On a steamy July day at the port on Pensacola Bay, American Magic Chief Operating Officer Tyson Lamond begins a factory tour in an incongruously chilly room inside a much larger, 35,000-sq.-ft. warehouse. The room houses cockpit simulators for the world’s fastest racing sailboats, contenders for the legendary America’s Cup. Winning the cup would be the pinnacle achievement for American Magic, but Lamond has a broader agenda in mind as he emerges into the heat and crosses into a building under construction that’s destined for manufacturing and storing 75-foot sailboats when they’re not tacking and jibing on the bay.
The new American Magic building, scheduled for completion in November, will be “transformational for our sport,” Lamond says in his Australian accent. “It’s about growing the sport of sailing,” and also the “manufacturing side of our sport.”
“I’m not talking just about boat building. I’m talking about the next generation of designers, the next generation of electronics technicians, hydraulics technicians, riggers.”
American Magic says it will create 150 high-wage jobs in advanced manufacturing, engineering and R&D at the site to make Pensacola “a leader on the world stage.”
It’s a vision within the vision Northwest Florida has for itself as it’s led by state-created Triumph Gulf Coast and its $1.5-billion bankroll. Triumph as of June has committed $754 million to diversifying the region’s economy through projects in aviation, manufacturing, logistics and other targeted industries. The money pays for government-owned, privately leased factories like American Magic’s or hangars where Boeing 757s get scheduled maintenance or school buildings and training programs. One grant made in 2018 led this year to a billion-dollar investment said to be the largest in Northwest Florida history. Triumph Board Chair Jay Trumbull Sr., in Triumph’s most recent accounting to Gov. Ron DeSantis and the Legislature, said Triumph is creating “a regional economy more diversified, resilient and self-reliant than at any other time in our area’s history.”
BIG SPILL, BIG SETTLEMENT
In a state of regions, Northwest Florida is a region apart. Part of the Panhandle sits in a different time zone than peninsular Florida. The westernmost county, Escambia, home to Pensacola and now American Magic, is roughly as close to New Orleans’ French Quarter as it is to the state capital in Tallahassee. The combined population of its eight coastal counties is half that of Miami-Dade. Historically the economy ran on low-wage tourism and military bases. “We’re a poor-ass area of Florida,” says former Florida House Speaker Allan Bense, a Panhandle business owner and Triumph’s first board chair. “We’re Lower Alabama and always have been.”
Bense exaggerates a bit. Step back to 2010, and the region, buoyed by always-in-demand coastal real estate, was growing. It looked forward to opening the new Northwest Florida Beaches International Airport near Panama City, the first new international airport to open since the 9/11 attack. “There was a lot of momentum going on in Northwest Florida at the time,” says Jennifer Conoley, CEO of Florida’s Great Northwest, the economic development group for the region’s 13 inland and coastal counties.
Then on April 20, 2010, drilling rig Deepwater Horizon blew up and sank less than 50 miles south of Louisiana, killing 11 workers and releasing the largest oil spill in marine drilling history. Environmental and economic impacts stretched from Texas to Florida. Apocalyptic amounts of oil never reached Florida’s beaches, but the fear of it did damage aplenty and exposed the fragility of Northwest Florida’s tourism economy.
“We’re a poor-ass area of Florida,” says former Florida House Speaker Allan Bense, a Panhandle business owner and Triumph’s first board chair. “We’re Lower Alabama and always have been.”
“You couldn’t plan vacations. Would it be smelly?” says Panhandle-based economist Rick Harper, who acts as economic advisor to Triumph. “There wasn’t a bride in the Southeast U.S. who could plan a coastal wedding in spring 2010 because they just didn’t know if there would be oil on the beaches.” Local and state government spent on oil-spill response activities while losing out on sales, bed, gas and cigarette tax revenue as tourists went elsewhere.
BP and its drilling partners paid out billions in settlements and penalties for environmental and business damage. Additionally, BP — 10 years ago this month — agreed to compensate with $4.9 billion the five coastal states for that lost tax revenue and oil spill response. Florida, which had the most coastline, got $2 billion of it.
