THE UPSIDE OF FLORIDA Rebranding an old classic: Public and private interests join forces to rejuvenate Pensacola
Flush out illegal immigrants with E-verify
Thunder Beach brings bikers and bucks to Bay County
How to protect the online reputation of your business 850 Business Magazine
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a da d iid F orrid off Fl es o hivvve Arrchi te A atte a tesyy Stta te urrrte ou ot oto cco ho Ph
bor, 1968 Destin Har
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The UWF College of Business is accredited by AACSB International—The Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business. Fewer than five percent of business schools worldwide have earned this symbol of the highest standard in business management education, and we are proud to be one of them. At UWF, we still do business the right way—person to person. Our new College of Business Education center epitomizes an innovative and relevant environment, designed to enhance student learning and create a new synergy for students, faculty and the entire business community. The center enables us to build future business leaders and serve as a model for advanced business education. 4
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850 Magazine February – March 2013
IN THIS ISSUE
40
56 Departments
28
Pensacola: The Upside of Florida
GUEST COLUMN
There’s a new energy pulsing through Pensacola. Downtown has become a mecca for shoppers and restaurantgoers, as well as baseball aficionados. Maritime Park, home of the Blue Wahoos, is a symbol of change in a town where public and private interests have joined forces to usher in a new era of economic development. By Linda
MANAGEMENT STRATEGIES
Kleindienst
40 PHOTOs BY Scott Holstein (Gaetz) and Courtesy Lee Ann Russo (Thunder Beach)
In This Issue
Features
A Presidential Conversation Okaloosa County’s Don Gaetz has taken over the reins as state Senate president and talks with 850 about his hopes to help business during his twoyear tenure at the helm of the Florida Legislature’s upper chamber. The road to the future of Florida’s economy, he says, runs straight through Northwest Florida. By Kimberley Yablonski
13 Gray Swoope, Florida’s Secretary of Commerce and the CEO of Enterprise Florida, talks of job creation and state/local partnerships.
14 Every small business has a screamer, a late payer, a Mr. or Ms. Picky for a client. Here’s the best way to handle them.
WI-FILES
18 Your company has been skewered online by a dissatisfied customer — now what do you do?
THE BOTTOM LINE
22 Some tips on how to collect on your accounts receivable without calling Tony Soprano.
HUMAN ELEMENT
24 Using E-Verify could boost your business image if your customers know your workers are legal.
8 11 71 74
From the Publisher Letters to 850 Sound Bytes The Last Word from the Editor
CAPITAL
46 Who is writing the news? There is a dearth of information about how business is being affected by what is going on in state government and the Legislature.
EMERALD COAST
52 Businesswomen across the Emerald Coast are joining forces — and checkbooks — to make a big IMPACT in their communities.
BAY
56 Thunder Beach roars into town twice a year, bringing plenty of friendly bikers and lots of cash to local businesses.
FORGOTTEN COAST
62 Ronald Fred Crum has been in business for 44 years. Learn how he has survived through many incarnations.
On the Cover: Blue Wahoos owner Quint Studer (left) and Mayor Ashton Hayward in the bleachers at the new downtown Pensacola ballpark. Photo by Scott Holstein
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66 Why a Fortune 500 company agreed to build a $50 million distribution center amidst miles of cotton fields.
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850
Hathaway Bridge
THE BUSINESS MAGAZINE OF NORTHWEST FLORIDA
February 2013 – March 2013
Vol. 5, No. 3
President/Publisher
Brian E. Rowland
EDITORIAL
Director of Editorial Services Linda Kleindienst Staff Writer Jason Dehart Editorial Coordinator Laura Bradley Contributing Writers Steve Bornhoft, Tony Bridges, Tisha Crews Keller, Jason Dehart, Wendy O. Dixon, Ashley Kahn, Buddy Nevins, Audrey Post, Elizabeth Ricci, Gray Swoope, Kimberley Yablonski Proofreader Melinda Lanigan
CREATIVE
Creative Director Lawrence Davidson Assistant Creative Director Saige Roberts Graphic Designers Jennifer Ekrut, Lizzie Moore, Laura Patrick, Shruti Shah Design Extern Sarah Casteel Production Manager/Network Administrator Daniel Vitter Staff Photographer Scott Holstein
SALES, MARKETING & EVENTS
Marketing and Sales Manager McKenzie Burleigh Director of New Business Daniel Parisi Traffic Coordinator Lisa Sostre Account Executives Rhonda Chaloupka, Jon Fistel, Darla Harrison, Lori Magee, Tracy Mulligan, Linda Powell, Frank Sandro, Chuck Simpson, Chris St. John Special Projects and Events Manager Caroline Conway Special Projects and events coordinator Lynda Belcher
WE SEE BUSINESS FROM A
FRESH PERSPECTIVE
OPERATIONS
Administrative Services Manager Emily Bohnstengel Accounting Specialist Tabby Hamilton Receptionists Mary Elizabeth Bosco, Kimber Fraley, Jazmeen Sule
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850 Magazine is published bi-monthly by Rowland Publishing, Inc. 1932 Miccosukee Road, Tallahassee, FL 32308. 850/878-0554. 850 Magazine and Rowland Publishing, Inc. are not responsible for unsolicited manuscripts, photography or artwork. Editorial contributions are welcomed and encouraged but will not be returned. 850 Magazine reserves the right to publish any letters to the editor. Copyright February 2013 850 Magazine, Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or part without written permission is prohibited. Member, Florida Magazine Association and three Chambers of Commerce throughout the region. Awards4U is the official provider of mounted features for Rowland Publishing titles. For more information contact Sam Varn 850.878.7187.
