May 20, 2024

Mike Brassfield

Florida Trend Associate Editor • mbrassfield@floridatrend.com

Laura Lyon

Mike Brassfield has been a reporter, editor and copywriter for more than 30 years. After graduating from the University of Kansas, he worked as a reporter in Kansas, Georgia and South Carolina before joining the Tampa Bay Times. During a 17-year career at the Times, he was an editor and reporter who covered government, business, law enforcement and transportation. After leaving the Times, he worked for a military magazine and a personal finance website before joining Florida Trend.

Articles by Brassfield:

Passing the Torch
There's been a changing of the guard at the Florida Bankers Association, which lobbies Tallahassee and Washington, D.C., on behalf of the banking industry. Longtime leader Alex Sanchez has retired after 30 years with the organization, 26 as CEO. His successor, Kathy Kraninger, was director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau during the Trump administration and is plotting a new course for the organization.
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Surf's Up
Surfing in Orlando? That's the idea behind a surf park that's being proposed for a landfill site in west Orange County. The $45-million Orlando Surf Park would feature a 15-acre pool with patented wave-making technology.
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Jazzing it Up
The struggling University Mall in Tampa was a sad scene, with empty anchor stores, dusty potted plants and stained carpets beneath the benches. JCPenney left in 2005, followed by Dillard's in 2008, Macy's in 2017 and Sears in 2018. Built in 1974 just west of the University of South Florida campus, the mall had acquired a seedy reputation.
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A Second Chance at Life
One Friday night in 2019, Roy Reid fell asleep on the couch while watching a movie. “At about two in the morning, I wake up with the worst pain I've ever had in my life — as if someone had punched a hole through my chest,” Reid says. “I run into the bedroom, wake up my wife and say, ‘I think I'm having a heart attack, we need to get to the emergency room.'”
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Defending the Shore
Their inventors compare them to air bags or speed bumps in the sea. And they just might be the future of fighting coastal flooding in Florida. They're called Seahives, and they're a new kind of artificial reef being developed and field-tested by researchers at the University of Miami. They're 18-foot-long, hexagonal-shaped hollow tubes that get stacked in pyramid-like shapes on the seafloor just offshore. The 2,500-pound concrete structures are perforated to allow seawater to flow through them.
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Donor Science
Artificial intelligence might be all the rage these days, but Michael Peterman was an early adopter of the technology. In the early 2000s, the Naples native was working at a Fort Myers company called AccuData and started closely watching what tech giants like Amazon and Netflix were doing with all the data they were collecting. “It was around the time when some juggernauts in Silicon Valley were launching their early forms of machine learning,” he says.
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Occupational Hazard
Once upon a time, having a dirty firefighting uniform was like a badge of honor. It meant you'd seen some heavy action. “In the past, the dirtier your gear, the dirtier your helmet, it was like a trophy,” recalls Longboat Key Fire Chief Paul Dezzi. “Now you clean it all up to make sure you're not breathing that stuff in.”
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Working Toward a Dream
Sharisse Brantley, 29, and her husband, Breun, 32, are the parents of three young children. She is a childcare professional with a college degree, taking care of infants and toddlers at the nonprofit Jack & Jill Early Childhood Learning in Fort Lauderdale, which serves working families earning modest wages. He is an entrepreneur and musician who runs a DJ and entertainment business, Profound Sound Productions, playing parties and events throughout South Florida.
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Barely Getting By
The headlines for Florida's economy have been sunny and bright: Hundreds of people move here every day, drawn by a business-friendly environment and a vibrant lifestyle. The unemployment rate is at historic lows, below 3%. Every hour Florida gains an additional $4.48 million in net income as wealthy people from the Northeast, Midwest and even California arrive, the Internal Revenue Service reports.
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Barely Getting By [Extra]
Despite record low unemployment and wage growth in recent years, Floridians continue to grapple with skyrocketing housing and insurance costs...
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