LION’S SHARE
The distribution of Triumph millions has been uneven across the eight coastal counties designated by the Legislature to receive it. Larger counties that started with more infrastructure, staff and industry have proved more adept than the small counties in finding and developing projects. The efficacy of individual economic developers and the aggressiveness of schools and colleges in pursuing grants plays a role.
Source: Triumph Gulf Coast, May 31 Schedule of Funding
Note: Percentages do not equal 100 due to rounding
The state Senate president at the time, Panhandle businessman-turned-politician Don Gaetz, founder and seller of the Vitas Healthcare hospice company, wanted that money for his region. Backed by then House Speaker Will Weatherford — Bense’s son-in-law, as it happens — Gaetz steered 75% of the settlement to his region’s eight coastal counties. Control of it would be under an entity called Triumph Gulf Coast.
“It’s a phenomenal amount of money,” Bense says. How phenomenal? For comparison, in 2003, Florida received global attention for offering California-based bio research outfit Scripps $310 million to open a campus in Florida. Triumph’s kitty, including interest, is five times that.
From the outset, Gaetz, who returned to the state Senate in 2024, wanted no repeats of Florida’s previous blunders in the economic incentive game that saw taxpayer money shelled out for companies and concerns that failed to deliver on promised high-wage jobs. Gaetz recalls he didn’t want “faith-based economic development.”
Triumph’s board would be comprised of prominent local businesspeople, appointed by the governor, legislative leaders, the attorney general and state CFO, with hopes they would bring business realism to the grant awarding. Promises would be quantifiable and verifiable and meet deadlines. Schools would have to commit to producing precise numbers of certificate-bearing graduates ready for work in IT, or as truck drivers, aviation mechanics, nurses and the like. American Magic, for instance, has promised 150 jobs paying $105,000 on average and agreed to sustain them for at least four years. Triumph is spending $50,000 a job to get them, the highest per-job payout it’s made but also the highest-paying average wage.
Triumph acts as a minority funding partner. It requires matching funds in the form of local or state money or private capital. American Magic, for example, is putting in $32 million. State and local government support, including a partially finished warehouse being fitted out for American Magic, brought the project total to $49.1 million.
What’s more, the Legislature — directed by then-House Speaker Richard Corcoran — in 2017 prohibited Triumph from directly funding private companies. Thus, the $8.5-million Triumph grant gets American Magic a port building built for it, plus a dock and boat ramp, but all categorized as “public infrastructure” because the city owns it and leases it to American Magic.
Additionally, Gaetz and the state ordered Triumph to claw back money if grant receivers don’t meet goals, though how that will play out remains to be seen. Thus far, Triumph hasn’t had to claw back any award, though it has renegotiated some. In American Magic’s case, Pensacola is on the hook for $50,000 for each job American Magic falls short in creating. Pensacola, in turn, in its lease put American Magic on the hook.
Don Gaetz, the state Senate president more than a decade ago, steered 75% of the BP settlement money toward the Panhandle’s eight coastal counties.
Chaired by Bense, Triumph became official by legislative act in 2016. The first $300 million from the settlement came in 2017 and 2018 followed by $80 million a year through 2033.
Bense, owner of contracting companies, is known as tight-fisted and a lean Triumph reflects that. Its executive director is Susan Skelton, who started in a volunteer capacity in October 2015 until the money came through for her to become Triumph’s only full-time staffer. Skelton had retired after a long career as a federal and state worker when she got tapped for Triumph by Bense. Triumph contracts out its other needs, including to economist Harper, who grades — A through F — the worth of applications and advises the board on the likely return on investment. American Magic got an “A” from Harper, who projected it would add $285 million to the region’s personal income, a return on investment of $33.50 for each Triumph dollar awarded.
American Magic was founded by Amway fortune heir Doug DeVos, car racing billionaire Roger Penske and Churchill Cos.’ John J. “Hap” Fauth. It represented the New York Yacht Club in the 36th America’s Cup competition in 2021 and 37th in 2024. American Magic wintered in 2021 and 2022 in Pensacola from its base in Newport, R.I., before its leadership decided to relocate the operation permanently to Pensacola. “Sailing in Pensacola Bay is perfect for our team,” Lamond says.
