Northwest
Florida’s Northwest has long enjoyed an abundance of assets — sugar white beaches, bright blue Gulf waters, a heavy military presence. In October 2018, the people who live here added one more — resilience. Hurricane Michael took down houses, hotels, trees and power lines across much of the Panhandle, but it didn’t damage spirits. Northwest remains a great place to live and grow a business, with no shortage of space for new companies and, thanks to the 3,000+ military retirees who join the workforce here annually, plenty of skilled workers to staff them. Aviation, technology and logistics are among primary industries here.
Aviation and Defense
Florida’s Northwest is home to six major military installations, including NAS Pensacola, Eglin AFB and Tyndall AFB. Not only do these half-dozen facilities themselves account for some 56,000 military and civilian jobs, they are a magnet for more, drawing privately owned aerospace manufacturers, aircraft maintenance firms, suppliers and Department of Defense contractors to the region with job opportunities for highly skilled personnel.
One example is Singapore-based ST Engineering. Within four months of opening a 173,500-sq.-ft. maintenance and engineering facility large enough to accommodate two Boeing 777s or six Airbus A321 narrow-body aircraft at Pensacola International Airport in June 2018, ST Engineering announced plans to build a second 655,000-sq.-ft. MRO facility next door. Construction is expected to begin in 2022.
Two newly arrived aerospace manufacturing companies have found homes in Bay County. U.K.-based GKN Aerospace opened its first Florida facility in spring 2018 at VentureCrossings near Northwest Florida Beaches International Airport. Three months later, Connecticut-based Advanced Composites & Metalforming Technologies (ACMT), which makes parts for commercial and military aircraft, announced plans to open a 159,000-sq.-ft. manufacturing facility in Lynn Haven. Both companies are looking to add 100+ staff members each in coming months.
KEY PLAYERS: BAE Systems, Farnborough, U.K.; The Boeing Company, Chicago, Ill.; Lockheed Martin, Bethesda, Md.; ST Engineering, Singapore
Logistics and Transportation
Florida’s Northwest is readily accessible by road, rail, sea and air. I-10 bisects this region from east to west providing easy connections to I-65, I-75 and I-95, which put 12 of the Southeast’s major metros and 58 million potential customers within an eight-hour drive. And streamlining freight delivery is a Class 1 CSX rail line connected to several short lines and to this region’s three deep-water ports.
Operations at Northwest’s busiest port — Port Panama City — slowed briefly in October 2018 with the arrival of Hurricane Michael, but fully resumed at the West Terminal within two weeks. And now, port improvements that had been anticipated before Michael are finally underway. The East Channel is being deepened to 36 feet in preparation for construction of the East Terminal, which will include a 260,000-sq.-ft. warehouse, 10,000 feet of rail track and a new 900-foot bulkhead.
At the Port of Pensacola, Offshore Inland Marine is busy converting the former cargo ship Stena Freighter to serve as a landing platform for the rocket boosters that will be shed as Blue Origin’s New Glenn lifts off from Cape Canaveral beginning in 2021. Once placed into service on Florida’s east coast, the vessel is expected to return to the Port of Pensacola for regular maintenance and repair and to homeport between rocket recovery missions.
The four commercial airports serving Florida’s Northwest are busier than ever, adding new destinations and logging unprecedented numbers of travelers. Total passenger count for the region topped 5.2 million in 2018, a 14.7% increase over the previous year. Pensacola International served the most passengers — 1.9 million in 2018 — and Northwest Florida Beaches International, the region’s newest airport, passed the 1 million mark for the first time, topping its 2017 numbers by 12.4%.
KEY PLAYERS: Eastern Shipbuilding, Panama City; FedEx, Memphis, Tenn.; Goldring Gulf Distributing, Milton
Technology and Innovation
Northwest Florida continues to position itself as a cybersecurity leader, with the University of West Florida at the forefront. The UWF Center for Cybersecurity, which opened a headquarters in downtown Pensacola in April 2019, is the regional hub for cybersecurity education and research, offering multidisciplinary programs and certificates, research opportunities, outreach activities and industry partnerships. A designated National Center of Academic Excellence in Cyber Defense Education by the National Security Agency and the Department of Homeland Security, UWF is the NSA/DHS Regional Resource Center for the Southeast, providing guidance on cyber defense education to colleges and universities in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina and Puerto Rico.
Elsewhere in Northwest’s technology sector:
• Beast Code, a software firm specializing in operational training, modeling and simulation and data mining primarily for the military, is planning to expand its Fort Walton Beach-based headquarters to accommodate an anticipated 100+ new employees within the next few years. Opened in 2014, Beast Code was recently cited by the economic development group GrowFL among its “50 Florida Companies to Watch.”
• AppRiver, a cybersecurity company based in Gulf Breeze, has been acquired by Dallas-based email security firm Zix. Founded in 2002, AppRiver is a provider of cloud-based cybersecurity and productivity services, serving more than 60,000 companies worldwide with satellite offices in Atlanta, Austin, Canada, the U.K. and Switzerland.
