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Southeast Fla. Yearbook 2009

Southeast

“Overall, I think people are optimistic that we will see improvement in the economy sooner rather than later.” — Paula Pearson, executive vice president, SunTrust Bank, South Florida

Fort Lauderdale / Broward County

See population, income and job statistics from this region.
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Recently, the Broward Alliance, Broward’s economic development group, surveyed its clients about the economy. The despair you would expect wasn’t in evidence. “The thing we’re hearing is access to capital,” says James P. Tarlton, the alliance’s CEO. Tarlton says recruitment of companies — its project pipeline — is about at pre-recession levels though companies are taking longer to make decisions. Business heads, though, aren’t oblivious to a 7.7% unemployment rate, the fewest housing starts in more than a decade and layoffs at Motorola, major Coral Springs employer Alliance Entertainment and homegrown software success Citrix. The unemployed and those looking to boost their skills are giving Broward’s higher-ed engine — including for-profits Keiser, Kaplan and Strayer along with non-profits Nova Southeastern, Florida Atlantic University and Broward College — lots of business. A long-delayed project, now scheduled for completion by 2016, to widen and lengthen the south runway at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport will be an important long-term economic contributor.
Paula Pearson
“The Boca Raton market seems to have fared better than other communities, but there are still signs of a weak economy,“ says SunTrust’s Paula Pearson. [Photo: Eileen Escarda]

Businesses to Watch

Who's Hiring
» Campus Management in Boca Raton is adding 60 jobs in software development, support and other fields.
» New York-based Cambridge Security Services in Fort Lauderdale, a new entrant in the market, plans to hire 30 to add to its first 20 and grow to 500 within five years, says Regional Vice President Marco Lopez.
» Tran Construction of Miami will hire 227 to construct a $12.3-million, 41-acre container terminal at Port Everglades. It becomes the third major port project begun in the last year following a petroleum terminal and a $75-million passenger terminal to handle Royal Caribbean’s two Oasis-class ships, the largest in the world. When the new cargo terminal is finished in 2010, 254 will work there.
» PartsBase in Boca Raton, an online aviation marketplace, plans to hire 60, at an average salary of $70,000, to its staff of 75.
» Wafer World in West Palm Beach, a silicon wafer maker, plans to add 11 jobs — machine operators, engineers, mechanics and salespeople — paying an average salary of $45,000. It currently employs 19.
» SV Microwave in West Palm Beach will hire 12 over two years at an average salary of more than $46,000.
» Kaplan Higher Education, which bases its executive offices in Fort Lauderdale, has 85 openings for academic, finance, marketing, technology and operations jobs.
» Home Diagnostics in Fort Lauderdale, maker of the True line of co-branded glucose monitoring devices sold at Walgreens, CVS and other retailers, plans to invest $16 million to $18 million to expand its manufacturing by the second quarter of 2010. CFO Ron Rubin says the company will hire engineers, machine operators and mechanics this year but hasn’t determined how many. Home Diagnostics employs more than 400 of its 500 employees in Broward.

» The Broward Alliance says a manufacturing company — which it has not identified — already in the county will add 335 jobs in the next two years, taking an additional 117,000 square feet of office and manufacturing space.

People to Watch

» Ray Ferrero Jr., president of Nova Southeastern University and chairman of the Broward Alliance, the local economic development group, hopes to break ground this year on the $750-million first phase (residential, retail and academic space) of Nova’s “academical village.” The university just completed two other major building projects. Meanwhile, enrollment is up, and Nova’s adding faculty “in some programs fairly substantially.” While professing to be as “cautious and wary” as everyone else, he also says, “everything as far as we’re concerned is looking very positive.” He’s also bullish on the progress of a Broward Alliance initiative to work through local CEOs to lure jobs to the area and retain existing employers.That planning is “now bearing fruition.” Both Nova and the alliance will be ready when the economy turns better, Ferrero says.

» Peggy Nordeen, president and co-founder of advertising, public relations and marketing agency Starmark International in Fort Lauderdale and a board member of the Boys & Girls Clubs of Broward County and A Child is Missing, moves up from vice chairwoman to chairwoman later this year of the Broward Alliance. Among others, her growing firm represents the Greater Fort Lauderdale Convention and Visitors Bureau and the Kissimmee Convention & Visitors Bureau. Nordeen and a committee she leads has raised $1.4 million from private sector sources to further support the Broward Alliance. “People are really stepping up to the plate,” she says. “Business wants to take control of its own destiny.”

West Palm Beach / Palm Beach County ?

Claudia Hillinger
Claudia Hillinger is overseeing the creation of a new Florida biotech branch of the Max Planck Society in Jupiter.
With a 9.1% unemployment rate, the fallout from the Bernard Madoff Ponzi scheme and plummeting housing starts, Palm Beach County can be excused for looking to the future rather than living in the present. In February, Scripps Florida — the more than $500-million incentive wager placed by former Gov. Jeb Bush and Palm Beach County that touched off Florida’s biosciences sector — held its grand opening in Jupiter. Meanwhile, talk continues of creating an “inland port” where goods would be warehoused and dispatched. Those two, life sciences and logistics, should be two of the four prongs for development the county pursues in the future, according to a study commissioned by the Economic Council of Palm Beach County. Travel and tourism and “high-value services” such as IT and professions round out the four. But for the present, says council President and CEO Mike Jones, “2009 is going to be a difficult year.”