The team, says Mayor D.C. Reeves, is a “perfect fit” for Pensacola and its 55-acre downtown port that won’t ever have the scale to compete in cargo tonnage with Mobile, Ala., or Savannah, Ga. “It’s rare a city gets to plant its flag as the ultimate destination in the United States for any one thing,” Reeves says. “That our city of Pensacola can plant its flag as the ultimate destination in the United States for sailing is an amazing thing and an unprecedented thing.”
American Magic, Reeves says, will have a “catalytic impact” on the city as a hub for advanced manufacturing, maritime tech and maritime education. It’s already hosted regattas in the bay. The University of West Florida, working with the city, chose because of American Magic to lease a port warehouse site for a new water and vessel engineering program. In August, Finland boat maker Nautor Swan announced it would move production of a new ClubSwan 28 boat line to Pensacola to collaborate with American Magic and together they would launch a racing series for the entry-level sports boat with six of the eight races in Pensacola Bay.
DOLING OUT DOLLARS
Anyone can apply for a Triumph grant, but the spadework of developing projects and applications generally gets done by economic development organizations. Bay Economic Development Alliance CEO Becca Hardin in June was just back from the Paris Air Show, touting Bay County and Triumph’s bankroll in meetings with Airbus, GE, Lockheed Martin and 22 other companies over three days. “We got a lot of attention at the Paris Air Show because word is getting out,” Hardin says. “Without the (Triumph) funds, it would be difficult to compete on a national and international level.”
From its first grant in 2018 — to expand the Panama City port — through July, Triumph has committed $365 million to workforce education programs and $325 million to job creation through new airport and seaport facilities, infrastructure for industrial parks, factories and logistics projects. The education and job creation projects have drawn $1.6 billion in matching funds. Triumph says it’s all producing another $1.2 billion in net new family income annually. “Triumph Gulf Coast is easily the most successful economic development program in our state, probably the Southeast,” Gaetz says.
The job creation totals 7,247 jobs. Triumph grants average $44,846 per job. In workforce education, the recipients of grants have promised 78,237 in industry certifications, licenses and degrees. That’s $4,665 per credential, though that average masks a wide disparity in costs among different credentials. “It is absolutely the single most important economic development tool we have in Northwest Florida,” says Erica Grancagnolo, Pensacola’s economic development director. “There would not be another way for us to move forward without Triumph.”
The tool generates some friction. Escambia Schools in 2019 bailed on a grant application after deciding Triumph’s demands were unacceptable. The tourism industry that bore the financial brunt of the Deepwater disaster would like to see more Triumph money come its way. Triumph did award $10.5 million to state marketing outfit Visit Florida to promote the region. With that in mind, Dan Rowe, CEO of the Panama City Beach Convention & Visitors Bureau, acknowledges that “we are getting a benefit from Triumph Gulf Coast” and also appreciates that the regional economy is being developed, but, he adds, “I still believe the tourism industry has a seat at the table. If you’re able to diversify the tourism economy, you’re creating jobs, you’re creating opportunity.”
The visitors bureau in 2018 asked Triumph for $6 million for a 130,000-sq.-ft. indoor, conference, sports and event center, the kind of project that would draw business meetings and special events to fill hotels during the week and off season, and also serve as a disaster response hub in emergencies. The $6 million represented 5% of the project cost. The project checked plenty of Triumph boxes — participation from local government, the military, education institutions, matching funds, workforce training — but Triumph wasn’t keen. The visitors bureau revised its application in 2023 and again in 2024 before suspending the application. “Wise people know when to pull back and watch the direction the new board wants to go,” Rowe says.
Vocal Triumph critic, 82-year-old Jack Rudloe, founder of Gulf Specimen Marine Lab and Aquarium in Panacea in Wakulla County south of Tallahassee, wrote DeSantis in 2019 to complain after Gulf Specimen’s bid for $4.9 million from Triumph to expand the facility and create 19 jobs fell flat. Harper graded the proposal a “C” for failing to meet Triumph’s mandate for public ownership, K-20 education affiliations and an externally validated industry credential. Rudloe says he feels his nonprofit was jerked around for a year and a half by Triumph. “It was about as good an application as you can get, and they used it as toilet paper,” Rudloe says. “We never stood a chance.”
