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Southeast Fla. Business Briefs - July 2010

BOCA RATON — Gov. Charlie Crist signed a bill allowing Florida Atlantic University to have its own medical school. The first class is slated to arrive in fall 2011.

» Private equity firm Sun Capital Partners, parent of Boston Market, Friendly’s and other restaurant chains, acquired Captain D’s Seafood Kitchen, the nation’s second-largest casual seafood chain with $235 million in 2009 sales and 539 stores, from Sagittarius Brands for an undisclosed amount.

» S. Gordon Restaurant Group, led by Stanley and Lenore Gordon, will open five Dunkin’ Donuts units in southeast Palm Beach County and southwest Broward beginning in 2011.

FORT PIERCE — Indian River State College will add three bachelor’s programs, in biology, digital media and human services, in January 2011 to its five existing four-year degrees.

HOLLYWOOD — Newark, N.J.-based management consulting firm Consultants 2 Go opened its Florida branch in Hollywood under vice president for business development Cathy Myers.

JUNO BEACH — FPL Group shareholders voted to change the company name to NextEra Energy to reflect the company’s involvement in clean energy nationally. NextEra’s utility subsidiary, Florida Power & Light, retains its name.

JUPITER — The National Institutes of Health awarded two grants totaling $6 million to Scripps to develop new drug discovery approaches to alcohol addiction and to find the genetic mechanisms behind Fragile X syndrome, an inherited form of mental retardation often linked to autism. Scripps Florida’s Dr. Claes Wahlestedt, a neuroscience and molecular therapeutics professor, is the principal investigator for both projects.

PALM CITY — GiftRAP Healthcare Software will add 38 jobs to its existing 42 in the next two years and expand its facility with the help of a $50,000 training grant from Workforce Florida.

PORT ST. LUCIE —Tradition Center for Innovation members formed Florida Innovation Partners to direct the center’s growth into a research park and to promote commercialization of discoveries at the park. The new group is run by a council of the center’s anchor institutions: Torrey Pines Institute for Molecular Studies, Oregon Health and Science University’s Vaccine and Gene Therapy Institute in Florida, Martin Memorial Health Systems and Mann Research Center. The group’s first initiative is to attract more institutions to the 150-acre, privately owned research park formerly known as the Florida Center for Innovation. It’s in the Tradition development in Port St. Lucie.

SUNRISE — National medical group Mednax (NYSE-MD) acquired a six-doctor neonatal physician group in Fort Myers, Associates in Neonatology, that staffs the neonatal intensive care unit at Children’s Hospital of Southwest Florida and three other area hospitals. Mednax separately acquired a four-doctor neonatal practice in Syracuse, N.Y. Terms for both transactions, the fifth and sixth for Mednax this year, weren’t disclosed.