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From the Publisher
Lack of Communication = Recipe for Disaster
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the moment to capture the essence of this story in a single frame. And the designers and editorial team took it to the next level with the right words and placement of type. Please take a moment now to look deep into this image and wording to “feel” what this industry is experiencing. What could have been done to avoid this misstep? Communication and logical thinking. The postal service has pretty stringent regulations with regard to the placement of a mailing label. It must be on the bottom onethird of the cover and placed horizontally. Okay, we know the rules. So now what? First Mistake — We did not specifically instruct our mail vendor where (or where not) to place this label. It most certainly could have run over the UPC code or in the water to the lower left. Across the UPC would have been the first call. Second Mistake — Our mail vendor, who has worked with us for 15 years, could have made a far better call. Or, if there was a lingering question, picking up the phone and asking the client would have been a good option. Someone consciously decided on the label’s placement, and I have spent hours mulling over what thought process this individual went through before making the final decision to place it across the most critical element of the photograph. Ultimately, as publisher, I must take responsibility for this series of mistakes that resulted in a botched cover. But I can assure you — it will never occur again. And I apologize to each and every loyal reader of 850. Now the good news — I am very confident this issue of 850 will win awards from the Florida Magazine Association this August. Fortunately, the judges will make their decision from a copy without the mailing label. Meanwhile, I hope you will learn much from this issue’s coverage of Pensacola, a community that is in the midst of reinventing itself into a formidable economic engine that will help drive Northwest Florida to its next level over time.
Brian Rowland browland@rowlandpublishing.com
Photos by SCOTT HOLSTEIN
About now you might be asking yourself the question: “Why am I looking at the cover of the last issue of 850 across from this page?” Well, I’m going to tell you why. And I’m going to share a few points about the tangible and, more importantly, the intangible aspects of the relationship between a vendor and client that are critical on so many levels. It began at 6:30 a.m. on Monday, Dec. 24, when I made my daily stop at the post office on my way to work. I always add myself to the mailing list for our magazines so that I can personally track their travel time in the postal system. On this morning, I opened the box, pulled the newest issue out, looked at the cover and felt like a sniper had hit me directly in the heart with a kill shot. The mailing label was placed directly on the most essential element of the cover image — an oyster fisherman in his boat — and for all practical purposes completely mitigated the message and the impression we wanted to deliver to the 15,000 business and community leaders who receive each issue of our magazine. The cover of any magazine provides the most important first impression to the reader. Your initial reaction to our cover image and copy sets the tone of the issue and hopefully draws you inside to read the stories that are researched and carefully written by professional journalists. In this case, a one-by-four-inch mailing label prevented that from happening, which is why I am running it again so you can focus on the cover and see our intended message. This type of image only comes when the moon and stars are perfectly aligned and our talented staff photographer, Scott Holstein, is in the right place at the right time. On this particular day Scott rose early to drive to Eastpoint, where he planned to spend the morning on the water, documenting the craft of oystering, which has changed very little over many decades. This is a very labor intensive job that has provided a living for generations of families along the Forgotten Coast. Scott goes to a photo shoot knowing the direction of the story that his photos illustrate. He utilizes his keen sense of observation and special photographic techniques to capture a series of images that our creative staff can utilize to bring the words and story alive on the pages of the magazine. On this particular day, it was clear and sunny when he departed from shore. By mid-morning a fog bank moved in off the Gulf to envelop the oyster boats in a misty haze. Within a second, Scott seized
TALLAHASSEE Volume 30 Number 3
DISAPPEARING INDuStRy Hammered by drought, storms and over harvesting, is the death knell sounding for Apalachicola’s oysters?
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an Industry 40 under 40 the new our Military Icon born of culminAtes Caviar Heroes find bIpartIsan with 8 finAl Capital of support froM burgers inductees florida eMployers 850 Business Magazine
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War paint for today’s business world.
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Dr. Douglas Stevens Professor of Accounting Faculty MBA Program Director 2011 Visiting Fellow, University of Glasgow, Scotland
FROM T HE MAI LBAG Thank you for sharing some historic perspective on the current crisis facing the people and ecosystem of the Apalachicola Bay (Dec 12/Jan 13). Having been intimately involved there for the last couple years, I am painfully aware of what the people are currently facing, and it is good to read the fact that the resilience I see in them has deep and historic roots. I trust we will find solutions that work for both these immediate challenges and also for the longer term.
our reliable phone & “ With Internet, Eric’s firehouse saves a bundle!”
