SHARE:
North Central: United They Stand
But today, companies sizing up Florida's hilly North Central region do expect incentives -- good ones. "Recently," says Wattles, "someone approached us about relocating his business here, but he only had one job to offer us -- his own. And he wanted to know what we were going to do for him."
It's not easy to attract big payrolls to this rural seven-county region; cheap labor, good climate and proximity to Florida's markets aren't enough anymore. Potent competitors now loom to the north, welcoming companies with tempting incentives.
"No question about it, Georgia has its act together," says Ken Easterling, a major accounts manager of Florida Power & Light and a member of the Committee of 100 in Putnam County. "Not only Putnam but also the surrounding counties have all lost heavy industry and manufacturing prospects to Georgia recently." South Carolina also has done damage, beating out locations in Putnam County and elsewhere that were competing for a major steel plant.
Sumter County has gotten a bitter taste of the competition for good jobs, too. "We were in the running for a Wal-Mart distribution center with 200-plus jobs at stake," says Chuck Lewis, executive director of Sumter County Development Council Inc., "but it went instead to Winter Haven."
With so much in-state and out-of-state competition, many economic development groups in North Central are putting aside turf squabbles and working together on certain projects. Several are taking part in Enterprise Florida's statewide effort to improve the delivery of job training services.
Other partnerships are under way too; Levy and Sumter joined other rural counties to market themselves nationally in Plants, Sites & Parks magazine. Last year, Putnam County entered Florida's First Coast, a consortium of six Northeast Florida counties that collectively promotes the region.
Even within some counties, leaders push for better coordination of local efforts to recruit prospective employers. "We'd tried for years to get our EDC efforts combined," says Howard Gardner III, vice president of Florida Furniture Industries in Putnam County. "Sometimes prospects met with the chamber, sometimes with government officials; it was always a disjointed effort."
That schism disappeared thanks to an intense community-wide effort to get designation for Putnam as a federal empowerment zone. The application process inspired a 446-page document created by plenty of focus groups and dozens of volunteers. "We got folks together from all walks of life, including those who were locked into poverty and others who were gainfully employed," says Easterling. "The old-timers say they'd never seen anything like it before. We understand each other a lot better now."
Though their quest was unsuccessful on a national level, community leaders realized their work wasn't wasted. Their "coming together" produced a first-ever "structured partnership" between private and public sectors. And it also generated a long-range economic plan that may help revitalize the city of Palatka.
Coastal Perspective
Tales of teamwork in economic development are rarer, however, along North Central's Gulf Coast.
Disgruntled Citrus County business people, convinced the private sector could better promote economic development, demanded that county government stop spending money on industrial prospecting. Now the work is done by the privately run Economic Development Association of Citrus County (EDACC). Modestly funded, this three-year-old organization relies on innovation; one idea is to use occupational license fees to fund business infrastructure needs. The EDACC also hopes to entice new businesses with time-saving "pre-approved" building plans for eight different industrial sites.
Despite its diminished role, Citrus County government still has some say in economic development. "Since EDACC has decided its role is industrial, we've turned to ecotourism," says Mary Craven, tourist and business facilitator for Citrus County. Recently, the county hired Tallahassee-based Geiger & Associates to launch a $75,000 campaign to promote tourism. Craven expects this effort to get a boost when a new $1 million visitors center at Homosassa Springs State Wildlife Park opens in July.
Unlike the situation in Citrus, economic development work in Levy County is left to the city and county governments. Much of the work involves nurturing new businesses. "Last year, 25 small-scale businesses, from restaurants to lawn mower repair shops, were started," says Levy County's economic development director, George Sandora, "and every one of them came with a problem, either with permitting, politics or neighbor objections."
Aquaculture
One pressing need common to many coastal communities in North Central Florida is retraining for fishermen who have been put out of work by the state's net-fishing ban. In Levy County, one high-profile retraining project, a state-funded aquaculture effort called Project WAVE (Withlacoochee Aquaculture Vocational Education), was launched in Cedar Key to instruct 50 former net fishermen in the entrepreneurship of raising clams on leased underwater sites. But the return on Project WAVE is uncertain since the success of small-scale clam entrepreneurs is threatened by larger competitors.
