GULF COAST
NOVEMBER 4 – NOVEMBER 10, 2011
Business Review FIRST UP:
PEOPLE FINDER
THREE DollarS
DEVELOPMENT:
STORY ON PAGE 23
Hitting the Links
fixing history
How to recruit SEE PAGE 12 and select the Platted lands plague best employees for your business. the state, but reducing Page 9
Lisa Krouse shares how good golf is for mind, body and business.
regulation could help.
Companies • Trends • Entrepreneurs • CEOs
The Weekly Newspaper for Gulf Coast Business Leaders
Engineering Inspiration The key to solving creative challenges PAGE 10
Mark Wemple
Chris Gallagher and Jonathan Parks stand in front of the parking garage on Palm Avenue in downtown Sarasota. Parks’ firm, Sarasota-based Jonathan Parks Architect, was the lead architecture firm — and creative force — behind the project.
GULF COAST BUSINESS BUZZ
+ Connecticut pays $900,000 per Jax job
Here’s one more reason why New Englanders should move to Florida. After failing to persuade fiscally prudent residents in Collier and Sarasota counties to
more than $900,000 of taxpayer money per job. And it’s not as if Connecticut taxpayers have that kind of money lying around. The Legislature had to approve a bond issue to raise the funds. So while some on the Gulf Coast still mourn the loss of the Jackson Lab deal, higher tax burdens in the Northeast from projects such as Jackson Lab will send more wealthy residents to Naples and Sarasota. That’s economic development for which Floridians don’t have to pay top dollar.
+ Agency holds on to wallet, gets deal done
Government officials aren’t exactly synonymous with cutthroat negotiators when they dole out incentives to lure businesses to town. The Bradenton Downtown Development Authority, however, recently turned that premise upside down. The DDA reached an agreement Oct. 28 with Syracuse, N.Y.-based Widewaters Group, a firm with bold ambitions to renovate an old hotel in the heart of downtown.
The city will provide Widewaters with $1 million in incentives and roughly $1.5 million in tax rebates. Widewaters, for its part, will turn the 86-year-old building, known locally as the Pink Palace, into a 115-room Hampton Inn & Suites — a $17 million project. (See Business Review, April 29.) Widewaters, which has built $1 billion worth of commercial real estate over the last 30 years, including 20 hotels, initially sought an incentive package worth $4.5 million. It later
See coffee talk on page 3
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COFFEE TALK
fork over millions of taxpayer dollars for a new research center with vague promises, The Jackson Laboratory has found a new home in the Constitution State. That’s because Connecticut legislators are far more generous with other people’s money than their Florida counterparts. They recently voted to give the Maine-based genetics laboratory $291 million in taxpayer money for a research center that may employ 320 people within 10 years. Even if Jackson Lab meets these job projections, that’s