a degree in zool-ogy from the university of South Florida in hand, he returned to Pensacola and went to work full time at lamar Advertising.

In recent years, Switzer has headed one of lamar’s biggest projects. The company, under his leadership, has a multidimensional plan to convert approximately 1,370 billboards throughout Florida to renewable en-ergy. The $12.5 million project will place throughout

On Top of Going GreenLamar V.P. Bobby Switzer is leading the outdoor giant into a green future by kimberley yablonski

SOU N D BY T E S LeAD news >> Grover Robinson & Associates, Inc., has merged with Coldwell Banker United, REALTORS®, commercial division. Joining the team as broker/associates are grover rob-inson, iV, and Clay roesch.>> With more than 50 years of real es-tate law and title insurance experience, Conerly, bowman & Dykes, LLP, of Destin, has launched Attorneys’ Title to help clients with closings on real estate transactions. >> Kevin D. bowyer, partner with O’Sullivan Creel, LLP, has been se-lected to serve on the Florida Cham-ber Foundation’s Six Pillars Caucus System. He will join the Innovation and Economic Development caucus to help craft the first-ever, statewide stra-tegic plan.>> Kerri Price is the new marketing co-ordinator for Alys Beach.>> servisFirst bank has opened an office in Pensacola, its first location

eMeraLd coast corridorCoastal Escambia, Santa Rosa, Okaloosa + Walton Counties

pg 75

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and help the environment.


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said. “That’s why we are intentionally avoiding unproven technologies or methods. The large-scale deployment of hundreds of small systems, like we are undertaking with the conversion of each structure, closely resembles the kind of renewable energy systems available to most homeowners.”

This is not lamar’s first foray into sustainable business practices. even before skyrocketing en-ergy prices, lamar made changes to transition la-mar Advertising, and the outdoor advertising in-dustry as a whole, to raw materials and products with a lower carbon footprint to decrease energy use and raw materials in manufacturing and to increase recycling of its products.

lamar prints its billboards on recyclable poly-ethylene, has been phasing out glue in its poster operations, switched to zero-VOC uV-curable printing inks in lieu of solvent-based inks and installed 26,000 energy-saving lighting fixtures in place of conventional billboard lighting. To make all these changes, the company invested approximately $15 million.

“We know the initial investment in initiatives such as these billboard conversions is steep,” said Switzer. “But we are looking for a dual return. First, over the 20- to 25-year life span of the billboards

outside Alabama, which will be led by rex McKinney as president and CEO. Other leaders of the new of-fice include: thomas “bo” Carter, chairman of the board; robert “bobby” Fair, executive vice presi-dent and senior lending officer; Karen wright, senior vice president-commercial banking; Cathy england, vice president-private banking; susi Franklin, vice president-banking center administrator; rick John-son, vice president-commercial banking; and Portia Kozma, vice president-cash management. >> hilton sandestin beach golf resort & spa has completed a $6.5 million hotel-wide renovation proj-ect, which includes a new beachside restaurant, Bare-foot’s Beachside Bar & Grill. The resort has added two new regional sales managers, terri Marsh and Florencia shiffer, and a new executive meetings manager, Melissa weeks. >> Legendary Marine has launched an all-new divi-sion, LEGENDARY PERFORMANCE, focused solely on high performance service and repair. Joining the Legendary Marine service team are scott Childs and Jeff hopper, who bring 55 years combined experi-ence in high performance service and racing. Both are former employees of Mercury Racing who have hands-on experience working at the famous Lake X and X-Site in Panama City.>> 30A.com has acquired the website domain South-Walton.com. The URL joins a family of other brands owned by the company, including Grayton.com, 30-A.com, ThirtyA.com, 30Arealestate.com, 30Arentals.com, 30Abeaches.com, CoastalDuneLakes.com, 30Atv.com, 30Anews.com, TheBeachHighway.com and over 150 other domain names related to the region. >> Emerald Coast AdFed is changing its name to AAF emerald Coast.