Brunie Emmanuel Project Manager Catholic Charities of Northwest Florida
Bundle Internet and Phone
While I have used ads and articles from Tallahassee Magazine and 850 Magazine for many years in my Introductory Marketing class, I thought the articles in the October/ November 850 issue were terrific. “Communication is Everything,” “Creating Results” and “Smart Marketing” encouraging social media for small businesses were wonderful articles for students considering real-life application of basic marketing principles. The value of these and related articles to businesses in the Panhandle is well established, but the instructional benefits for upper level business and accounting students should be acknowledged. It’s excellent supplementary material. Thanks to you and your writers for producing timely and valuable business advice for our college students, as well as our business and professional community. Dottie Roberts, MBA Business Administration Faculty, Flagler College Tallahassee
I wanted to take a moment and compliment Jason Dehart on such a well written article on my company that came out in this month’s issue (October/November 2012). I think you did a great job on this. I hope you had some fun writing this story since my business is somewhat on the fringe of regular businesses. Great job! Larry Schmidt Production Support Group Inc. Reel Rock Productions Inc. Tallahassee
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Executive Mindset
Business Speak Northwest Florida is Poised for growth
T
his is an exciting time for Florida and particularly for Northwest Florida. As the U.S. economy shows signs of a cautious recovery, our state leads the nation in job creation, having achieved the greatest drop in unemployment among all states since the national downturn. It has decreased from nearly 12 percent to 8 percent since Gov. Rick Scott took office. In November 2012 alone, Florida gained 12,100 jobs, which is placing thousands of individuals and families back on track for economic security. In October, the state’s 24 Regional Workforce Boards reported a record of more than 50,423 Floridians placed into jobs. Even more, people once again are moving to Florida. Net immigration for 2012 is up to an estimated 134,500, almost doubling 2011’s 68,000 total. Florida’s housing starts also increased by more than 29 percent from September 2011 to September 2012. And median home prices rose by 7.4 percent during that period. Many of these improvement indicators resulted from three distinct actions centered on the state’s economic development: conscious decisions and strategies directed toward job creation, enhancing the state’s competitive landscape and improving Florida’s business climate. Before taking office, Gov. Scott interviewed a group of leading site selection consultants — professionals who are vital to bringing competitive projects to the state — to learn their opinions about Florida’s competitiveness. Their feedback was significant concerning various factors that prompted the governor and the Legislature to improve economic development processes and practices. One notable outcome was legislation that established the Department of Economic Opportunity. Look at what has happened in the last two years. We are different. We are stronger. State agency heads are communicating and working together as never before to create opportunities and solve problems. Successful economic development requires this type of seamless coordination across all entities involved, not just at the state level. Northwest Florida is fortunate to have outstanding, high-performing economic
G r ay S w o o p e Gray Swoope, is Florida’s Secretary of Commerce and president and CEO of Enterprise Florida Inc. Swoope, who attended second grade in Fort Walton Beach, came to Florida from Mississippi, where as economic development chief he helped recruit companies like Toyota and GE Aviation.
development organizations and elected officials who understand their importance to the region’s growth, prosperity and vibrancy. Enterprise Florida works hand-in-hand with its economic development partner Florida’s Great Northwest, which markets the 16-county region as a globally competitive location for business and recruits jobs and investment here. In each of those counties, we work with our designated partner economic development office to generate interest in the region from corporate decision-makers and present the most compelling proposition possible for why businesses should select Northwest Florida for expansion and investment. The Panhandle’s adjacency to Alabama and Georgia and its connection to Mississippi and Louisiana through the I-10 corridor naturally spark competition among these states for economic development projects. It has also led to tremendous opportunities to promote the region’s greater resources in sectors the state specifically targets for economic development. Aviation-aerospace is an example. The desire
among Alabama, Florida, Louisiana and Mississippi to market their common aerospace resources and assets found along the I-10 corridor led to the development of The Aerospace Alliance, a public-private coalition that works to position the southeast U.S. region as a pre-eminent aviation-aerospace corridor. This unprecedented partnership among the states is enhancing Florida’s job-recruitment and industry diversification efforts. Northwest Florida is well placed to maximize these opportunities because of the strength of its legacy and growth of new industries, with aerospace and military-defense among them. Already deemed by many as the foundation of the region’s economy, these sectors stand to gain tremendously through our ties to our military installations and aggressive recruitment by Enterprise Florida and its Northwest partners to generate more business — and jobs — in these sectors. There is a highly qualified workforce coming out of the military that wants to remain in the area as well, which makes the region attractive to major manufacturers. Again, recruitment efforts are bearing more fruit, thanks to our seamless approach. Manufacturing is an up-and-coming target area not to be overlooked as a viable prospect for new business in Northwest Florida. During the past year alone, the region has benefited greatly from quite a few economic development projects centered on manufacturing operations. They range from smaller but lucrative ventures like 8-year-old electrical equipment manufacturer Custom Control Solutions’ expansion in Cantonment, a $520,000 investment in that Escambia County community with 15 new jobs that set the stage for many more; to Atlanta-based Home Source International’s establishment of a manufacturing and distribution facility in Marianna, a $2.3 million capital investment with 303 jobs forthcoming. Northwest Florida is on target for further growth, because its favorable business climate and strategic partnerships are resulting in job and economic growth. Working together as we are on a state to local level is demonstrating the region’s capabilities, which makes Florida more competitive. n