People to Watch

» Jupiter marks the third location in which Claudia Hillinger has established a branch of Germany’s Max Planck Society. The six-acre bioimaging institute will be built next to Scripps Florida at Florida Atlantic University’s campus with $94 million in state incentives and another $94 million in cash and property from Palm Beach County, FAU and Jupiter.

» Eric Strand took DesignerPlumbingOutlet.com in Palm Beach Gardens from $354,561 in revenue in 2004 to $12 million last year. But only four of its nine employees are in Florida, and all work from home, connecting virtually. Strand this year rolls out a new business, SocialJuice.net, using the expertise he gained in taking advantage of online social networks to boost his plumbing outlet’s online visibility and eliminate 90% of his paid advertising.

Businesses to Watch

» Laurence F. Davenport Jr., executive director of the non-profit Business Loan Fund of the Palm Beaches in West Palm Beach, went to Washington in February to tell Congress about the virtues of community lenders like the Business Loan Fund. It’s a microlender (loans usually less than $35,000) and also does small-business loans and provides technical assistance throughout the Treasure Coast to “the ultimate mom-and-pops.” He’s seeing more businesses coming for help in keeping the doors open and more people downsized out of a job looking to form their own companies. Unlike banks, the Business Loan Fund deploys its cash. “If I get $1 million, 85% of it’s going to be out in the street rather quickly,” Davenport says.

» SV Microwave of West Palm Beach expects to grow about 15% this year. It posted $24 million in revenue last year and has 125 employees, with plans to hire another 12 over the next two years. Under general manager Subi Katragadda, SV makes high-performance microwave components, cables and connectors used primarily in defense and aerospace.

Boca Raton ?

Largely built out as the building bubble inflated, Boca hasn’t had to dispose of new, unsold housing stock — a source of suffering for the rest of the region. Aside from that, though, says Ward Kellog, chairman and CEO of Boca-based Paradise Bank, “the rest of us are in the same boat” as the nation. Boca has known worse times. In the mid-1990s, after IBM pulled out thousands of jobs, Boca had the nation’s highest office vacancy rate.

At Paradise, a commercial lender, Kellog is seeing business owners reluctant to expand until they’re sure of the economy, but he’s also seeing signs of a bottom: Commercial property selling below its construction cost, and buyers purchasing ultra-high-end houses. His commercial bank opened a branch in Delray Beach in February and expects to finish a Fort Lauderdale branch soon. “This is certainly a bad cycle,” he says, but “we’ve seen cycles before.”

Person to Watch

» Sam Zietz’s business, American Bancard, may be something of a business barometer for 2009. One of the fastest-growing businesses in Florida through 2007 with $15.3 million in revenue and 105 employees, American Bancard provides both merchant credit card services and point-of-sale/management systems for small businesses. A few months ago, Zietz rolled out a touch-screen, easy-to-use point-of-sale system for small retailers who until now couldn’t afford the systems that big box retailers used. “It’s gotten phenomenal response. Three weeks ago, a client sent us a cake. It’s been overwhelming, the positive feedback.” Zietz says sales and leasing performance will have a lot to do with the overall economy. Factoring — lending to companies based on their accounts receivable — tumbled with the credit freeze, and his head count fell to 50. “In the next three to six months it’s going to explode — as soon as credit thaws.”

Business to Watch

» Campus Management is expanding its campus and adding 60 jobs in software development, support and other fields over the next two years, adding to the nearly 260 it already employs in Boca Raton and the total of nearly 500 worldwide. The 21-year-old company supplies software products and services to 1,200 colleges, universities and non-profit organizations.

Jobs
MSA
Jan. 2008 Jan. 2009 % Change Jobless Rate
Fort Lauderdale/
Pompano/
Deerfield Beach
783,800
752,200 -4.0% 7.7%
West Palm/
Boca Raton/
Boynton Beach
555,500 535,700 -3.6% 9.1%
Source: Agency for Workforce Innovation

HOMES
Single-family, existing-home sales by Realtors
MSA
Jan. 2009 Sales 1-Year Change Jan. 2009 Price
1-Year Change
Fort Lauderdale
467 +52% $191,000 -39%
West Palm Beach/ Boca Raton 408 +11% $232,100 -32%
Source: Florida Association of Realtors

POPULATION TOTALS
 2.4% or higher  1.0% - 2.4%  1.0% or less
COUNTY
2009 Average Annual Growth
2005-2009
Trend
Broward 1,818,962 0.67%
Palm Beach 1,336,299 1.50
Florida 18,898,835 1.60%

POPULATION BY AGE
Years of Age (2009)
County 0-14 15-19 20-39 40-64 65+ Total
Broward
19.5% 6.6% 25.2% 34.8% 14.0% 1,818,962
Palm Beach 17.3 5.9 23.6 32.0 21.3 1,336,299
Florida 18.0% 6.3% 25.8% 32.7% 17.2% 18,898,835

PER CAPITA INCOME
COUNTY
Per Capita Income 2009 Source of Income
Labor Property Transfer
Broward
$44,214
73.7% 20.5% 5.7%
Palm Beach 59,619 54.7 39.2 6.1
Florida $40,331 67.6% 23.6% 8.8%