Lots of other applicants don’t stand a chance for Triumph’s remaining $750 million or so. Funding requests in the “pre-application” stage totaled $2.99 billion in June and actual applications totaled another $1.53 billion. Many are destined to fail because they don’t meet threshold Triumph tests such as creating jobs that pay above area average wages. “It’s not that we’re saying no because we want to say no,” says Trumbull, the current Triumph chair and owner of an HVAC and plumbing company. “We’re saying no because it doesn’t fit in the parameters the Legislature gave us.”
RIPPLE EFFECTS
How “transformational” — the oft-used and, one insider says, overused adjective — Triumph dollars end up being won’t be known for years. The final BP installment doesn’t even come until 2033, and many current projects have a timeline well into that decade. Certainly, the payoff for others is immediate. A Triumph-funded truck-driver training center, for example, has been turning out drivers making solid wages.
“I really believe in 10 years we are going to look back and say what a gift we got,” board chair Trumbull says. “The gift is not the oil spill. That was terrible. The way it was turned from a terrible thing to a super creative way — and I give a lot of credit to Don Gaetz — to spend the money the state got — I do think it’s an amazing gift.”
American Magic has until three years after construction is finished to deliver its 150 jobs. The project already has meant work for local contractors, such as general contractor Greenhut Construction. It’s also led to internships and jobs for students from Pensacola State College and UWF. But as of July, American Magic employed only 43. Lamond, the COO, says employment will grow to 120 to 140 once it occupies the new building in November.
It turns out American Magic, with its skill set in composites, aerodynamics and advanced manufacturing, has proved adept at contract manufacturing for aerospace. Lamond shows off a clean room where American Magic workers toil over something aerodynamic. What it is and who the client is, he won’t say. But it will go into space, he says.
Aerospace represented 90% of manufacturing operations in July, Lamond says. When marine manufacturing picks up in the new building, he expects the ratio to be around 60% aerospace and 40% marine. He’s talking with the port and city about taking more space.
“I think Triumph is doing what they set out to do,” says Reeves, the mayor, “which was to be the significant economic engine for our area affected by disaster. You’re starting to see up and down the Panhandle, more and more every day, some of these projects getting off the ground. We’re certainly grateful. We still have other potential Triumph projects in the hopper.”
AIRCRAFT SERVICING
Jet tails bearing the UPS name give away the identity of the customers serviced in the blue ST Engineering hangars on the Pensacola International Airport flight line. Inside the massive hangars, the guts of 757 engines and bodies lie open to the 683 ST mechanics that maintain, repair and overhaul them.
Northwest Florida economic developers and Triumph Gulf Coast have targeted the well-paying plane servicing industry for expansion, an industry with a negligible presence there until 2018 when ST opened its first 174,000-sq.-ft. hangar in Pensacola. It can hold four 757s. A second hangar came online in 2022. ST chief integration officer Bill Hafner says the company scouted several areas and chose Pensacola because it was “the most welcoming.”
ST, a subsidiary of Singapore Technologies, received no Triumph money for the first two hangars. But ST likes the area so much, it’s relocating its mothership Mobile, Ala., operation to Pensacola. Triumph Gulf Coast gave Pensacola a grant to help fund a third hangar now under construction. A fourth, also partially funded by Triumph, will be completed in late 2026 or early 2027. ST committed to Triumph that it would employ 1,735 in Pensacola. ST’s investment through 2025 totals $60 million and it’s considering two more hangars. “We’re into this up to our eyeballs, absolutely,” Hafner says. “We’ll be here for a very, very, very long time.”
Approximately 100 miles down the road at Northwest Florida Beaches International Airport in Panama City, state aerospace development authority Space Florida is building a jet engine maintenance, repair and overhaul site for Miami-based IAG using a $25-million Triumph grant. IAG, as part of its $107.5-million project, will also have an engine test site and a third site in Lynn Haven, employing 500 in total at a $60,000 average wage.