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Executive Mindset
Management Strategies
C LIENT RElations
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You’re
Fired! How to deal with problem clients By Laura Bradley
T
hey can come with a wide variety of neuroses. Some like to call 50 times per week; others will take weeks to decide on a font style for their website banner. Whatever their quirks might be, problem clients can cause stress, rampant inefficiency and, worst of all, a possible decrease in your profits. The first step in dealing with problem clients? Try to avoid doing business with them in the first place. Willy Bolander, assistant professor of marketing in the Sales Institute at Florida State University, explains that many companies — nascent enterprises in particular — believe that any client is a good client. Guided by this mistaken notion, these businesses take on many clients, ignoring the fact that some of them might cost the company more than they actually return. Targeted marketing is important, Bolander notes, but he additionally suggests considering the other side of that coin: “We say ‘target market’ — who are you going to sell your service to? The other way you could look at that is, ‘Who are you trying to not sell to?’ ” Clients must be evaluated before you hire them, he continues. There are key traits to look for, and others to avoid. A good client is reliable when presenting needs and
demands, and readily follows through with information and necessary input. A client who has gone through many vendors in a short period of time, or who seems reluctant or slow in responding to requests, might cause problems later on. Bolander urges companies not to overlook follow-through, as this can lead to some of the worst ordeals. He recalls problematic clients he dealt with as a client development manager at a start-up CPA firm in Atlanta: “Some of our problem clients were people who we would call every week for a month or two, asking them to send us their receipts and their banking records so we could get started processing their books for that month or that quarter, and we could never get a hold of them; they would never follow through. We’d get a call from them out of the blue when they’re trying to get a loan and the banker says, ‘Let me see your books; let me see where everything’s at,’ and now, all of a sudden, everything is very, very urgent.” Some prospective clients might also raise a red flag during the first stages of collaboration by exaggerating their credentials, connections and prestige. Mike Ragsdale is the co-founder of TownWizard, a company that helps entrepreneurs establish interactive, mobile guides for their local communities. With a network spanning about 150 communities world-wide,
Ragsdale has met his share of problem clients, but one in particular stood out. “I remember the first time I ever spoke with him, something about him didn’t seem right. He was talking a very big game; he supposedly had all sorts of Hollywood connections, and he’d done this, and he’d done that and he was a big heavy-hitter, high roller. I wasn’t immediately enamored. If anything, I was a little more suspicious.” It goes back to the old saying: If it sounds too good to be true — or downright unbelievable, then it probably is. Evaluation should not just be reserved for new clients, either; existing clients should be subject to the same scrutiny if they are causing problems. When it comes to long-term clients, it is crucial to evaluate your relationship and make sure that it is a healthy give-and-take. Bill Hobbs, founder of La Plata Press LLC and author of “The Work Book: How to Build Your Personal Brand and Get Hired,” explains, “A customer relationship is like any other relationship. If you allow the customer to just take, take, take, then it’s really not a valuable relationship for either of you.” Short-term clients, however, require a different kind of work. In these services, problem clients must be dealt with preemptively, and when these measures fail, the customer service framework must be
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Management Strategies
evaluated and restructured. Denise Daughtry explains that her business, Winterfest of Pensacola Inc., relies heavily upon its Web interface to deal with its clients — tickets and booking are all online-only. For her, the best way to avoid problems with online clients is to make the process simple and the expectations clear (regarding both what the customer receives for the money and the conditions under which the service will be rendered). Winterfest of Pensacola caters to many clients in various capacities, running trolley tours, as well as charter and parking services, serving about 50,000 customers a year. Many problems with clients stem from unclear expectations. With a website, “You have 10 seconds to get it right,” she points out, so she and her webmaster, Josh Davidson, are constantly working to make the website clear and simple. Her charter business in particular has taught her to explain to clients precisely what is expected of them in return for service. Occasionally in the past, parties aboard the trolleys got too rowdy, causing damage to the trolley and danger to the driver and themselves. Daughtry found that raising the damage deposit, along with being very clear about the level of discipline expected from clients, has largely done away with that brand of problem client. “We usually sell out everything we do, but we only sell out because we can manage it,” Daughtry explains. “One mistake sets you out of the loop in a smaller community.” In the end, the question is simple: Are you getting back at least as much as you are putting in? A successful partnership between you and your client means that you both are working together to extract value from the partnership. While the American service industry has long adopted the mantra, “The customer is always right,” this mindset can encourage unhealthy, damaging relationships in the long run, as well as a loss of the mutual respect that is essential in any partnership. Ragsdale points out, “The customer is not always right. You have to look not just at what they’re paying you — you have to look at what they’re costing you.” When it becomes clear that the partnership is not working, the hardest part is cutting ties. Once you identify your problem
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clients, it is crucial to deal with them quickly, honestly and directly. “The best way to deal with a problem client is to deal with them right up front,” says Hobbs. There is no use tip-toeing around a client who is costing you time, energy and money. The focus must be on clear, professional communication about the problems in the relationship. Bolander adds, “The easiest thing to do is to set up a situation where the client can remove themselves.” If you find yourself constantly negotiating and accommodating, sometimes the best approach is to just stop. No more negotiating, no more accommodation. Allow your problem clients to choose whether to cooperate in a mutually beneficial manner or to find someone else.
