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Treasure Coast: Going for the Gold
Welcome mats like that are being laid out up and down the Treasure Coast. While the region's economy continues to rely heavily on tourism and citrus, recruitment and incentive programs are beginning to attract better-paying professional and manufacturing jobs.
History indicates that future job growth in Treasure Coast counties could be uneven, county to county. For example, while economic development efforts bring significant gains to the region's largest county, Palm Beach, leaders in the smallest, Okeechobee, scramble to offset job losses from agribusiness shutdowns.
Overall, though, non-farm employment in the Treasure Coast region is expected to increase an average of 3.7% a year for the rest of the 1990s, higher than the 2.7% projected for all of Florida, according to the University of Florida's Bureau of Economic and Business Research (BEBR).
Pro-growth In Palm Beach County
Local sentiment has turned decidedly pro-growth in Palm Beach County, where the expansion of local firms and corporate relocations to Boca Raton have cut the county's office vacancy rate to less than 15%, according to Deighan Appraisal Associates in Port St. Lucie.
Palm Beach County's employment base has been under stress. House sales in the county were off by 5% last year due to cutbacks by some of the county's major manufacturers, including IBM and Pratt & Whitney, says Merle Dimbath, a Stuart economist. Agricultural interests are pinched, too.
"Our winter crops are being left in the fields to rot because farmers can't get a break-even price," says Tom Gregory, who coordinates Palm Beach County's agriculture economic development efforts. Gregory adds that sugar growers are "holding their own under extreme pressure" as environmentalists and the Clinton administration push for a one-cent-per-pound sugar tax.
Against that backdrop, Palm Beach County's government has become an aggressive bidder for good jobs. A three-year-old Job Growth Incentive (JGI) program pays cash to employers for creating high-paying jobs. To date, the JGI has helped to attract over 30 companies with commitments to create more than 4,000 jobs, at a cost of less than $2,000 per employee. The county government's economic development coordinator, Michael Tarlitz, says the payback on the investment is "at least three-to-one" when the program's cost is compared to the tax revenue generated by new jobs.
JGI accounts for about half of the roughly $15 million the county has dumped into seven economic development programs since 1993, including a capital funds program, a high-technology deployment center, small business incubation offices and a property tax exemption program.
Additional county incentives of $500 to $2,000 per employee are offered to companies involved in local film and video production. One taker last year was Palm Beach Ocean Studios. It will produce big-budget feature films and television programs in a 41,000-square-foot, $7 million facility in eastern Palm Beach County.
Palm Beach Ocean Studios will provide more than 100 high-paying jobs, says studio President Thorpe Shuttleworth, a former New York entertainment lawyer, adding that "ours is the first film studio built in South Florida in 30 years." The $208,000 incentive grant from the county had more symbolic than financial meaning, Shuttleworth says. It showed the "progressive attitude" of the local government and business community toward new ventures.
Heart Of The Treasure Coast
The beat of business has quickened in recent years in Martin and St. Lucie counties, in the heart of the Treasure Coast region.
Martin County is well poised to become a new frontier for economic development. Sometimes criticized for failure to promote a favorable business climate, local leaders are trying to improve the corporate world's perception of the county.
"People are starting to see that things are different now," says Ted Astolfi, executive director of the Business Development Board of Martin County. "We're more pro-business, a place to go."
Major infrastructure improvements also may boost the county's economy. For example, a soon-to-be-completed, multimillion-dollar beach renourishment project is expected to draw more tourists to the county -- including vacationing Dade and Broward business executives, who may also find it to be an ideal spot to relocate their businesses, Astolfi says.
Until recently, most of Astolfi's energies were focused on an aerospace plant in Stuart established by Grumman Corp. He helped to retain the plant's 430 jobs during a transition in which Northrop Corp., another aerospace giant, acquired Grumman. Last year, Northrop Grumman spent more than $2 million to upgrade the plant and moved a 100-employee engineering research and development division there.
A test of local attitudes toward business is coming. A Martin County Commissioner proposed a tax-abatement ordinance to encourage local business development; the proposal will be put to a referendum vote later this year.
Attracting new industry, particularly manufacturing operations, is a high priority in St. Lucie County, where the local unemployment rate of 11.6% in 1995 was one of the state's highest, according to estimates by BEBR. New Meyers Aircraft, which will be putting up to 120 county residents to work by the end of 1997 was among St. Lucie's biggest coups last year.
St. Lucie West, a large development in fast-growing Port St. Lucie, continues to be an important commercial catalyst. The development's dollar volume of commercial and residential construction is about $80 million a year, according to Deighan Appraisal Associates.
Among the newcomers is Fontina Foods, a processor of herbs, spices and sauces sold worldwide, which operates a 27,000-square-foot production and research and development facility in St. Lucie West. The company outgrew its Pompano and North Palm Beach locations and was drawn to St. Lucie West by lures such as tax incentives, proximity to I-95 and labor availability.