hosPitAL news >> Fort walton beach Medical Center Acute Inpatient Physical Rehabilitation has been newly accredited as a Stroke Specialty Pro-gram, the only program with this accreditation in the area and one of just 20 in Florida.>> Sacred Heart Health System has se-lected Dana bledsoe as the president of Sacred Heart Children’s and Women’s Hos-pital. Bledsoe began her healthcare career as a nurse and has spent the past 19 years in leadership roles at pediatric hospitals. >> The sacred heart Cancer Center has broken ground on a new building at Mack Bayou Center in Santa Rosa Beach that will house outpatient treat-ment services and offices for cancer specialists.>> New to Baptist Medical Group: Dana harrison as finance director, tim sweeney as senior financial analyst and Lynn Lambert as accountant.>> renee sutton, r.n., has been named as the new director of Baptist Health Care’s Hospital Case Man-agement and Social Services. Other changes: Alicia snyder has been promoted to executive director of Risk Management and Corporate Compliance; Mike Viola is the new director of Properties and Construc-tion; Marcella scapecchi is the new manager of the Sterile Processing Department.>> A $5 million expansion of the gulf breeze hos-pital has added 10,000-square-feet and created sev-eral new specialty staff positions.>> Liz Adams, marketing media manager for Baptist Health Care, has been elected as the 2011-2012 Pen-sacola Young Professionals president. hong tran, director of strategic planning, is the new Quality of Life chair.

bLeDsoe

pg 77

phot

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tesy

sac

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eMeraLd coast corridor

the state, with solar and wind power billboards designed to return energy to the electrical grid.

The u.S. Department of energy is providing a $2.5 million grant to the project through the Florida energy and Climate Commission and the Governor’s energy Office. And lamar is funding the remaining $10 million.

The project, which targets eight markets from Pensacola to Daytona and Tallahassee to Fort My-ers, is expected to be completed by April 2012. The installations will be on billboards along in-terstates and major roads to give the project the widest public exposure.

“While this will eventually be good for la-mar’s bottom line, one of the main reasons we are undertaking this project is to show Floridians that this exact technology can be utilized to con-vert their homes to renewable energy,” Switzer

Switzer’s cousins, lamar CeO and President Kevin Reilly, Jr., Charles lamar III and his sister, Mary lee lamar Dixon, great-grandchildren of the company’s founder, did own most of the company at one time. Since lamar went public some years ago those shares have been significantly diluted. Headquartered in Baton Rouge, la., the company’s 3,300 employees are spread out in 150 offices in the united States, Puerto Rico and Canada. lamar employs about 75 people in four offices across the Panhandle in Panama City, Fort Walton Beach, Tallahassee and Pensacola.

In 1999, after the acquisition of Chancellor Media for $1.6 billion, lamar became the na-tion’s largest outdoor advertising company, measured by number of displays. In 2005, lamar generated revenues of more than $1 billion for the first time.

Switzer envisions lamar will remain a family-run business. “I’m in my 50s and one of my cous-ins is in his 40s, so we are (going to be) around for a while. Currently, my son is working in the busi-ness, and in a few years there may be a few more family members joining. My son is the fifth gen-eration, and hopefully more cousins will come on,” he said. >>

converted to renewable energy, we will return an untold amount of renewable, emission-free en-ergy to the power grid while demonstrating in a very graphic manner to the public the payoff that comes with renewable energy.

“Second, this is a smart business decision that in the long run will mean significant savings for lamar while helping to preserve the environ-ment for future generations. The lifespan of these systems allows them to be amortized, giving us a very logical business rationale for incorporating systems such as these on a widespread basis.”

Switzer, personally, has also embraced green initiatives. His home and boat are solar powered. And his home has geothermal air conditioning units. “I try to do everything I can to reduce the amount of carbon emissions I use and reduce the power bill,” he said.

even befOre skyrOcketing energy prices, lamar made changes tO transitiOn lamar advertising, and the OutdOOr advertising industry as a whOle, tO raw materials and prOducts with a lOwer carbOn fOOtprint tO decrease energy use and raw materials in manufacturing and tO increase recycling Of its prOducts.


CREATINGCONNECTIONS

CREATIVE. PRINT. SOLUTIONS.™

At Rowland Publishing, we think one of our best attributes is the innate art to listen, understandand then produce what the client wants. Our creative solutions will showcase your businesswithout straining your budget. Call (850) 878-0554 or visit rowlandpublishing.com today.

WHILE THE TITLE OF THEIR NEW publication was

“Unconquered,” the Seminole Boosters were stymied by the chal-

lenges of producing a quarterly, glossy, 84-plus-page magazine with

just one in-house graphic designer.

“We weren’t making deadlines,”

said Jerry Kutz, the Boosters’ vice

president of marketing and commu-

nications. “We’d get bottlenecked.”

Kutz said he approached Row-

land Publishing in early 2009 be-

cause of the company’s reputation

for creating quality publications

on time. He also appreciated the

publishing experience of owner

Brian Rowland. “He’s a good con-

sultant who can translate what I

want into what I like,” Kutz said.