• STARS Alliance, an innovative program championed by Florida State University professor and dean of the FSU College of Communication & Information Larry Dennis, is aimed at recruiting, retaining and graduating more women and minorities in IT. Since its founding in 2005, STARS has grown from its original 10 members to more than 50 colleges and universities throughout the U.S. At FSU, a decade ago, women and minorities made up about 15% of the students enrolled in IT programs; today they are more than 50%.
• Gulf Breeze-based Andrews Institute for Orthopaedics & Sports Medicine is providing relief for the pain associated with carpal tunnel syndrome with a new procedure called “Ultrasound Guided Carpal Tunnel Release.” Using a Mayo Clinic-designed “microknife” inserted through a small incision in the wrist and guided by ultrasound to the injured area, the surgeon is able to see — and precisely cut — the transverse carpal ligament that is causing the pain. Recovery time is reduced to days rather than weeks.
KEY PLAYERS: AppRiver, Gulf Breeze; Bit Wizards, Fort Walton Beach; Digital Boardwalk, Pensacola
Renewable Energy
Pensacola-based Gulf Power plans to build a 74.5-megawatt solar farm on 697 acres in Jackson County. Construction of the Gulf Power Blue Indigo Solar Energy Center is expected to begin in late 2019 and will employ an estimated 200-250 workers. When completed, the farm will generate enough electricity to power 15,000 homes.
In 2016, Gulf Power and Coronal Energy, powered by Panasonic, joined forces with the U.S. Department of Defense to install the first of 1.5 million solar panels at three sites: Eglin Air Force Base, NAS Pensacola and NAS Whiting Field. The combined facilities became fully operational in summer 2017, and continue to power 18,000 homes annually.
Gulf Power serves approximately 450,000 customers in eight counties throughout Northwest Florida and was acquired by Juno Beach-based NextEra Energy in January 2019. NextEra also owns Florida Power & Light Company, which serves approximately 5 million customer accounts in Florida.
KEY PLAYERS: Duke Energy Florida, St. Petersburg; Gulf Power, Pensacola
Education
In 2018, personal finance website WalletHub.com named Tallahassee the 15th most educated city in the U.S. based on such factors as quality of education and educational and career attainment. Nearly half (48%) of its residents over the age of 25 have a bachelor’s degree or higher, compared to 31% nationwide.
Two of Florida’s 12 public universities are located in Tallahassee: Florida A&M University, ranked seventh nationwide among historically black colleges and universities by U.S. News & World Report and known for its pharmacy school; and Florida State University, the nation’s 18th-ranked public university and a research heavyweight at No. 69 among U.S. public universities for patents granted in 2018 (34 in all). In FY 2018-19, FSU researchers received more than $233 million from federal, state and private sources to support investigations into such areas as health sciences, high energy physics and marine biology.
The region’s third public university — University of West Florida in Pensacola — has added a bachelor’s degree in cybersecurity and is partnering with Pensacola-based Florida Institute for Human & Machine Cognition to develop Florida’s first doctoral program in intelligent systems and robotics.
Also in this region: Tallahassee Community College, which is home to the new Veterans Success Center where vets receive help in transitioning to civilian life, achieving academic success at TCC and finding work after graduation; Northwest Florida State College, named among the nation’s 50 best community colleges by College Choice 2018, with four educational sites in Florida’s Northwest; and Pensacola State College, where a two-story STEM facility that will house its cybersecurity and math programs is under construction.
Life & Leisure
Accolades Aplenty
Northwest Florida is a great place to live, but don’t just take our word for it. U.S. News & World Report put Pensacola on its 2019 top 25 list of most desirable places to live in the U.S. Southern Living ranked Destin No. 2 and Panama City No. 3 on its list of “The South’s Best Beach Towns 2019.” And MSN.com’s Insider Online bestowed the title “Best Small Town in Florida” on DeFuniak Springs in Walton County, citing its Victorian charm and welcoming atmosphere, with a shout-out to the Walton County Public Library, Florida’s oldest.
The Livin’ Is Easy
Daily life in Florida’s Northwest is a lot like being on vacation. Traffic jams are practically unheard of and flip-flops are universally welcomed. There are dozens of small towns with tongue-twisting names like Apalachicola, Miccosukee, Wacissa and Sopchoppy to explore, plus Florida’s capital city Tallahassee, and America’s oldest, Pensacola, where five different flags have flown since its founding in 1559. This region boasts a full calendar of special events and festivals too plus a wealth of natural beauty — winding rivers, abundant pine forests, crystal-clear springs and even an underwater sculpture garden in the Gulf of Mexico off south Walton County. And for sports enthusiasts, there’s Blue Wahoos AA baseball in downtown Pensacola and a steady stream of tournaments to enjoy at the new Sports Complex in Panama City Beach, featuring 13 fields where soccer, lacrosse, rugby, football, flag football, baseball and softball can be played.
Caring Just for Kids
MSAs with populations under 500,000 typically don’t have a children’s hospital; Pensacola does. Studer Family Children’s Hospital at Ascension Sacred Heart, which opened in spring 2019 with 126 beds, is the fourth largest children’s hospital in Florida and Northwest’s only hospital solely dedicated to caring for sick and injured babies and children. The facility boasts the area’s only Level III neonatal intensive care unit as well and is equipped to provide pediatric intensive care, cancer care and rehabilitation.