GULF COAST
DECEMBER 21 – DECEMBER 27, 2012
Business Review
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STORY ON PAGE 23
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Power Lunch
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Executives who kick butt in and out of the boardroom.
Yanos in downtown Fort Myers serves American cuisine with a taste of Asia.
Companies • Trends • Entrepreneurs • CEOs
The Weekly Newspaper for Gulf Coast Business Leaders
No Pain, No Gain Think your workout is tough? Think again. PAGE 6
Mark Wemple
GULF COAST BUSINESS BUZZ
+ Fort Myers hiring boom No. 1 in nation It may be hard to believe, but a recent survey by employment firm Manpower forecasts a
cuts. And in North Port-Sarasota-Bradenton, 13% of employers plan to hire more people while 4% plan staff cuts.
+ The ‘greening’ of Sarasota is game on Will Sarasota be the next Greenville, S.C.? That’s the hope, in some respects, that local economic development officials and city leaders have with Norman Gol-
lub, the newly hired downtown Sarasota economic development coordinator. Gollub, who starts his new post in early 2013, was the economic development manager for the upstate South Carolina city, with a population of about 60,000, from 1998 to 2004. He secured more than $825,000 for improvement projects, according to his rĂŠsumĂŠ, and he led efforts to haul in $50 million in private redevelopment funds. That rĂŠsumĂŠ is the backbone
of the optimism. For instance, Steve Queior, president and CEO of the Greater Sarasota Chamber of Commerce, says Gollub’s Greenville experience stood out among the 60 or so other applicants. Gollub scored high marks for several other jobs, Queior told the Sarasota Observer, sister paper of the Business Review, but the one possibly most impressive item of experience was Greenville,
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hiring boom in the Cape CoralFort Myers area. In fact, Manpower says the Fort Myers area has the best prospects in the nation for hiring. The employment firm says 27% of the companies it interviewed in the Cape Coral-Fort Myers area plan to hire more staff in the first quarter. Just 4% plan to reduce staff. Meanwhile, in the Tampa area, 17% of employers plan to add staff while 12% plan job
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