May 1, 2024
Feature
All Hands on Deck
Leon County officials, concerned over closings and delays of Amazon's national network of distribution centers, are now more optimistic that the e-commerce giant's $200-million Tallahassee fulfillment center is on track to open later this year.
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Published on 7/27/2023
Floating Solar Farm
Duke Energy Florida is building its first floating solar array project in Bartow. The almost 1-megawatt solar array will feature more than 1,800 floating solar modules installed on a 1,200-acre cooling pond, which was once a phosphate mining pit. At peak output, the array could power nearly 100 local homes when it begins to operate as early as this month.
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Published on 7/26/2023
Saving Sea Cows
Brevard County has been at the center of a historic wave of manatee deaths in recent years: More than one-third of the 1,900 sea cows that died in Florida between 2021 and 2022 were recovered in Brevard County, where algae blooms in the Indian River Lagoon have decimated the seagrass that the mammals rely on for food.
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Published on 7/26/2023
Reading Between the Lines
Twenty years ago, St. Petersburg criminal defense attorney Lucas Fleming began noticing that many of his teenaged clients had something in common: They could barely read.
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Published on 7/26/2023
Voices of Leadership
“The creation and molding of FLORIDA TREND into a magazine we hope you will want and need has been an exhilarating experience. All of us who have been toiling away day and night shaping an incongruous mass of information into the first issue have worked sustained by the feeling that what we were doing was something meaningful. The pieces only had to be put in place and there it was! There was an industry in words and pictures. There was Florida industry on the move. We had not caused it; we had only stopped it for a moment and put it on paper.
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Published on 7/26/2023
Then & Now
Since 1958…
Florida has moved from the 10th most populous state to third today behind California and Texas.
The state’s population grew nearly 400%, from 4.5 million people to 22.3...
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Published on 7/25/2023
The Art of Play
Kevin Daniels and Jimi Dennison share a love of the “flow arts” — a mix of skills and creative expression. Think of juggling meets dance. In 2010, they founded Fun in Motion Toys to bring “movement-inspired” toys to the world.
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Published on 7/25/2023
Trending the Florida Dream
A Florida historian reflects on the state's promise and challenges over the past 65 years.
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Published on 7/25/2023
Dial-an-Expert, No Charge
Steven D. Rubin, a South Florida real estate attorney for more than four decades, jokes that he has a bright idea every 40 years. Several years back, he had the...
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Published on 7/21/2023
An Ounce of Prevention
Scott Westheimer, the new president of the Florida Bar, says education, mentoring and other proactive approaches can keep attorneys out of trouble.
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Published on 7/21/2023
Unlocking Potential
Florida State College of Jacksonville and The Arc Jacksonville, a local non-profit that serve and advocates for individuals with intellectual and development differences (IDD), have created a vocational program called Career Campus to help young adults with IDD transition to the workforce.
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Published on 7/20/2023
Key Milestone
Two hundred years ago this month, the Florida Territorial Legislature created Monroe County — which contains all but one of the Florida Keys — as Florida's sixth county. Five years later, Key West was incorporated as a city and became the county seat. The Florida Keys include 1,700 islands stretching over 220 miles. The Calusa and Tequesta tribes were the original inhabitants of the islands.
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Published on 7/19/2023
Serving those who serve: Florida attorneys' pro bono law project aids active duty military
Commercial litigation attorney Josh Roberts of Holland & Knight in Jacksonville recalls one of his first pro bono cases around 2008, when he helped an active-duty member of the Navy regain custody of his six-year-old son. The client had divorced his wife, who suffered from an addiction. He would pick up his son, only to find the ex-wife passed out on the sofa and his son neglected.
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Published on 7/19/2023
Eight Watershed Moments
From the 1950s to the 2020s, Floridians experienced monumental change influenced by global events, a dynamic economy and Mother Nature herself. These are some of the events that shaped the state as we know it.
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Published on 7/19/2023
Dear Julie, Dear Dad
In 1970, FLORIDA TREND founder Harris Mullen penned a letter to his daughter, Julie, who had grown up with the magazine and was away at college. As FLORIDA TREND turns 65, the founder's first-born replies.
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Published on 7/18/2023
Legal Lion
Just before midnight on Dec. 29, 1972, a clear and moonless night, Eastern Airlines Flight 401 prepared to land at Miami International Airport. It had been an uneventful flight from New York JFK, but as the crew prepared for landing, a burned-out landing gear indicator light confused them. As they swung the jet back west over the Everglades to buy time to sort out whether the aircraft's landing gear was deployed, the crew failed to notice the autopilot had been disengaged. No one was flying the plane.
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Published on 7/18/2023
Florida's Future
We asked 13 experts in their respective fields to look into their crystal balls. Here are their thoughts on the decade ahead.
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Published on 7/18/2023
Icon: Jeff Johnson
From a pretty early age, knowing I was adopted, I always felt like I needed to do something really big with my life. And so, when I went off to college, I really wanted to focus on studying the really big topics, so I studied religion and politics.
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Published on 7/11/2023
Upping the Ante
Joey Levy, a South Florida native, dropped out of Columbia University at age 19 to pursue his first startup, Draftpot, a fantasy sports app. While Draftpot ultimately wasn't successful, he became obsessed with innovating the sports-betting experience for the casual fan. That sent him down a rabbit hole that led him to found two more startups.
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Published on 7/11/2023
Age-Friendly Care
AdventHealth is growing its primary care program geared toward the 65-and older set. First launched in 2021 in Daytona Beach, the AdventHealth Well 65+ program offers patients everything from longer appointments — up to 60 minutes instead of the typical 15 minutes — to on-site lab work, same-day and next-day appointments, video visits and the ability to reach a team member by phone or online, seven days a week.
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Published on 6/30/2023
Faster 3-D Fabrication
Ali Tamijani, an aerospace engineering professor at Embry-Riddle University, has spent the past decade and a half working on design and simulation technologies for 3-D printing, a process the aerospace and aviation industries have embraced to create prototypes and parts for planes and spacecraft.
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Published on 6/29/2023
House Hacking
Rising home prices, shrinking inventories and the highest mortgage rates in two decades are forcing some Florida Millennials to turn to an old concept with a new name: “House hacking.” The term refers to people who rent out part of their home to help cover a monthly mortgage payment they otherwise could not afford.
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Published on 6/29/2023
Key Deals
In adjacent deals, Integra Investments and Key International bought the Perry Hotel & Marina on Stock Island at Key West. Formerly known as Stock Island Marina Village, the site is five miles from historic Old Town.
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Published on 6/28/2023
Reviving a Gem
Randy Alonso, 38, recalls the Coconut Grove of his childhood as a tight-knit local community where his family, with roots in Cuba, enjoyed Sunday night dinners at the GreenStreet Cafe. Now, he owns and operates Mayfair Grill and Sipsip Calypso Rum Bar in the renovated Mayfair House Hotel & Garden — part of the renaissance of Coconut Grove and CocoWalk, its commercial center.
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Published on 6/27/2023
Connecting Seniors
After spending time with his grandparents, who live in the Villages, Lyman Starmer, 19, of Jacksonville started to think about the online platforms that connect residents of adult communities. At age 17, he started an online platform called Perspective with the goal of connecting people on bipartisan issues.
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Published on 6/26/2023