But Triumph’s big investment to build a major plane servicing industry akin to that in Southeast Florida faces constraints.
P.J. Anson Jr., CEO of one of the industry’s major players, Jensen Beach-based STS Aviation, a global plane servicing, parts supplier and employment platform company, says the company was approached last year about expanding in Northwest Florida. Northwest Florida and Triumph provide an interesting opportunity, but the difficulty is that ST Engineering and Airbus in Mobile need so many workers, he says. “It isn’t an easy place to pull a couple hundred airplane mechanics. It gets pretty tight up there.”
Indeed, says Hafner, “The limiting factor is workforce. Many people come to us and want to bring aircraft, and we simply can’t accept them because we don’t have either the physical capacity or the manpower.”
Triumph money is working on it. Adjacent to one ST hangar, Pensacola State College with $12.4 million from Triumph is building an aviation mechanic school building. At present, the school occupies temporary digs on an upper floor in an ST hangar. Some 100 students are at various stages of their 18-month training. One challenge: Students who think working with their hands means not having to be proficient readers; comprehending service manuals is critical to the work. ST donated $392,000 to the school, which also is funded by Escambia and Santa Rosa counties. Gov. Ron DeSantis personally delivered a $4.41-million job growth grant for it. Triumph has funded other aviation mechanic programs in the region.
The temporary digs are well stocked with all manner of engines, systems and diagnostic gear along with an on-site FAA-approved testing center for when students are ready to test for certification. “Everything is here,” Hafner says. “Look at the equipment. It’s fantastic.” The school is independent of ST, but ST hopes graduates will take jobs downstairs. ST pays mechanics $71,000 a year on average. “You can move into six figures without great difficulty if you apply yourself,” Hafner says.
Triumph Gulf Coast at a Glance
- ORIGINS AND IMPACT:
A nonprofit corporation established by the state of Florida to distribute $1.5 billion the state obtained in a settlement from the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill. To date, Triumph has committed about half that money to job creation and workforce training programs as well as marketing, emergency response equipment and tax relief.
- GEOGRAPHY:
The Legislature mandated that the money go to economic recovery and economic diversification of the eight coastal Panhandle counties disproportionately impacted by the spill and attendant publicity. The counties are: Escambia, Santa Rosa, Okaloosa, Walton, Bay, Gulf, Franklin and Wakulla.
- OVERSIGHT:
It’s governed by a board appointed by the governor, attorney general, state chief financial officer, the Senate president and state House Speaker.
PROJECT SAMPLER
Nearing the halfway point of going through its $1.5-billion bankroll, Triumph Gulf Coast has funded 63 grants covering a spectrum of interests. For instance, there was $15 million for Bay and Gulf counties after their tax revenue fell because of Hurricane Michael. But most of Triumph’s money has gone for projects intended to create jobs or train the workforce.
- DeFuniak Springs airport expansion ($4.229 million)
- Walton County public safety communications system ($21.2 million)
- University of West Florida watercraft and engineering program ($3.3 million)
- IAG Aero Group maintenance repair and overhaul facility and engine test cell, Northwest Florida Beaches International Airport ($25 million, 500 jobs)
- Seaside Collegiate High School workforce education expansion ($9.6 million)
- Bay school district career and technical education ($8 million)
- Body armor manufacturer Point Blank Enterprises, Wakulla County ($13.5 million, 300 jobs)
- Manufacturing company expansion, Santa Rosa County ($2.5 million)
- Aviation company Williams International, Okaloosa County ($16.8 million)
- Northwest Florida State College nursing and aviation mechanic and pilot training ($29 million)
- Leonardo Helicopters, Santa Rosa County ($8.5 million)
PROJECTS
The Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition’s new Healthspan, Resilience and Performance building and its National Center for Collaborative Autonomy
TRIUMPH FUNDING: $27.3 million
EQUIPPING SCIENTISTS
A few flights of stairs in a brick building in downtown Pensacola and Morley Stone goes from a virtual reality workspace where Special Ops soldiers test new gear to a lab studying human performance at the sub-cellular level. Stone, CEO of the Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition, says research in the building will answer questions such as what makes some soldiers more resilient under stress, or why some people age better than others. He pauses at an innocuous gray box.