Since the collaboration began,

Rowland Publishing has provid-

ed project management, design

and editorial review services for seven issues of “Unconquered.” In ad-

dition to graphic designers refi ning the magazine’s look, seasoned edi-

tors from Rowland were able to make edits to the stories provided by

the Boosters’ staff . “They like having that extra set of experienced eyes

to look at them,” said Rowland Creative Director Lawrence Davidson.

Rowland’s services allow the Boosters to include timely informa-

tion in their magazine. Most recently, stories about new recruits were

included in an issue that went to press just fi ve days after National

Signing Day. “When needed, it’s all hands on deck to get the project

done,” Kutz said. “Rowland people are easy to work with and they

keep you on pace.”

“Unconquered” is sent to about 15,000 Seminole Boosters and also

is used as a marketing and promotional tool. “The magazine is like

having four brochures a year,” Kutz said. “The layout and design is

tied to our marketing plan.” ■

“Rowland people are easy to work with

and they keep you on pace.”

Jerry Kutz, Seminole Boosters vice president of marketing

and communications

11850_JJ_RPICaseStudy_Boosters.indd 2 6/1/11 3:02:11 PM


honors AnD AwArDs >> The National Associa-tion of Federal Credit Unions has named Pen Air Fed-eral Credit Union Chief Financial Officer David tuyo the 2011 Professional of the Year for credit unions with more than $150 million in assets.>> sunQuest Cruises has been selected as “Best of Wedding Reception Venue for North Florida” by The Knot for its 2011 Best of Weddings – the second con-secutive year SunQuest has won this honor. The Knot is a one-stop wedding planning service that offers ad-vice to millions of engaged couples each year. Best of Wedding winners are determined by bride surveys.>> Camp Creek golf Club — the award-winning Tom Fazio design owned by The St. Joe Company and located in Watersound — debuted at No. 48 on Golf Digest’s 2011-2012 list of “America’s 100 Greatest Public Golf Courses.”>> McDonald, Fleming, Moorhead, Ferguson, green & De Kozan, LLP, has received the 2011 Friend of University of West Florida Award. The honor is given each year to the person or company that has provided the greatest overall support to and promo-tion of the university, the alumni association and the more than 65,000 UWF alumni.>> gulf Power Company’s project to reuse millions of gallons of reclaimed water at its generating plant in Escambia County was named the top project among the 2011 Industry Excellence Award winners from the Southeastern Electric Exchange.>> Members of the Northwest Florida Coast Chapter of FPRA recently won 13 awards in the regional Im-age Award competition held in conjunction with the Pensacola FPRA Chapter. Winners included: tracy Louthain with the Beaches of South Walton Tourism Development Council, who received five awards, in-cluding the Grand All award for the Council’s Deep Water Horizon initiatives; nancy stanley and Valeria Lento with the Hilton Sandestin Beach Resort & Spa, who won two awards, including Grande All, for their H-Team communications strategies; stacey brady and Angela triplett with the Howard Group and Grand Boulevard along with Zandra wolfgram for the Le Grande Cirque campaign; and Andi Mahoney, white wilson and Emerald Ladies Journal, winning two awards for the Little Black Dress Party and wom-en’s health. Communicators of the year: Kay Phelan of Phelan & Lowry, Ltd., receiving the for-profit award; Marcia hull, executive director of the Mattie Kelly Arts Foundation, receiving the award for a non-profit or-ganization; and Valeria Lento, communications man-ager at the Hilton Sandestin Beach Resort & Spa, who was named crisis communicator of the year.

APPointeD by goV. sCott >> To the University of West Florida Board of Trustees: Jayprakash “Jay” Patel, 47, of Pensacola, chairman and chief executive officer of LHS Companies; susan K. o’Connor, 59, of Gulf Breeze, president of The O’Connor Manage-ment Group; garrett w. walton, 62, of Pensacola, president of REBUILD Northwest Florida Inc.

eMeraLd coast corridor

BUSINESS NEWS?

Send your business-related news to 850 editor, linda Kleindienst,

at [email protected]. Deadline is the 20th of the month

before publication.

CREATINGCONNECTIONS

CREATIVE. PRINT. SOLUTIONS.™

At Rowland Publishing, we think one of our best attributes is the innate art to listen, understandand then produce what the client wants. Our creative solutions will showcase your businesswithout straining your budget. Call (850) 878-0554 or visit rowlandpublishing.com today.