“A customer relationship is like any other relationship. If you allow the customer to just take, take, take, then it’s really not a valuable relationship for either of you.” Bill Hobbs, founder of La Plata Press LLC and author of “The Work Book: How to Build Your Personal Brand and Get Hired” Bolander recalls culling the problem clients at the CPA firm with this strategy. Many had been misquoted at rates that were far lower than they should have been, and also demanded services that were far outside what their money should have bought them. His plan was to raise their rates to the correct amount and to stop negotiating.
“I got some crazy looks from people within the organization when I told them that was my plan, but customers were actually pretty responsive to that,” he notes. “Some of them thought it was strange, but for the most part, they were pretty responsive.” On the same note, if a problem client has been talking about other vendors and options, it is not always your responsibility to stop them from leaving. “Be very direct. If they have a better option, tell them to go with it,” urges Hobbs. There is no use trying to maintain a partnership that is not satisfying to both parties, especially if a match can be made elsewhere. You will both benefit in the long run. Unfortunately, the process of dealing with a problem client is not always so clean. When a client does not remove him or herself, a company will have to initiate a conversation. Ragsdale advises that before the problem becomes truly harmful to the relationship (or at least before it becomes more harmful), try to resolve the issue verbally. “I think the first thing you do is you have a very honest, friendly but genuine and stern conversation with the client,” he instructs. Let the client know you appreciate their business but are concerned about certain points of tension. Describe the issues, and try to find ways to fix them and repair the partnership. This conversation should be thorough and should happen at least twice before breaking with a client. It is also crucial to have records of these conversations. If these measures fail, then it is time to let the client know calmly and professionally, and to recommend some other vendors or options for them if possible. With problem clients taken care of, the final step is to avoid taking on more. Ragsdale advises companies to consider ahead of time what behaviors constitute a problem client and at what point a customer ceases to help the business. “Depending on the type of business, it’s all about setting up what you consider a problematic client. I would look at it and say that the moment they start costing you more than they’re contributing, that’s an obvious excuse to get rid of them. If they’re also having an effect on your corporate culture, then you really have to weigh that in. It’s not just a financial cost.” n
WE’RE ALL ABOUT YOU! 2'6) IS A FULL SERVICE INSURANCE AGENCY PROVIDING RISK MANAGEMENT COUNSEL EMPLOYEE BENElT SERVICES COMMERCIAL INSURANCE AND lNANCIAL SERVICES TO BUSINESSES ACROSS THE STATE 2'6) S TRAINED PROFESSIONALS WORK CLOSELY WITH YOU TO BUILD A COMPREHENSIVE CUSTOMIZED BUSINESS PROTECTION AND EMPLOYEE BENElT PLAN FOR YOUR COMPANY 2'6) IS THE .ORTH &LORIDA RESOURCE FOR BUSINESS PROTECTION
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Executive Mindset
Wi-Files
T he importance of online reviews
Managing Your Online Reputation Learn how to protect your business from false Internet attacks By Tony Bridges
W
hat would you do if someone came into your place of business and began shouting false accusations against you and your company to every customer within hearing? Easy. When it’s your business, you control the physical environment. You can quiet the person down, investigate the problem and, if necessary, make him leave. Most importantly, you can act immediately to reassure the customers about what they just witnessed. The Internet, however, is a whole different kind of place. Netizens usually describe it as the “Wild West,” where the environment belongs to no one and very little of it is under control. There isn’t just one voice shouting, there are millions. And when negative information goes out, it is seen by the whole world, not just a few customers. The modern reality is, businesses live or die by the Internet. Consumers increasingly check online reviews before choosing everything from health care providers to a local restaurant, with as many as 70 percent relying on the Internet for “word-of-mouth” recommendations, according to some surveys.
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A disgruntled party — whether a former partner, employee or customer — can wreak havoc on your company by posting unfavorable information across multiple online platforms, scaring off anyone considering doing business with you. That’s why managing your online reputation is a crucial aspect of your business. It takes constant effort and some Internet savvy, but it can be done. And it needs to start before you even have a problem. “It’s that old line, the best defense is a good offense,” said John Peloza, professor of marketing at Florida State University.
The Internet Matters If you’re like most people, when you want to make a purchase, the first thing you do is go to Google, which handles nearly threequarters of online searches. The results on the first page of Google search will get most of your attention, although you may go as deep as the third page if you’re being particularly diligent. The customer reviews, forum comments and blog hits that turn up in those results will most certainly influence your purchasing decision.
Similarly, negative reviews can also impact the decision to buy an item or use a service. How much so? Four out of five people surveyed said negative online reviews had made them change their minds about a purchase, according to the Cone Online Influence Trend Tracker report. Peloza pointed to the United Airlines broken-guitar incident as one of the most famous examples in recent years of the effect negative information on the Internet can have on a company. In 2009, a musician named Dave Carroll posted a video on YouTube chronicling how the company’s baggage handlers broke his guitar during a trip and how the company subsequently failed to make it right with him. The video was viewed by millions of people, and The Times of London later reported that within four days of the song hitting the Internet, United stock fell 10 percent, a loss of about $180 million. While there were other factors involved, the video is believed to have played a significant part in the loss. Now here’s the kicker to all this consumer information online: The Internet is rife with fake reviews. For example, problems with bogus reviews of auto dealerships
pedophile, according to Dr. Chris Anderson, co-founder of Cyber Investigations Services in Niceville. The company helps businesses track down and stop people behind online reputation attacks. “I get the horrified calls every day” from business owners who are losing customers because of nasty information about their companies online, Anderson said. “This is a world-wide problem.”