The local economy also is expected to receive a multimillion-dollar boost over the next decade from the recent relocation of the winter home of the Professional Golf Association (PGA) to The Reserve in Port St. Lucie.
"Down the road, the symbiosis of the PGA with a bigger and better St. Lucie County International Airport and enhanced port development, with trendy boutiques and Key West-style architecture, will turn St. Lucie County into a major tourist destination," predicts Les Hargrave, executive director of the St. Lucie County Chamber of Commerce.
Cloudy Business Climate
In the Treasure Coast's smallest counties, Indian River and Okeechobee, economic development officials are working hard to remove clouds from their business climate.
Agrarian Okeechobee, still reeling from the loss of nearly two dozen dairies in recent years, is postponing its recruitment activities until $1 million worth of infrastructure improvements are completed at its airport complex later this year, says Frank Marsocci, former executive director of the Okeechobee Economic Council.
Some of the dairy employment declines will be offset by prison jobs. A newly built state correctional facility in Okeechobee is projected to add 300 high-paying jobs over the next few years, which could help pull the county up from the bottom rungs of the per capita income ladder in Florida.
Tourism holds some promise, too. The county's winter-visitor count has steadily increased, owing largely to the popularity of lake fishing. Also a 15-year project to restore the Kissimmee River, coupled with the pending state purchase of land for a 45,000-acre park, further supports tourism.
Indian River County's economy is recovering from several blows, including American Eagle's recent decision to stop offering commuter flights between Vero Beach and Miami. In addition, several citrus packing houses moved south to St. Lucie County. And Ocean Isle Software pulled up stakes within months of its takeover by San Diego-based Stack Electronics, eliminating 70 well-paying jobs in Vero Beach.
Job growth from 1995 to 2000 will be slower in Indian River than in other Treasure Coast counties, according to projections by BEBR. But Penny Chandler, the new executive vice president of the Vero Beach/Indian River County Chamber of Commerce, appears intent on proving the University of Florida forecasters wrong.
As part of her restructuring of the chamber, a volunteer-led committee was formed to oversee development of industrial parks, including a site of about 200 acres at the county landfill that could eventually attract specialized recycling facilities, dumping an estimated $1 million annually into county tax coffers.
Chandler is pushing hard to lure and nurture business with direct financial incentives, which she says are in short supply. Not even The New Piper Aircraft Inc., a big local employer, gets any special favors. The light-airplane manufacturer emerged from bankruptcy last year and now employs 600 workers in Vero Beach, but the city's municipal power plant charges the company a premium rate instead of offering volume discount.
Like other economic development leaders with more energy than incentive money, Chandler is pressuring local government offices to give businesses better service.
"If permitting and zoning departments were simply more appreciative of business," says Milt Thomas, director of economic development at the chamber, "it would almost be enough to keep and bring companies here. Instead, they get red tape and requirements that are ludicrous."
Indiantown's Potential
Keep an eye on Indiantown, 20 miles west of Stuart in Martin County. It has ready availability of power, good road transportation links to Orlando, Miami and West Palm Beach and a rail line that feeds directly into the Port of Palm Beach. "Industrial development is destined to increase there," predicts Merle Dimbath, a Stuart economist. One growing company there is Caulkins Indiantown Citrus Co. Thanks partly to affordable steam power from a new cogeneration plant next door, Caulkins has doubled its processing capacity over the past several years, according to company treasurer Andrew Taylor. Other sizable companies in Indiantown include Bay State Milling and Tampa Farm Service, major sources of flour and egg distribution in South Florida.
Research Station May Relocate
Relocation of the USDA's Agriculture Research Station from Orlando to St. Lucie County could happen in two to three years, according to Michael Minton, a Fort Pierce attorney heading up a local task force assembled by the St. Lucie County Chamber of Commerce to attract the USDA lab to St. Lucie.
The move initially would mean the transfer of at least eight to ten research scientists and up to 100 local hires, with an annual payroll in the $10 million range.
The relocated station also could act as a hub around which agricultural companies might cluster, says Les Hargrave, executive director of the St. Lucie County Chamber of Commerce.
The ag station is in downtown Orlando, far from rural areas of Polk and Lake counties. Minton says Orlando's city government supports the station's proposed relocation to St. Lucie County.
The move would put the station in the middle of an important citrus production area. Back-to-back freezes in counties to the north caused Florida growers to turn south in the 1980s, a trend that turned St. Lucie into the state's top grapefruit-producing county. St. Lucie County also has a nucleus of scientific talent at such institutions as the Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institution, the University of Florida's Ft. Pierce Agricultural Research Center, and a renowned entomology lab in nearby Vero Beach.