WHILE THE TITLE OF THEIR NEW publication was

“Unconquered,” the Seminole Boosters were stymied by the chal-

lenges of producing a quarterly, glossy, 84-plus-page magazine with

just one in-house graphic designer.

“We weren’t making deadlines,”

said Jerry Kutz, the Boosters’ vice

president of marketing and commu-

nications. “We’d get bottlenecked.”

Kutz said he approached Row-

land Publishing in early 2009 be-

cause of the company’s reputation

for creating quality publications

on time. He also appreciated the

publishing experience of owner

Brian Rowland. “He’s a good con-

sultant who can translate what I

want into what I like,” Kutz said.

Since the collaboration began,

Rowland Publishing has provid-

ed project management, design

and editorial review services for seven issues of “Unconquered.” In ad-

dition to graphic designers refi ning the magazine’s look, seasoned edi-

tors from Rowland were able to make edits to the stories provided by

the Boosters’ staff . “They like having that extra set of experienced eyes

to look at them,” said Rowland Creative Director Lawrence Davidson.

Rowland’s services allow the Boosters to include timely informa-

tion in their magazine. Most recently, stories about new recruits were

included in an issue that went to press just fi ve days after National

Signing Day. “When needed, it’s all hands on deck to get the project

done,” Kutz said. “Rowland people are easy to work with and they

keep you on pace.”

“Unconquered” is sent to about 15,000 Seminole Boosters and also

is used as a marketing and promotional tool. “The magazine is like

having four brochures a year,” Kutz said. “The layout and design is

tied to our marketing plan.” ■

“Rowland people are easy to work with

and they keep you on pace.”

Jerry Kutz, Seminole Boosters vice president of marketing

and communications

11850_JJ_RPICaseStudy_Boosters.indd 2 6/1/11 3:02:11 PM


QUESTIONS FOR BOBBY SWITzERQ: What first drew you to the idea of using renewable energy for your signs? About four years ago, there was a lot of talk about the rising cost of energy and its effects on the environment, such as global warm-ing. At the same time, we were introducing the digital signs that consumed more ener-gy than the regular signs. When you take all those things into consideration — and the fact that the state had a rebate for businesses to put solar on their business — I put all the pieces together with the idea that we need-ed to do something that would conserve energy and maybe even produce energy to compensate for the new digital signs that were going to be more energy intensive. The state turned me down when I applied for the rebates and when I talked to the gov-ernor’s office, they suggested we apply for the grant. I was looking to do a small proj-ect and it turned into a huge project. Some of the funds from the federal government are from the stimulus package. I would not have done as big a project, or done it as ag-gressively, if not for the stimulus money. It helped create the project and the jobs.

Q: What has been the best business decision you have made? What I do for the company is run the operations side of things. We create what others in the compa-ny sell. We are moving our product to be as sustainable as we can make it. Over the last few years, we moved away from paper and that has probably been the best move. Get-ting rid of the 100-year-old process and using a recyclable product to get all the messages on the board is good for our business. n

“ getting rid Of [a] 100-year-Old prOcess and using a recyclable prOduct tO get all the messages On the bOard is gOOd fOr Our business.”

www.Bensonshvac.com

850 Business Magazine | June – July 2011 | 79Photos by SCOTT HOLSTEIN

ngie Hill owns a Merle norman fran-chise. And a boutique. And a party

planning service, beauty salon and movie rental store. And all are

housed in one 4,100-square-foot storefront.But she didn’t begin her career as an entrepre-

neur. After graduating from nursing school in 1992, she worked at Calhoun-liberty Hospital and met her husband, Phillip, who was an emer-gency medical technician there at the time.

After eight years, they decided to quit their jobs and move to Atlanta for a change of pace. There, she worked in a furniture store her father-in-law was opening.

The Hills traveled between Atlanta and

Blountstown for a few years, until Angie Hill’s friends told her of an ad in the paper that said Merle norman, a beauty supply store in Blount-stown on Highway 20, was for sale.

“I’d always wanted to own one,” she said. “It was my thing. I love makeup.”

The Hills bought the store, financing it with money Phillip Hill had saved by working two paramedic jobs. They had been planning to run the store from Atlanta until plans abruptly changed two weeks after the purchase. She was pregnant.