Trouble Spots in the ‘Wild West’ Word-of-mouth consumer information spreads across the Internet in two basic ways. One is social media on sites such as Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest, which are all about sharing information quickly across broad networks of inter-connected friends, co-workers and family members. Social media users tend to share experiences — what a certain movie was like, how well a new electronic device performed, how they were treated by a local store. These platforms tend to be less anonymous because of the social aspect, but information spreads exponentially as it is picked up and passed on. The other is through content sites. Those consist of: » Review sites — On these sites anonymous users can give detailed opinions on a particular product. Examples include Epinions, Yelp and the review sections of Amazon.com products. recently led Google to purge thousands of them, and allegations of fake negative reviews has hotel owners talking about suing travel review site Trip Advisor. A best-selling crime novelist in the UK was even caught posting fake bad reviews of his competitors’ books on Amazon.com. The problem has become so pervasive, researchers at Cornell University and other schools are trying to develop programs to detect phony online reviews, because studies suggest that average Internet users can spot the fakes only about half the time. What that means for your business is that potential customers — or business partners or even employees — can be influenced by
negative information about your company, even if much of it is false. Most of the time, the negative information, honest or not, is fairly innocuous. It generally consists of reports of bad experiences, such as a person in Leon County complaining that a construction-related business failed to return phone calls, a customer in Bay County reporting a dirty retail store and a diner in Escambia County detailing apathetic service at a restaurant. But it can also get downright vicious and defamatory. For example, in one recent case, a person attempted to shut down a business by launching an Internet campaign accusing the owner of being a drug dealer and a
» Blogs or news sites — These are sites with specific categories (cars, Apple products, etc.) that allow anonymous users to post comments below the articles. This also includes sites which write their own reviews and allow readers to comment. Examples include everything from Engadget and Red Tape to personal blogs to your local newspaper. » Forums or message boards — These sites consist primarily of discussions between users about a particular topic. Examples include Mac Rumors, Craigslist forums and, arguably, report sites such as Rip-off Report.
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According to Anderson, customers who leave bad reviews don’t go over the line, but usually just relate their experiences, and businesses can live with that. But the fake reviews and outright attacks typically are intent on harming the business and most often come from exes — ex-partners, ex-employees and ex-romantic partners, he said. “A lot of this stuff happens because of the anonymous nature of the Web,” Anderson said.
Defending Your Reputation Against Attack So, that’s the threat. Now, what can you do to protect against it? “Good reputation management is basically good marketing,” said John Carlson, head of business development and marketing for Sarasota-based Glide Interactive, which offers consulting in reputation defense. Remember those Google search results mentioned earlier? The first page of results is crucial, and your business has to own that real estate. That page needs to show your website, blog, Twitter feed, Facebook page, LinkedIn profile, listings in reputable industry directories and any other relevant content you can think of. “You want the best and most accurate information about your company to come up,” Carlson said. As Anderson says, if all you have up is a company website, it leaves plenty of room for damaging attacks. One of the ways many businesses try to claim Google search results space is to fill those pages with fake positive reviews. The upside to doing that is that it leaves the impression that your business has lots of satisfied customers — but the downside is that it can be disastrous if you’re caught. That’s why Carlson strongly cautions against posting fake reviews and warns against using reputation management consultants who offer those services. “It’s not good for the Web, either, when people do that,” he said. As a business, you also need to proactively engage customers online through
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Consider this from the Local Consumer Review Survey by Internet consultants BrightLocal:
70% of shoppers look online to find a local business
67% read online reviews of local businesses
69% percent trust those reviews
49%
say they are more likely to shop at a local business that had positive online reviews (other surveys have put this number at higher than 75 percent).
