Northwest

Northwest

Renowned for its sugar white beaches, bright blue gulf waters and the presence of six major military installations, Florida’s Northwest is unique among all other regions in the Sunshine State. Just two years ago, this place took a hard hit from Hurricane Michael; today it bustles with assets, opportunity and new construction. A great place to live and grow a business, Northwest has plenty of space for new companies and no shortage of skilled workers to staff them owing to the more than 3,000 military retirees who join this region’s workforce annually. Primary industries here include aviation, technology and logistics.

 

Aviation and Defense

Six major military installations are located in Florida’s Northwest, including NAS Pensacola, Eglin AFB and Tyndall AFB. These facilities account for some 56,000 military and civilian jobs; the privately owned aerospace manufacturers, aircraft maintenance firms, suppliers and Department of Defense contractors are magnets for thousands more.

ST Engineering, a Singapore-based aviation services firm, completed its first 173,500-sq.-ft. maintenance and engineering facility at Pensacola International Airport in June 2018, then it announced plans to build a second facility in summer 2020. Plans call for two more hangars with a combined area of 400,000 square feet over the next several years, bringing ST Engineering’s total footprint at PNS to some 750,000 square feet and more than 1,200 new jobs.

Among other developments in this industry sector:

KEY PLAYERS: BAE Systems, Farnborough, U.K.; The Boeing Company, Chicago, Ill.; Leonardo S.p.A., Frosinone, Italy; ST Engineering, Singapore

Logistics and Distribution

Florida’s Northwest is unique for many reasons. With borders tightly tucked between the Gulf of Mexico to the south and Alabama and Georgia to the north, this narrow panhandle of land offers ready access by road, rail, sea and air. I-10 bisects Northwest from east to west, providing seamless connections to I-65, I-75 and I-95 and putting 12 of the Southeast’s major metros and 58 million potential customers within an eight-hour drive. And streamlining freight delivery are Class 1 CSX and Norfolk Southern rail lines connected to several short rail lines and three deep-water ports.

In January 2020, the Port of Pensacola appeared to be on course for a banner year. At $2.41 million in 2019, port revenue had nearly doubled from the previous year’s $1.26 million due in large part to General Electric’s Pensacola-based Wind Energy assembly plant that shipped 1,632 wind-powered generators through the port. Prospects were good for growth through 2021, but then along came the coronavirus and the possibility that port revenues nationwide could decline. In the meantime, more than 100 welders and metal fabricators are converting the 600-foot Stena Freighter from cargo ship to landing platform for Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin rocket boosters. Also in residence at the port: the New York Yacht Club’s high-tech racing sailboat Defiant and its 100-member racing team, representing the U.S. at the 2021 America’s Cup.

At Northwest’s busiest port — Port Panama City — Clark and Son, a distributor of custom kitchen cabinets, will lease a 100,000-sq.-ft. facility to use as a distribution and final assembly headquarters with 50 new jobs. Eastern Shipbuilding in Panama City will expand into Gulf County at a waterfront site owned by the Port St. Joe Port Authority that includes a large warehouse and three smaller buildings to accommodate electrical services. Eastern continues to fulfill its contract with the U.S. Coast Guard for four offshore patrol cutters.

Four commercial airports continued to prosper in 2019, adding both new routes and passengers. At year’s end, total passenger count for the region topped 6 million, a 16% increase over 2018. While Pensacola International was this region’s busiest airport, serving a record 2.2 million passengers for the year, Northwest Florida Beaches International in Panama City recorded the highest growth with passenger volume increasing by 20.77% in 2019.

And coming soon to this industry sector:

KEY PLAYERS: Eastern Shipbuilding, Panama City; FedEx Ground, Defuniak Springs; Goldring Gulf Distributing, Milton

 

Renewable Energy

Gulf Power — now owned by NextEra, the parent company of FPL — opened its first solely owned solar plant in April 2020 on 697 acres just outside Jacob City in Jackson County. At 74.5 megawatts, Blue Indigo Solar Energy Center provides enough electricity to power 15,000 homes. Two more 74.5-megawatt facilities are under development: Blue Springs Solar Energy Center, also in Jackson County, and Cotton Creek Solar Energy in north Escambia County.

