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Southeast Florida Roundup
Good Call: Broward Non-Profit Trains People with Disabilities
Non-profit Arc Broward, a service provider to 1,200 children and adults with disabilities, uses a marketdriven approach to help those with disabilities become employable. Its Arc Tech, a “social enterprise,” offers electronics recycling and secure disposal of IT products such as servers, laptops, monitors, switches and desktops.
People with autism and other disabilities take a 12-week materialhandling program to learn technical skills; they also take employability training. The program qualifies them to work in light manufacturing, refurbishing, retail, e-commerce and recycling.
As of late 2017, 75 adults had completed the program, and about 55% got jobs in light industrial, ware- house/distribution or retail. Arc Broward says it needs more employers willing to hire. Arc Tech collects about 1 million pounds of electronics a year, almost all from corporate customers. It has recovered 20 million pounds since it began in 2001, while refurbishing more than 7,500 pieces of hardware.
“I like that both the individual and the company benefit from the process,” says Michael Weinstock, vice president of operations at JEG & Sons, a Miami phone wholesaler. Watching workers hired from Arc develop “and become part of the team at JEG & Sons is very gratifying.”
Business Briefs for Southeast Florida
BOCA RATON — FAU’s Charles E. Schmidt College of Medicine received initial accreditation for a residency program in neurology, the fifth residency program at FAU following internal medicine, general surgery, emergency medicine and psychiatry. FAU will collaborate on the neurology residency with Boca Raton Regional Hospital and Tenet’s Delray Medical Center.
DANIA BEACH — Q Link Wireless, a company that provides free phone service through the federal Lifeline program, added 40 full-time jobs after it won licenses for wireless service in Arkansas and Hawaii. The company now operates in 30 states and Puerto Rico.
FORT LAUDERDALE — Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Trimble paid $500 million to acquire locally based construction management software company e-Builder. Founders Jon and Ron Antevy will stay on in leadership, and e-Builder will remain in South Florida. Weston-based Cleveland Clinic Florida opened its concierge medicine office, the enterprise’s first such office, on East Broward Boulevard. Port Everglades signed a longterm lease with Horizon Terminal Services, which will relocate from elsewhere in the port to a larger facility for importing vehicles. Now handling 15,000 autos and pieces of heavy equipment, it plans to add 25 employees as it begins handling 40,000 to 50,000 automobiles. The Aspen Institute and Siemens Foundation recognized Broward College for its nursing program, among eight community colleges nationally and four in Florida honored in the Siemens-Aspen Community College STEM Award. Each award brought a $50,000 prize. The other Florida colleges were Hillsborough (paramedic), Miami-Dade (animation and gaming) and Valencia (telecommunications technology).
- Developer SobelCo. and its contractor Kaufman Lynn Construction broke ground on SobelCo.’s 321 at Water’s Edge, a 23-unit luxury condo project scheduled for completion in early 2019. Premier Developers received a partial certificate of occupancy as it opens its Riva, a 100-residence, 15-story condo building, the first luxury condo on the Middle River. Units run from mid-$700,000 to $2.29 million for penthouses.