social media and through a company blog. If you are already having conversations with customers, they are more likely to include you in the discussion when something negative happens, Peloza said. “Building the relationship ahead of time somewhat inoculates against the reputation damage,” he said, calling it the single most important thing a business can do. It’s also crucial that your business monitor social media and the Web for mentions of your company, including searching Google for the company name and the owner’s name at least once a quarter. If someone does post negative information online, the response depends on what kind of information it is. A customer relating a bad experience, even if you suspect it is fake, requires that you immediately reach out to the customer for more information and then try to fix the situation. “You really want to get to that person as soon as possible,” Carlson said. “It’s really quite simple. Customer service … is key.” Done right, you may be able to convert that unhappy customer into a return customer, and to show those watching online that you care and are responsive. And, if the initial posting was fake, that likely will be exposed when the “customer” doesn’t respond to your request for specifics. In the case of a deliberate attack — usually involving many negative postings coming all at one time and consisting of particularly vicious or personal accusations — it might be time to consult someone like Anderson. Services like his work to identify the anonymous poster, then contact that person to demand the attacks stop. Usually, all it takes is a threat to expose the person’s true identity, he said, although occasionally cases go to litigation. The cost of an investigation averages about $2,500 to $3,500, he said, while litigation runs about $10,000 to $15,000. “That’s a drop in the bucket compared to the business you may lose,” Anderson said. n
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Executive Mindset
The Bottom Line c ollecting on accounts payable
Go After What’s Due You Have a plan for collecting on unpaid client bills BY BUDDY NEVINS
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veteran lawyer, who had done legal work for a country club in South Florida, was facing a big hurdle. When he presented his bill, he was told to back off and was warned not to sue. That’s when he found out that the hidden boss of the country club was a member of the Mob. The lawyer, who asked not to be named, needed his money — $25,000. He had a solo practice with bills to pay. He called a friend, who called a friend, who knew another guy with underworld connections. After looking over the contract, the other guy ruled that the debt was legitimate and that it should be paid. Before the week was out, a messenger delivered a check to the lawyer’s office. After reading the lawyer’s story, small business owners may think the the best way to collect on a debt is to enlist the
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Sopranos. Forgetaboutit! Even in today’s economy, where it is tough for businesses to get paid, there are many more acceptable ways to cut accounts receivable and usually retain a client, too. Most small businesses probably would rather get paid cash-on-delivery. For many, this is not possible. Some businesses get some of their money after the services have been delivered. Others are forced to offer credit to match competitors. For everybody, waiting to get paid is maddening, especially to anyone who needs the money to pay their own bills. And the time wasted on collections could better be spent servicing old customers and developing new ones. Slower payments appear to be an unwanted legacy of the recent recession. Companies continue to wait longer to get their money as businesses stall paying. The average time businesses waited to get paid
in the beginning of 2012 was around 28 days, which is two to three days later than before the recession, according to accounting software maker Sageworks. On the other side of the equation, the average time for making payments has stretched to roughly 27 days from 25 days last year. Sageworks analyst Samara Zippin blamed the uncertainty about the direction of the economy. “A rise in accounts payable days coupled with no significant change in accounts receivable days indicates businesses may be concerned about the economic recovery and how that will affect their company’s cash flow, even while sales growth is up,” Zippin said. Individuals are reacting to the economy in the same way as businesses. Roger P. Levin, a dentist who helps others improve their practices, warned in the August 27, 2012, issue of Dental Economic that
overdue patient accounts “have become more prevalent for many practices in the post recession economy.” Randy W. Kirk, author of “Running A 21st Century Business,” said business folks should not despair. He suggested reducing the problem by never giving credit on first orders. Take cash and run a credit check on the customer for the future. “Otherwise you might get one-time shoppers who stiff you,” Kirk said.
“If you don’t discuss money before you do business … you’ll discuss it after you’ve given away your product or service and your bargaining position will be worse.” Leonard Sklar, author of “The Check Is Not in the Mail” Many consultants suggest that businesses prepare a written policy to give customers before granting them credit. Leonard Sklar, the author of the book “The Check Is Not in the Mail,” suggested sales people go over the form with a customer to make sure there is no confusion about the credit terms. “Most businesses don’t have that. Why? They are scared to death they’ll offend somebody,” Sklar told audiences at his accounts receivable seminars. “If you don’t discuss money before you do business … you’ll discuss it after you’ve given away your product or service and your bargaining position will be worse.” Before offering credit, prepare for the worst. Prepare form letters to collect late debts. The early letters should be friendly. The later ones should be more businesslike. The letters will come in handy when
the problems start. And some problems will start if you grant enough credit. Here is what consultants suggest you do if your bill hasn’t been paid:
After 30 days, dust off that first form letter. The first collection notice should be pleasant. It should thank the customer again for choosing you and gently remind them that the bill is due. The tone should be affable. Ask whether everything is okay with the service or merchandise. Ask whether there are any problems that need to be resolved. It is important to remember that the customer may have cash flow problems in this economy, too. By emphasizing that you are there to help, you will probably get paid and retain a future customer.
After 60 days, step up the pressure. Make a telephone call. Business consultant Kirk advises to keep the call friendly because “really friendly collection calls get the money quickly.” He also advised that the call be followed up with email because “people tend to run away from phone calls.” At this point, any sales people who took part in the original deal should get involved. Kirk continues to emphasize that businesses trying to collect a debt should avoid hostility. “I don’t want to lose the receivable or lose the customer,” Kirk says. “This is extremely bad thinking on the part of some credit departments.”
