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Economic Yearbook 2006 - Tampa Bay Area
A New Look
Changing demographics and a furious job market energize communities in the Tampa metro area.
 Batter Up: New York investor Stu Sternberg, former managing director of Goldman Sachs, took control of the Tampa Bay Devil Rays last fall. In one of his first moves, he named Matthew Silverman, another veteran of Goldman Sachs, as president of the Major League Baseball franchise. |
Tampa
The Tampa Bay region is home to more than 80,000 University of South Florida graduates, and last year the university completed construction of a $43-million edition to its research park. The new Tampa Bay Technology Incubator is a 60,000-sq.-ft. facility on the southwest corner of the school's Tampa campus, providing office and shared lab space for biotechnology and life sciences research. ... The financial services sector also continues to grow at a fast clip. The Depository Trust & Clearing Corp., for instance, opened a new operations center in Tampa last year that created 400 jobs. ... Academic Financial Services, a nationwide provider of federal loan programs, announced last fall it is moving its headquarters to Hillsborough County, a move that will double its workforce to 500 over the next three years. ... Countrywide Home Loans purchased two buildings near Tampa International Airport, where it is opening its first central office campus in the state. It plans to employ between 900 and 1,000. ... HSBC North America plans to add 500 jobs after opening a second Tampa area call center last year. ... Tampa International Airport, which handled nearly 20 million passengers last year, 9.5% more than in 2004, is slated for a major expansion, including a new north terminal complex, over the next decade. ... Majority investor David Wasserman is planning a $100-million facelift for 20-year-old Hyde Park Village. Once a hotspot for upscale shopping, the retail center has been overtaken by International Plaza in recent years. The three-year revitalization project will focus on renovation, road improvements and pedestrian crossings.
Key Newcomers
? Born and raised in Tampa, Habib Skaff returned to the area last year to launch Intezyne Technologies, which develops synthetic polymers for the delivery of cancer drugs. The company, founded by Skaff and three other scientists he got to know while attending the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, is located in the Tampa Bay Technology Incubator.
? Delcie Durham, former program director for engineering design and materials processing and manufacturing at the National Science Foundation in northern Virginia, was recently named associate provost at the University of South Florida and dean of USF's graduate school.