“I didn’t want to raise little kids up there,” she explained. large cities like Atlanta have their advantages, but living in a small town like

Angie Hill Does it AllA nurse-turned-entrepreneur keeps her Blountstown business thriving by ana goni-lessan

SOU N D BY T E S LoCAL news >> Mowrey elevator is expanding its corporate headquarters on Lafayette Street in Mari-anna into a 15,000-square-foot three-story building. In business since 1976, the company has grown to be the largest privately owned elevator manufacturer in the Southeast U.S. The company also has a 300,000 square-foot-manufacturing facility.>> After being shut down for more than a year by fire, the red bay grocery coop on State Road 81 in eastern Walton County is back and open for business.>> Baptist Health Care has named Keith strickling as the new controller of Atmore and Jay hospitals. He will also be responsible for patient access management and financial services for Atmore Home Health Care.

i-10 corridorNorthern Escambia, Santa Rosa, Okaloosa + Walton Counties and Holmes, Washington, Calhoun, Jackson + Liberty Counties


more children’s parties, evidenced by the glitter makeup and lotion bar in the boutique section of the store. “I started collecting the party dresses about seven years ago on the assumption that we would do the princess parties,” she said of the brightly colored costume dresses that hang on a rack in the back room.

But even the new, larger location still couldn’t contain all she wanted to do. After the local Mov-ie Gallery went out of business, she wanted to open a movie rental store of her own.

To expand her space in the shopping center, she proposed a trade. Sh0e offered a neighbor-ing business, a children’s consignment store named Pollywogs and Bullfrogs, her old store on

Highway 20. In exchange, she would take over their shopping center space so the Hills wouldn’t have to worry about traveling back and forth from one business to the other.

Reel Time Movie Rentals opened in Septem-ber. “We felt like Blountstown needed a large DVD rental spot and an area people could come to and get on the computer,” Angie Hill said. Be-sides renting movies, customers can enjoy wire-less Internet, coffee and food.

An open doorway connects the two businesses between the party planning area of the salon and spa and the movie store. Movies are constantly playing on a big-screen TV, and customers are in-vited to watch and relax.

“And they do. They go over there to watch movies and get coffee or wait for their hair to get washed out,” she said.

Angie Hill realizes hers isn’t a typical business. She credits her success to plenty of research and her readiness to fulfill the growing needs of her community.

She urges potential business owners to think long and hard about their area and its needs. “Make sure your demographics support what-ever business venture you plan on getting into,” she said.

She also believes business owners don’t have to own their storefront, and that leasing is a vi-able option. “When you own your own property, there are surprise expenses,” she said. “With a lease, you know what you’re going to pay and renters don’t have to worry about property taxes or insurance.”

Maintenance became an issue at the old loca-tion. Phillip Hill was in charge of the upkeep, but with his new job as interim administrator at the Calhoun-liberty Hospital in Blountstown, he didn’t have time to maintain the store like he had in the past.

Angie Hill contends the change to leasing has benefited them greatly without a downside. “It’s a win-win situation for us,” she said.

In the first nine months, she said her busi-ness has had a more than 20 percent increase in revenue. The 2010 holiday opening brought in more money in one day than any other day in the store’s nine-year history.

The business has cut down on advertising in the newspaper by 60 percent and focuses primarily on direct mail and social media net-works like Facebook and Twitter. “If you’re not on FB or tweeting, you’re out of the game,” Phil-lip Hill said.

Angie Hill said she doesn’t know whether to attribute the business success to the new loca-tion or to the economy, but she said something has brought about positive energy.

“I can feel it here,” she said. n

Blountstown “is very ideal” for raising children and affords the opportunity to be close to schools, day care, doctors and hospitals, she said. So the couple decided to move back to Blountstown and to start setting up the store.

It was a mutual effort by the couple to prepare for their new business venture. She began taking classes at Chipola College’s Cosmetology Pro-gram after the birth of her second child and, for the first year, Phillip Hill ran the store.

When the salon part of the business first opened, she was the only stylist. But as business took off, she added a stylist each year for the first five years to meet the needs of her growing cus-tomer base. everything was going well until the end of 2009, when the business began to feel the weight of the bad economy.

“We felt like we had gotten stagnant,” Angie Hill said. So she and her husband sat down to re-think their game plan.

At the time, the Merle norman Salon & Spa was being operated out of what used to be a fam-ily home in a stand-alone location on Highway 20. Because the popular business had outgrown its parking lot, the couple decided to move.

looking back, Phillip Hill believes they should have made the move the year before. “We had just outgrown our building, plain and simple,” he said.

The Hills found a good deal on a location in a shopping center off Main Street alongside Harvey’s Supermarket, one of only two grocery stores in town. Traffic count studies provided by the leasing company showed the Hills that the new location would be a great place for them to work in concert with other nearby businesses.

