May 17, 2024
Transportation
A Bumpy Ride
In April 2022, a Fort Lauderdale company that customizes private aircraft for the wealthy invited media to the airport to tour its largest project to date, a Boeing 767 owned by Coral Gables attorney and entrepreneur John H. Ruiz.
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Published on 5/16/2024
Sky-High Ambitions
From The Jetsons to Back to the Future to The Fifth Element, flying cars have always been the stuff of science fiction, but they might be soaring through Florida's skies sooner than you think. The state has become a hotbed for flying car companies who view it as an appealing location for their emerging industry.
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Published on 5/16/2024
Fast Ferry
Spain's Balearia Group made its name moving people, cars and goods from the mainland to Mallorca and the rest of the Balearic islands off the southeast Spanish coast. It grew to serve the Canary Islands, north Africa and the south of France. Then it leapt across the Atlantic in 2011 to Fort Lauderdale to run a fast ferry to Freeport and, as of 2019, Bimini in the Bahamas.
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Published on 5/15/2024
Transatlantic Ties
Florida and the United Kingdom have a close relationship — and it's not just because the state is a magnet for British tourists. The U.K. is Florida's top foreign investor. The state supplies the U.K. with a wide range of goods and commodities, including aviation and aerospace products. British affiliates have total holdings of more than $18 billion in Florida, with more than 350 British companies employing 70,000 Floridians, according to the Florida Department of Commerce.
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Published on 5/14/2024
Railroad Revolution
Jacksonville is known as a logistics hub, which includes railroads like CSX and Florida East Coast Railway, both headquartered there. Yet other railroads, like Norfolk Southern, also have a large presence in Northeast Florida.
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Published on 5/14/2024
Slow-Speed Planning
As Brightline officials celebrated strong ridership numbers from their new Orlando-to-Miami high-speed rail line late last year, talk of looking west to Tampa seemed to pick up steam. Dozens of Tampa officials and business leaders led by Mayor Jane Castor spent a November day riding the train that tops out at 125 mph, with plenty dreaming of a day they can zip past Interstate 4 logjams.
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Published on 5/8/2024
Florida's Future
We asked 13 experts in their respective fields to look into their crystal balls. Here are their thoughts on the decade ahead.
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Published on 7/18/2023
Rail Renaissance
In 2018, Brightline — the nation's first privately financed passenger rail service in nearly four decades — debuted service between Miami, Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach. The Miami company opened stations in Aventura and Boca Raton last year and this summer will launch hourly departures between Miami and Orlando.
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Published on 6/15/2023
Out of the Blue
Steve Murawski, a University of South Florida professor, offers an illuminating data point: The economic value of commercial and recreational fishing in Florida is greater than aerospace, citrus and ranching combined.
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Published on 5/31/2023
Moore Odyssey
Roger Moore last year gave a thought to his legacy as the sale of the boat retailing business he co-founded moved toward completion.
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Published on 5/31/2023
Wave of Growth
Northwest Florida's two maritime ports posted strong growth last year, fueling their plans for major expansions.
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Published on 5/31/2023
Driver's Seat
Pursuing a career in transportation made sense to Michelle Maikisch, a ninth-generation Floridian who grew up in a family of engineers and farmers in Cottondale, a rural town in the Florida Panhandle. Her father was an engineer for the State Road Department, the predecessor to the Florida Department of Transportation. Other family members also worked for the transportation department. “I've just about been around transportation my entire life,” she says.
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Published on 5/31/2023
Sunnier Days Ahead
Coming off a record year of passenger traffic, Punta Gorda Airport is expecting business to get even better with the planned opening this year of the 785-room Sunseeker Resort on Charlotte Harbor.
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Published on 5/25/2023
Driving Successes
As president of Tallahassee Community College and a veteran law enforcement official, Jim Murdaugh knows the value of workforce training in helping people improve their circumstances, including those who have had run-ins with the law.
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Published on 5/24/2023
Touting JaxPort
Competition for cruise business south of Jacksonville is fierce, with active ports at Cape Canaveral, Fort Lauderdale and Miami. However, Jacksonville is a good entry point for local residents or those just north of Jacksonville who otherwise would have to go to Charleston to find a cruise within driving distance, says Alberto Cabrera, director of cargo and cruise development, in talking up JaxPort.
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Published on 5/24/2023
Custom-Made
Peter Quinter doesn't spend much time behind a desk. On any given day, the trade attorney might be at a port warehouse, aboard a freighter or inside a Boeing 747 helping clients deal with import or export hiccups and advocating to get their shipments back on track.
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Published on 5/23/2023
Economic Engine
Brightline's upcoming train service to Orlando is providing an economic boost to Central Florida. The company's $100-million vehicle maintenance facility — dubbed Basecamp — will employ 100 workers, and the train carrier has partnered with Siemens USA (which manufactures its trains), railroad contractor Herzog and Valencia College to create a curriculum to train students for careers as train mechanics.
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Published on 5/22/2023
Keep on Truckin'
FleetForce is expanding in Florida this spring with six new training and testing centers. The truck-driving school, based in Sarasota, projects it will be able to graduate 3,000 commercial drivers annually, to help reduce a shortage that trucking trade experts say is close to 80,000 nationally.
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Published on 5/17/2023
City Center
Along a stretch of I-4 some 25 miles east of Tampa and 60 miles west of Orlando, a new City Furniture campus stretches for a half-mile. The 87-acre development that opened late last year features 1.3 million square feet of warehouse space and a nearly 190,000-sq.-ft. two-story showroom, complete with a wine and coffee bar.
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Published on 5/16/2023
Rocking the Boat
A marine marketing truism holds that the ideal locale for photographing a boat is in the clear blue waters of the Bahamas. Cam Heaps, CEO of electric boat maker Voltari, wanted that Bahamas photo and decided to go for more: Instead of shipping or towing his new Voltari 260 performance boat there, he would seek to set a record for the “first and longest” electric boat overseas crossing — the 91 miles from Key Largo to Bimini.
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Published on 5/15/2023
Name Game
Broward's seaport is one of the three busiest cruise ship home ports in the world. It ranks among the nation's leading container ship ports and is South Florida's main seaport for gas, jet fuel and alternative fuels. Some 7,000 people work at companies that provide direct services at or to the port.
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Published on 4/20/2023
Orlando International Airport debuts its new $2.75-billion,15-gate terminal
Orlando International Airport debuted its new $2.75-billion, 15-gate terminal, which features a slew of technological touches. Among the highlights are:
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Published on 10/31/2022
Virgin Voyages' new palm tree design cruise terminal is open at PortMiami
Virgin Voyages' new cruise terminal is open at PortMiami. The terminal, part of a county project aimed at reducing emissions from vessels at berth, is home to the 2,770-passenger Scarlet Lady...
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Published on 5/31/2022
St. Lucie County gets a green light to reorganize its foreign trade zone
The foreign trade zone in St. Lucie County sat largely dormant for the 26 years since it was created, covering the Treasure Coast Airport near Fort Pierce and three nearby parcels. This year, the county received federal approval to reorganize the zone to allow expedited designation of sites for companies ready to conduct trade-zone activity such as manufacturing. The zone was expanded to include all of St. Lucie, Indian River and Okeechobee counties...
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Published on 5/31/2022
Northwest Florida's four major airports all had record traffic in 2021
Airport Director Matt Coughlin attributes much of the growth to a jump in tourism brought on, in large part, by the airlines marketing Pensacola...
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Published on 5/31/2022