Yet despite that drawback, many people in Citrus County want aquaculture to come to their Gulf waters, too. Here, the net ban's devastating effect was coupled with a three-year-old ban on scallop harvesting. "Both bans have put hundreds out of work here and cost the local economy millions," says insurance agent Kevin Cunningham, a member of the area's privately run economic development association.
To get Citrus back on its feet, Cunningham and others are trying hard to obtain state funding for an aquaculture project designed to teach locals how to raise and cultivate scallops, thereby replenishing the population so the ban on harvesting can be lifted. Norman J. Blake, a University of South Florida professor of marine science, says Citrus' coastal waters provide ideal habitat for scallops.
"Florida is the only state on the East Coast with scallop habitat that doesn't have scallop aquaculture," Blake says, adding that more than 90% of bay scallops consumed in the U.S. are imported. "A scallop aquaculture project would be good for the whole Nature Coast."
Retention vs. Recruitment
Fishing for out-of-town companies that want to relocate often requires expensive bait. So, while economic development groups in North Central Florida cast about for big catches, they find it cost-effective to try to help homegrown companies.
That is precisely what Alachua County's Council For Economic Outreach (CEO) is doing. "More and more, we're involved with retention efforts," says Quenta Vettel, CEO's spokesperson. Nationwide Insurance, for instance, recently pondered whether to expand its regional Gainesville office or to close it down and eliminate more than 600 local jobs. So, with the same zeal used to entice new prospects, CEO convinced Nationwide to keep its presence in Gainesville, where the company's employment gradually will expand to nearly 1,000. Vettel also thinks the CEO and the local community helped persuade Sabine, a manufacturer of electronic tuning equipment, not to leave Alachua County and take 85 jobs with it.
In Ocala, economic development officials are working on their own "retention effort" by trying to secure foreign trade zone status for their local airport. "We're taking an aggressive role in providing an environment that'll make companies want to stay," says Pete Tesch, senior vice president for the Ocala/Marion County Economic Development Council.
One obstacle to business retention and recruitment, not just in North Central Florida but statewide, is a tax on commercial use of electric power, says Tesch, who also is president-elect to the Florida Economic Development Council. "We're the only state in the Southeast that has a sales tax on the manufacturer's use of electricity, which puts us at a big disadvantage," says Tesch, who is pushing Florida legislators to ax the tax.
Whether the electricity tax stays or goes, one thing is certain: North Central Florida will need all the energy it can muster to meet -- and beat -- the competition for good jobs.
College-Town Economics
History is being made in Alachua County where Gainesville's business community and the University of Florida -- two groups not exactly known in the past for compatibility -- have joined forces with local government to promote job creation.
"There's been a big change in attitude in the last couple of years," explains professor Arnold Heggestad, UF's director for entrepreneurial programs. "The university decided that our future is related to Alachua County. Since jobs are becoming harder to find, we set out to get more internship opportunities for our students. We also wanted to develop our technology transfer program."
With funding from public and private sources, UF spawned the North Florida Technology Innovation Corporation, which offers what it calls "a not-for profit entrepreneurial assistance program that provides business and technical services to new and developing technology-based companies." As of March, the corporation was helping three small companies, including a software firm and a maker of biological insect control systems. The corporation also opened an office in nearby Ocala, offering assistance to early-stage technology companies in that area.
By supporting job creation in North Central Florida, UF supports its own efforts to recruit faculty and staff who relocate with a spouse.
"There's not much for faculty spouses to do here," says Heggestad. "We needed to create opportunities for them."
Dam Debate
President Nixon stopped the project for awhile. Then pro-business forces breathed new life into it. But in 1991, Congress finally de-authorized what would have been a huge shipping lane through the heart of Florida, from the Gulf Coast to the Atlantic.
Yet some work on the cross-state barge canal was finished before Congress killed the project. Among other things, workers completed the Rodman Dam on the Oklawaha River in Putnam County. And even though the barge canal is history, debates over Rodman Dam rage on.
A recreational industry has developed along the shores and in the vicinity of the reservoir created by Rodman Dam. But environmentalists propose knocking down the dam and drying up the reservoir. The ecology of the area would be improved by restoring natural flow of the Oklawaha River, says Gary Appelson, who works on river restoration for a group called the Florida Defenders of the Environment.
Business interests want the dam left alone. "It makes a $6 million annual economic impact on our area," says Wes Larson, executive vice president of the Putnam County Chamber of Commerce.