The move has proven to be more successful than the couple first hoped. “We have had more business here because we’re networking with other businesses in the shopping center. Here they could be going to get milk and then pop in,” she said. “It was a good move.”

now the Merle norman Salon & Spa has more space to sell other items — yankee Candle Com-pany products, gourmet food and handbags are just a few lines the boutique offers. Monogram-ming is also available for clothing, which An-gie Hill contracts out to another local business in liberty County.

Behind the boutique and to the left of the salon is the party area. Three tables with chairs, a couch and a fireplace are set up, divided from the salon by a velvet wallpapered wall.

last December, the business hosted more than 30 people at a party the Calhoun County Clerk of Court gave as a Christmas present for her staff. For almost five hours, Angie Hill and her stylists gave manicures, pedicures, facials and haircuts.

Staff parties aren’t her only specialty. She plans

angie hill realizes hers isn’t a typical business. she credits her success tO plenty Of research and her readiness tO fulfill the grOwing needs Of her cOmmunity.she urges pOtential business Owners tO think lOng and hard abOut their area and its needs.


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The Last Word

When we embarked on this month’s special report about the state of commercial real estate in northwest Florida, I approached the project with trepidation. My initial thought: The last thing business leaders in our region need to hear right now is more bad news.

After dozens of conversations with real estate experts across the 850, we have put together a snapshot of what is happening, from Tallahassee to Pensacola.

John Paul Somers of Destin may have summed it up best when he told me, “I’ve had great days and dark and gloomy days. (But) those who have capital to commit are saying … the fundamentals of this market are strong enough and they feel like we’re going to slowly rebuild from here.”

So, in the end, the news was not all bad. We may not be totally out of the woods yet. And by no means will we be returning to our boom years in the very near future. But the black cloud that has been hanging over us — economic misery brought on by the Great Recession and then exacerbated by the Gulf oil spill — definitely appears to be lifting.

And so, after all the reporting was done, I can honestly report that I let out a sigh of relief.

Admittedly, in some places the activity is stagnant. But there are many areas where there are rays of sunshine peeking out. For instance:

>> They recently broke ground in Panama City Beach’s Pier Park for a new, 26,000-square-foot Marshalls. And it will be open by Christmas.

>> Two new Super Walmarts are heading into the emerald Coast—and the people who made the decision to put them there say they took a lot into consideration before giving the go-head, in-cluding the area’s population and its growth potential.

>> In Tallahassee, new multi-family projects are being developed around the universities. As J.R. long of Structure Commercial Real estate in Tallahassee so aptly points out, “As the economy suffers, people go back to school.” That, in turn, leads to a de-mand for housing. And retail is doing pretty well around the schools too.

Where the banks aren’t willing to front the money, private equity groups are stepping up to the plate and taking financial positions in new projects. These are the folks who have been sitting on the sidelines, cash in their pockets, waiting for property prices to fall low enough so they know there will be a good return on their investment.

“Between 2005 and 2007, we had amateur investors who were flipping. We talked a lot of people out of buying. Banks were loan-ing money on properties where it didn’t make sense,” Craig Barrett, CeO of nBI in Fort Walton Beach, told me. “now we’re selling to savvy investors. I’ve seen them buy stuff for 10-cents on the dollar.”

Make no mistake, northwest Florida will indeed recover. That goes for the housing market, the commercial real estate market, the tourism economy — and the myriad ongoing economic develop-ment efforts by our cities and counties.

Sure there are going to be blips. But this region has great po-tential. land is affordable. It’s doesn’t have the congestion that has plagued most of South and Central Florida. natural resources abound — from our lakes, beaches and forests to our fishing and hunting and multitude of recreational opportunities.

If you’re a business looking to expand and you’ve just experi-enced the northern winter of 2010–2011 — don’t you think that looking to the south is an option?

Some of our counties grew by double digits between 2000 and 2010 — despite two devastating back-to-back hurricane seasons smack in the middle of that time period.

Our growth has been fueled by growth in the military and an influx of retirees (including lots of military). We’ve had more aero-space and defense companies opening shop here. We have a pro-liferation of fairly low cost land available for distribution centers, manufacturing and industrial sites — as well as housing.

If we play our cards right, we can get a boost from the expansion of the Panama Canal and the fact we have a new international air-port in our midst. On top of that? We don’t have a personal income tax, and the state’s political leaders are working to whittle down the corporate income tax.

Keep your chin up, northwest Florida. Good things are on the horizon.

LINDA KLEINDIENST, [email protected]

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Documents

2011 June-July Issue of 850 Business Magazine