“That’s a one-and-a-half-million-dollar piece of equipment,” Stone says. It’s a top-flight genomic sequencer. “This was the first one in the entire Southeast. It allows us to do world class, cuttingedge science.” Triumph Gulf Coast paid for it. “Triumph funds were absolutely instrumental in hiring scientists and staff members to work in this building, and were instrumental in equipment,” he says.
The 180-employee institute, best known for its robotics work, has bloomed into human research from the molecular to the whole human. Most of its work is for the U.S. Defense Department, but it also has grants from the National Institutes of Health among others.
Triumph provided $20.4 million toward the $40-million brick “Healthspan, Resilience and Performance” building opened last year on the institute’s downtown Pensacola campus. Triumph money has gone toward a planned secure building for classified work, and $6.9 million went toward the institute’s “National Center for Collaborative Autonomy” — as in working with drones — at another downtown campus building.
PROJECTS
Construction of FSU aerospace and advanced manufacturing facilities in Panama City
TRIUMPH FUNDING: $98.5 million
FLORIDA’S ‘ROCKET CITY’
Triumph Gulf Coast’s largest single grant, $98.5 million, is going to Florida State University for its applied research and workforce development arm in Panama City. To say FSU’s hopes for that project are ambitious would be an understatement: create a local industry rivaling Huntsville “Rocket City” Alabama in aerospace and manufacturing.
The Triumph grant is part of FSU’s planned, nearly $400-million inSPIRE — Institute for Strategic Partnerships, Innovation, Research and Education. FSU is kicking in $65 million over the first 10 years, including faculty to teach science and engineering students. FSU has until early 2028 to finish the building. By 2035, it’s supposed to have gotten at least 1,000 teachers at least 5,000 certificates in STEM education and it’s supposed to award 200 bachelor’s, 40 master’s and 15 doctorates in STEM fields, mentor 40 local companies and draw in $225 million in outside funding. Florida State University has tapped aerospace leader and test pilot Drew Allen to head inSPIRE.
PROJECTS
Workforce training programs at Pensacola State College
TRIUMPH FUNDING: $23.4 million
SHORING UP EDUCATION
State colleges and local school districts have reaped the benefit of Triumph funding to develop workforce training in Northwest Florida. Pensacola State College won $12 million toward a new math, IT and cybersecurity classroom building on its main campus, along with equipment to stock it. The state provided another $18.9 million for the building, which was finished in 2023. The college promised Triumph that its cybersecurity/IT program would produce at least 6,448 industry certifications over 10 years. The college also received a $3.8-million Triumph grant toward building a $7.8-million truck driver training and test facility in Santa Rosa County. It committed to producing a total of 1,000 licensed truck drivers over 10 years. A diesel mechanic program, underwritten by a $7.6-million Triumph grant, is on the way. Other Northwest state colleges have a similar track record of Triumph investment.
One of Triumph’s first grants was in 2018 to provide infrastructure and site development at the Shoal River Industrial Park in Okaloosa. That investment led to this year’s announcement that Michigan-based aviation company Williams International will expand there with a $1-billion investment creating at least 336 jobs and a 1-million-sq.-ft. plant. It’s said to be the largest single investment in Northwest Florida history.
PROJECTS
A new I-10 interchange and bypass around Crestview
TRIUMPH FUNDING: $64.1 million
EASING CONGESTION
Piles of dirt and construction materials on I-10 in Okaloosa County don’t look noteworthy, but the $199-million project of which they’re part represents one of Triumph’s largest commitments — $64.1 million. The Florida Department of Transportation, with Triumph and local financial support, is building a new I-10 interchange and bypass around Crestview. Locals worry that traffic congestion — yes, Northwest Florida has traffic jams — will lead the Air Force to shift some operations away from its massive Eglin Air Force Base and the Air Force Special Ops home Hurlburt Field. The road enhancements will keep the military happy and perhaps lead to more jobs in weapons R&D as well as new housing and commercial development, Triumph hopes.
PROJECTS
Aircraft hangars, repair and training facilities
TRIUMPH FUNDING: $66 million