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Around the State
Florida Treasurer and Insurance Commissioner Bill Nelson has imposed a rate freeze on Allstate homeowner policies through 1998. The freeze follows a Nelson-approved 22% rate increase on the same policies. Allstate, Florida's second-largest private provider of homeowner insurance, had requested a 41% hike. Also, the company pledged to stop non-renewing coverage and to write at least 25,000 new policies annually in the state of Florida.
Brown citrus aphids, discovered in Dade and Broward counties late last year, have spread to Collier, Hendry, Martin and St. Lucie counties. A threat to the citrus industry because it can carry the tristeza virus, the pest is being combated by the Florida Department of Agriculture through release of a parasitic wasp, which feeds on the aphids.
The sugarcane mosaic virus, a disease which can slow growth and reduce crop yields, is affecting about 15% of South Florida's sugarcane acreage.
Best Buy, the Minneapolis-based consumer electronics chain, is hiring 275 for two new stores in Hillsborough County. Additional stores are planned for Lakeland and Sarasota, which will each employ between 125 and 150.
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Northwest
The U.S. Navy dedicated its $227 million, two-million-square-foot Naval Air Technical Training Center at the Pensacola Naval Air Station. Operations at the training complex will generate an influx of more than 1,500 instructors and staff and up to 20,000 students annually.
A 1,318-bed state prison in Santa Rosa County east of Milton is scheduled to open in October and bring 200 jobs to the area.
In Pensacola, the merger of two not-for-profit health care organizations, Baptist Health Care and Lakeview Center Inc., will create the area's third largest employer, with 5,000 positions, after state and federal government.
The Gadsden County Commission designated a 25-mile stretch of County Road 12 between Greensboro and Havana the North Florida Art Trail, in recognition of the area's galleries, antique shops, historic houses and a growing community of artists.
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Northeast
Merrill Lynch, the financial services company based in New York, plans to construct a $14 million, 142,000-square-foot building at its Deerwood Park campus in Jacksonville to accommodate growth there. Completion is expected by January.
At the Imeson Industrial Park in Jacksonville, Stone Container Corp. of Chicago is completing its fourth area factory, a $5.1 million, 218,865-square-foot corrugated box plant expected to employ 150 people when it opens in October.
The city of Jacksonville Beach signed a contract with the Haskell Co. and Sleiman Enterprises, both of Duval County, for a $5.75 million project to build a downtown city hall, a festival area and a police station.
A trucking company based in Arkansas, American Freightways Inc., plans to build in Jacksonville's Westside area a $2 million, 40,000-square-foot terminal, which will open next summer and employ 150, mostly dockworkers.
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Central
BellSouth Mobility will relocate 353 central Florida jobs to its new district headquarters in Lake Mary. The $35 million, five-story administration building will open next summer. The company plans to create another 350 jobs there by the year 2001.
Charles J. Givens, Jr., filed for Chapter 11 protection for his Longwood company, International Administrative Services, which provides businesses with bookkeeping and accounting services.
The Brevard County Commission favors a ten-year tax break for Harris Corp. that could save the company $825,000 the first year and bring 250 jobs to Palm Bay, if the company's semiconductor unit wins a contract with a private firm to manufacture computer chips.
In east Orange County, U.S. Home Corp. is building a 1,500-unit golf course community on 1,140 acres of land purchased for $11 million. A sales center will open late this year and the golf course will open late next year. Home prices will range from $100,000 to $400,000.
Privately held Piper Industries, a manufacturer of plastic products, leased 41,600 square feet in the Orlando Central Park industrial park for a new, 28-employee division called Piper Plastics.
A three-year-old publisher of legal directories based in Deltona, Publishing Co. of North America, opened a sales office in Winter Park, where it expects to employ 75 by the end of 1997. The company went public in May.
Citrus producer, processor and marketer Orange-co of Bartow acquired the Birds Eye foodservice juice business from Philip Morris Co. Orlando was named the 1996 top travel destination in the world by Travel Guide Gazette, which sent ballots to more than 40,000 travel agents worldwide.
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Tampa Bay
American Portable Telecom (APT), a public company with headquarters in Chicago, is leasing 91,555 square feet in Tampa for its national operations center, which will open this fall and employ more than 400 when fully staffed. APT is one of the nation's largest independent providers of Personal Communications Services, a high-quality alternative to cellular telephones. To lure the company, Tampa, Hillsborough County and the state of Florida awarded APT tax refund inducements totalling $1.5 million over the next six years.
This month in Tampa, PrimeCo Personal Communications will open a customer service center, bringing 300 jobs to a new 40,000-square-foot office building. The wireless communications company, formed by an alliance of AirTouch Communications, Bell Atlantic, NYNEX and USWEST Media Group, established its Southeast regional headquarters in Tampa last year.
Rochester, N.Y.-based Paychex Inc., a payroll-services company, agreed to acquire St. Petersburg's National Business Solutions Inc., an employee-leasing firm, in a stock swap. The deal is valued at $140 million.
Home Shopping Network, the St. Petersburg television retailer, is spinning off its insurance subsidiary to one of the subsidiary's executives. It will be called L&B Financial Network, based in Clearwater.
ABR Information Services, based in Palm Harbor, broadened its reach in the employee benefits administration market with the acquisition of Fairfax, Va.-based L.P. Baier Co., a large independent administrator of flexible spending account plans.
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Treasure Coast
Palm Beach County commissioners agreed on plans for a $42 million, 280,000-square-foot convention center in West Palm Beach and a $25 million spring training baseball stadium in Jupiter. Both would be financed by hotel bed tax money.
A Boca Raton-based computer hardware maker, the Panda Project, fired 25 employees, or 20% of its work force, citing staff redundancies due to recent strategic partnerships with Siemens Nixdorf Information Systems, Parametric Technology Corp. and AMP Inc.
Columbia JFK Medical Center is building a 26,250-square-foot, two-story medical pavilion scheduled to open later this year at the Aberdeen Professional Center in Boynton Beach.
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Southwest
Highlands, Hardee and DeSoto counties have a new daily newspaper, Highlands Today, launched by Media General Inc., a publicly owned, Richmond, Va.-based communications company. Media General's other properties include the Tampa Tribune.
The International Barter Exchange, Southwest Florida's largest barter/trade organization, purchased a new corporate headquarters in Sarasota where it will consolidate operations and staff.
A new, Tom Fazio-designed golf course, scheduled to open New Year's Day, is being built in Bonita Springs near Pelican Landing.
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Southeast
Miami-based Physicians Corp. of America is reorganizing its Florida operations and eliminating 182 jobs.
Capital Factors Holding Inc., a Fort Lauderdale financial services company, sold two million common shares in its initial public offering.
In Miami, UPS opened its first U.S.-based, full-service brokerage operation, providing customs clearance for international shipments and other services for firms moving cargo through Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Palm Beach, Fort Myers and Key West.
In late July, Assistant U.S. Attorney Roger Stefin subpoenaed the Broward County school district's records of bids and money paid to Coastal Construction & Development Inc., S.T. Wicole Construction Co. and local architects, Donald Singer, Michael Shiff & Associates and Shrum, Ali & Associates. According to a report in the Sun-Sentinel newspaper, several schools built by Coastal and S.T. Wicole have recurring problems with leaks and falling tiles. In a separate development earlier this year, the district's associate superintendent in charge of construction, Ray de la Feuilliez, was suspended for ten days after internal investigators reported mismanagement in his department.
