April 18, 2024
Feature
Passing the Baton
The topic for the three panelists at the real estate forum in Fort Lauderdale had nothing to do with Millennials. The focus was “Downtown Fort Lauderdale: A Dynamic Investment Opportunity.” Generational change, however, was center stage.
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Published on 6/15/2023
Rail Renaissance
In 2018, Brightline — the nation's first privately financed passenger rail service in nearly four decades — debuted service between Miami, Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach. The Miami company opened stations in Aventura and Boca Raton last year and this summer will launch hourly departures between Miami and Orlando.
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Published on 6/15/2023
Betting on Bugs
Trina Chiasson was born and raised in Wellington, Maine, a little town in the woods with a one-room schoolhouse. Always interested in nature, she studied environmental economics at the University of Southern Maine. Her first career stop was at an environmental non-profit in Washington, D.C., where she learned how politics could impede environmental progress.
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Published on 6/14/2023
Icon: Mike Boylan
Hurricane Charley in 2004, that storm was heading right toward us in Tampa Bay, and that's when I got addicted to forecast cones and tracks.
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Published on 6/13/2023
Out of the Blue
Steve Murawski, a University of South Florida professor, offers an illuminating data point: The economic value of commercial and recreational fishing in Florida is greater than aerospace, citrus and ranching combined.
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Published on 5/31/2023
Moore Odyssey
Roger Moore last year gave a thought to his legacy as the sale of the boat retailing business he co-founded moved toward completion.
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Published on 5/31/2023
Smooth Sailing
St. Augustine Sailing, which offers private luxury charters and sailing lessons, has not just one, two or three family members involved in the business. There are seven of them working together.
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Published on 5/31/2023
Wave of Growth
Northwest Florida's two maritime ports posted strong growth last year, fueling their plans for major expansions.
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Published on 5/31/2023
Driver's Seat
Pursuing a career in transportation made sense to Michelle Maikisch, a ninth-generation Floridian who grew up in a family of engineers and farmers in Cottondale, a rural town in the Florida Panhandle. Her father was an engineer for the State Road Department, the predecessor to the Florida Department of Transportation. Other family members also worked for the transportation department. “I've just about been around transportation my entire life,” she says.
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Published on 5/31/2023
Robot Training
Tom Mudano, president and CEO of Pasco County-based AmSkills, is aiming for his workforce-education non-profit “to become a destination point for robotics training in the state of Florida.”
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Published on 5/26/2023
Food Chain
Looking for ways to drive more foot traffic to a Kissimmee flea market he purchased in 2015, Nadeem Battla met with Syd Levy, who once owned Flea World in Sanford. Levy told him that people went to Flea World for the food, and they stayed for the shopping, says Battla.
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Published on 5/25/2023
Just in Time Tech Boost
The company behind a project formerly known only as Confidential Project Xray is global IT management and security software giant Kaseya, which is expanding its Miami global headquarters and pledges to create 3,400 jobs paying an average of $107,000.
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Published on 5/25/2023
Beating the Heat
A team of FAMU-FSU College of Engineering researchers at the High-Performance Materials Institute in Tallahassee has conducted experiments that prove a compound of boron nanotubes can withstand temperatures up to 4,000 degrees Fahrenheit.
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Published on 5/25/2023
Sunnier Days Ahead
Coming off a record year of passenger traffic, Punta Gorda Airport is expecting business to get even better with the planned opening this year of the 785-room Sunseeker Resort on Charlotte Harbor.
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Published on 5/25/2023
Driving Successes
As president of Tallahassee Community College and a veteran law enforcement official, Jim Murdaugh knows the value of workforce training in helping people improve their circumstances, including those who have had run-ins with the law.
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Published on 5/24/2023
Touting JaxPort
Competition for cruise business south of Jacksonville is fierce, with active ports at Cape Canaveral, Fort Lauderdale and Miami. However, Jacksonville is a good entry point for local residents or those just north of Jacksonville who otherwise would have to go to Charleston to find a cruise within driving distance, says Alberto Cabrera, director of cargo and cruise development, in talking up JaxPort.
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Published on 5/24/2023
Custom-Made
Peter Quinter doesn't spend much time behind a desk. On any given day, the trade attorney might be at a port warehouse, aboard a freighter or inside a Boeing 747 helping clients deal with import or export hiccups and advocating to get their shipments back on track.
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Published on 5/23/2023
Economic Engine
Brightline's upcoming train service to Orlando is providing an economic boost to Central Florida. The company's $100-million vehicle maintenance facility — dubbed Basecamp — will employ 100 workers, and the train carrier has partnered with Siemens USA (which manufactures its trains), railroad contractor Herzog and Valencia College to create a curriculum to train students for careers as train mechanics.
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Published on 5/22/2023
A Clean Start
For decades, the five-acre site at the eastern edge of downtown Naples was littered with rundown metal buildings once used as warehouses and car repair shops. It was an area where street crime flourished.
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Published on 5/17/2023
Park Place
Sarah Combs grew up a farmer's daughter. From an early age, she harvested crops on the family's spread in a tiny, tight-knit Colorado town, developed a strong work ethic and constantly engaged with neighbors. It was a long way from north Tampa, an area that over the years has been beset by poverty.
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Published on 5/17/2023
Keep on Truckin'
FleetForce is expanding in Florida this spring with six new training and testing centers. The truck-driving school, based in Sarasota, projects it will be able to graduate 3,000 commercial drivers annually, to help reduce a shortage that trucking trade experts say is close to 80,000 nationally.
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Published on 5/17/2023
City Center
Along a stretch of I-4 some 25 miles east of Tampa and 60 miles west of Orlando, a new City Furniture campus stretches for a half-mile. The 87-acre development that opened late last year features 1.3 million square feet of warehouse space and a nearly 190,000-sq.-ft. two-story showroom, complete with a wine and coffee bar.
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Published on 5/16/2023
The Greening of Florida's Brownfields
Over the last quarter-century, Florida has helped to transform almost 200 contaminated sites into clean community hubs. The pace of the redevelopment is about to pick up dramatically.
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Published on 5/16/2023
'Perfect DNA'
John Vo, former vice president of propulsion at electric pickup truck maker Lordstown Motors and head of global manufacturing for Tesla, moved to Florida in 2020. He heads Blue Innovations Group, an electric boat startup based in Pinellas Park. It's working on a line of boats, one of which would have solar charging panels, an 800-hp powertrain and run on a 220-kilowatt battery.
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Published on 5/16/2023
Rocking the Boat
A marine marketing truism holds that the ideal locale for photographing a boat is in the clear blue waters of the Bahamas. Cam Heaps, CEO of electric boat maker Voltari, wanted that Bahamas photo and decided to go for more: Instead of shipping or towing his new Voltari 260 performance boat there, he would seek to set a record for the “first and longest” electric boat overseas crossing — the 91 miles from Key Largo to Bimini.
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Published on 5/15/2023