And while this state boasts no operational utility-scale wind facilities of its own, Florida’s Northwest plays an important role in facilitating wind power elsewhere. GE’s Wind Energy Plant in Pensacola assembles 2.5-megawatt wind turbines, each with the capacity to provide a year’s worth of power for up to 1,500 homes, for shipment to other states. GE is the largest supplier of wind power in the U.S. with nearly 400 projects and an operating capacity exceeding 40 gigawatts, enough energy to power 11 million homes.

Technology & Innovation

Northwest Florida continues to gain traction as a leader in cybersecurity research, workforce education and professional training. At the forefront is the University of West Florida, offering cybersecurity degree programs and certificates across multiple disciplines. A federally designated National Center of Academic Excellence in Cyber Defense Education, UWF is the official Regional Resource Center for the Southeast, providing guidance on cyber defense education to colleges and universities in four Southeastern states and Puerto Rico. And in the private sector, Randy Ramos, founder of the Pensacola-based IT firm Global Business Solutions, is on a mission to increase Florida’s cybersecurity workforce, one student at a time. His ACCELETRAIN® cybersecurity vocational programs aimed at teens are finding wide acceptance.

Pensacola-based Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition and Gulf Breeze-based Andrews Research & Education Foundation are partnering to conduct research on human performance for the benefit of sports medicine and to improve the capabilities and resilience of astronauts, fighter pilots, divers and other elite members of the military.

FAMU-FSU College of Engineering Dean Murray Gibson has been named a Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors. Gibson holds five U.S. patents in techniques for semiconductor layer growth, including a patent on a technique for electron beam lithography that led to one spinoff company.

Innovations coming out of universities in Florida’s Northwest include:

KEY PLAYERS: AppRiver, Gulf Breeze; Bit-Wizards, Fort Walton Beach; Digital Boardwalk, Pensacola; Global Business Solutions, Pensacola; Inspired Technologies, Tallahassee

 

Health Care

Ready access to quality health care is more important than ever these days, and in Florida’s Northwest, health care systems are growing in size and capability to better provide it.

In Pensacola, Baptist Health Care, which already has nine locations in the metro area, has announced plans for a 10th to be located at the intersection of Brent Lane and I-110. Not only will the new $550-million hospital provide easy access for patients, it will offer 650,000 square feet of patient care space and the latest technologies for diagnosis and treatment. The new hospital is expected to open in summer 2023 with 250 beds and the potential to add floors as needed.

Pensacola-based Ascension Sacred Heart has opened two new health-care facilities: a $19-million, 58,000-sq.-ft. surgical center featuring six outpatient operating rooms, imaging equipment, a breast health center with mammography and a dermatology center; and a $9.5-million, 17,500-sq.-ft. outpatient rehabilitation center. And at Sacred Heart Hospital in Pensacola, a blood test that helps detect lung cancer early is now available. The test, which is known as EarlyCDT-Lung, increases detection of early-stage lung cancer while decreasing unnecessary invasive procedures, radiation exposure and costs. It is one of only a few such tests offered in North Florida.

In Panama-City, Gulf Coast Regional Medical Center has begun a $62-million expansion that will add 67,000 square feet consisting of a fourth and fifth floor to the facility’s north tower and a third floor to its south tower. Clinical facilities to be added include a 22-bed medical/surgical unit, an 18-bed acute inpatient rehabilitation facility and a 12-bed surgical intensive care unit for a total of 52 new beds. Estimated completion: late 2021-early 2022.

In Tallahassee, Capital Regional Medical Center has opened two more freestanding emergency rooms, one in Southwood, the other in the Lake Jackson area. The identical 10,800-sq.-ft. facilities have 24 beds each and provide pediatric and adult care around the clock.

Education

For the third year in a row, personal finance website WalletHub.com has named Tallahassee among the top 20 most educated cities in the U.S. based on quality of education and educational attainment. Nearly half (48%) of Tallahassee residents over the age of 25 have a bachelor’s degree or higher compared with 32% nationwide.

Two of Florida’s 12 public universities are located in Tallahassee: Florida A&M University, ranked seventh among historically Black colleges and universities by U.S. News & World Report and first in Florida for elementary education programs; and Florida State University, the nation’s 18th-ranked public university and a research heavyweight at No. 22 among U.S. public universities for patents granted in 2019 (43). New to the FSU campus: the Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Science Building, housing the university’s environmental science, geology, meteorology and oceanography programs, including 31 research and teaching labs, a broadcast studio for meteorology students and a 280-seat auditorium. At seven stories, it’s the tallest point on the FSU campus.

This region’s third public university — University of West Florida in Pensacola — earns accolades on U.S. News & World Report’s 2020 list of “Regional Universities South” in two categories: “Top Public Schools” (No. 15) and “Best Colleges for Veterans” (No. 19). UWF is widely known as a center for its cybersecurity and entrepreneurship programs, including the recently opened Commons Entrepreneurship Incubator aimed at providing networking opportunities for students with innovative business ideas.

Also in this region: Gulf Coast State College, home to the Unmanned Safety Institute, the first training safety and education center of its kind in the U.S. for drones; Tallahassee Community College, the only state college in the nation to receive a $1-million investment from the National Science Foundation to provide full scholarships for students seeking associate degrees in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM); and Northwest Florida State College, nationally recognized for its registered apprenticeship programs in carpentry, plumbing, machining and hospitality.

 

Life & Leisure

Tourism is big business in Northwest Florida and it’s easy to see why. Who can resist all those miles of sugar white sand and emerald green water? Hurricane Michael in October 2018 took a sizable bite out of tourism revenues across the Panhandle temporarily, but this region came roaring back in 2019, posting double-digit gains in visitor spending across the three coastal counties of Walton, Okaloosa and Santa Rosa. Even Bay County — the most heavily impacted by Michael — began showing recovery in the tourism sector in late summer 2019, with losses partially offset by bed and tax revenue from displaced residents and out-of-town contractors. Not surprisingly, tourism in Florida’s Northwest is significantly down in 2020 due to closures related to COVID-19, the full effects of which have yet to be fully assessed.

Northwest Florida is a great place to visit; it’s an even better place to live. Flip-flops, shorts and shades are universally accepted here, and the only traffic jam you’re liable to encounter is on a causeway headed for a beach. And speaking of Panhandle beaches, Grayton Beach State Park is No.1 on the 2020 list of America’s 10 best beaches compiled by Florida International University’s Stephen “Dr. Beach” Leatherman. Away from the coast, there are dozens of small towns to explore, many of which boast tongue-twisting names like Miccosukee, Wacissa and Sopchoppy. Florida’s capital city — Tallahassee — is here too, along with Pensacola, named to U.S. News & World Report’s 2019 top 25 list of most desirable places to live in the U.S., and DeFuniak Springs, dubbed “Best Small Town in Florida” by MSN.com’s Insider Online in 2019. There’s plenty of natural beauty here too — winding rivers, pine forests, crystal clear springs — plus lighthouses, the world’s smallest police station and museums devoted to everything from naval aviation to Florida history and fine arts.

In an effort to preserve this state’s fragile ecosystem, the Florida Department of Environmental Protection is teaming up with Florida’s hotel and hospitality industry to encourage lodging facilities to voluntarily commit to reducing waste, conserving water, using less energy and recycling. To date, 15 Northwest Florida lodging facilities have signed on to The Florida Green Lodging Program. In 2018, participating properties decreased landfill waste by more than 1.5 million pounds statewide. Some properties have even seen financial savings and increased occupancy rates as a result of participating in the program.