At 90 days, or three months, friendly words end. At this point, some businesses should write off any debts that would cost more than they are worth. It might also be worth it to tear up an otherwise good customer’s bill if there is a valid difference of opinion about it. Some debts are too big to ignore. There are three simple ways to try to collect — and they all cost money. The first is to hire a debt collection agency. The costs range from a small flat fee for a simple form letter to as much as half the amount owed for the most difficult-to-collect debts. Most have
trained specialists who collect money by using the telephone. “A two-way conversation (almost always better than a one-way letter) is conducted by a professional collector who has heard every excuse in the book and knows how to motivate debtors to pay, through sheer experience,” Sklar wrote. One caveat that consultants suggest is that businesses use members of the American Collectors Association. The ACA has an ethics code which forbids the worst abuses of the collection industry, including harassment, dishonesty, fraud, deceit and misrepresentation. The second way to collect debts is to hire an attorney. The price is comparable to a collection agency. For instance, Sprechman & Assocates, a statewide firm that offers extensive services in Northwest Florida, is paid one-third of any amount collected. They have experience in working out payment plans. The costs start to rise, however, if they go to court. Law firms even have their own investigators who can track down those who owe money. Boyer Law Firm of Jacksonville tells prospective clients they had the ability to chase down a debtor in Paris who tried to stiff a Florida business who had sold him T-shirts. A third commonly used method to collect debts $5,000 or less is for business owners to represent themselves in small claims court. A guide from The Florida Bar recommends that an owner have proof of the exact amount owed, that the debt is owed to the owner and written evidence such as a contract of a promise to pay. If the owner can’t prove those elements, the judge may dismiss the case, The Bar guide warns. Even if an owner acts as his or her own lawyer, they can’t avoid the stiff filing fees. In Northwest Florida, the small claims court filing fees range from $55 for a claim less than $100 to $300 for claims from $2,500 to $5,000. By following these steps, small business experts say most debts can be cleared off the books. Even if business owners end up paying fees to get what is owed them, the Golden Rule of collection experts should always be remembered: It is better to have some of the money than to not get any. n
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Executive Mindset
Human Element
k eeping it legal
E–asy As
1, 2, 3 How to assure customers your business hires only legal workers By Elizabeth Ricci and Tisha Crews Keller
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I
n 1986, the Immigration Reform and Control Act mandated that every company should verify the employment eligibility of its workers through the Form I-9 Employment Eligibility Verification. You know the one: the short, “I am a US citizen” questionnaire with signature that you have on file for everyone who works for you. Although easy to complete, the I-9 is not without its faults. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) intends to ramp up its monitoring of all immigrants working in the country — from the western European violinist to the Asian Indian computer scientist. And just because you’re not employing tomato farm workers doesn’t mean you are out of the immigration woods. Many companies get into hot water because they don’t fill out the I-9 completely or correctly. More commonly, they don’t follow the strict regulations about documentation paperwork that should accompany the form. Like most other anti-discrimination measures, you must collect the same I-9 documentation information (such as photo IDs, Social Security cards) for all employees. So, if you hire a person that appears to be from another country — whether or not you are sure of their immigration or citizenship status — you cannot require them to provide photo identification, birth certificates, etc., unless you have those on file for every other individual in your company. If you knowingly hire a person who is not eligible to legally work in this country, the U.S. government can hand down large fines — and even jail time — for habitual offenders. Most companies, however, put themselves in legal jeopardy by either not collecting any documentation with the I-9 or doing so irregularly. The U.S. government sought to make this an easier and more streamlined process by introducing the “E-Verify” online system, a free service offered by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. It is touted as a one-stop shop for employment eligibility verification, and proponents say it is the best way to ensure your workforce is in compliance.
In fact, E-Verify was hailed by President George W. Bush as, “the best means available to confirm the work authorization of the workforce.” Likewise, the federal government notes that other advocates of enrollment claim, “[the] statistics show E-Verify works … even for employees who receive initial mismatches and are later confirmed as work authorized, E-Verify informs them of possible errors with their government records. By clearing up mismatches sooner rather than later, E-Verify can save these employees significant time and frustration.”
It Takes Only Seconds E-Verify is the Internet-based companion to Form I-9 that allows an employer, in three to five seconds, to determine a worker’s employment authorization status by comparing information listed on Form I-9 with some 455 million Social Security records and 80 million Homeland Security visa, citizenship and U.S. passport records. The Department of Homeland Security strongly encourages, but does not currently require, states to mandate that employers enroll in E-Verify. Currently, only four states require that all employers be enrolled in the system while nine have some form of E-Verify requirement. There are seven states, including Florida, with pending legislation that would require enrollment. Also, as of September 8, 2009, certain federal contractors must enroll new and existing employees in the system. Immigration was one of Gov. Rick Scott’s key campaign issues. On his first day in office in 2011 he issued an Executive Order requiring state agencies to use the E-Verify system to verify employment eligibility of state employees and contractors. Indeed, the E-Verify system provides all kinds of benefits to companies, even beyond state government. The system is businessfriendly, with key conveniences such as 24/7 access, a full array of training and customer service, instant results and employee dispute information.
Find Your Match One of the most convenient aspects of the system may be the photo identification process. When employers log onto E-Verify to look up employment eligibility, they are greeted with a file photo of the employee matching the information entered. The first step is making sure the person sitting in front of you is the same one on the screen. The next step is compiling the required documentation and getting instant results from your search. If an employee is cleared for work, “Employment Authorized” status appears and you are on your way. If the search returns a mismatch, a “Tentative Nonconfirmation” results. If this happens, employers need to print and review a notice with the employee that explains the cause of the mismatch and what it means for the employee. The employee has eight federal government work days to resolve the problem before being declared ineligible for legal work in the U.S. It’s rare that an employee runs into this kind of problem. In fact, the U.S. government reports only 1.7 percent of employees receive initial mismatches and 1.39 percent of those are not work authorized. The system actively follows these mismatches and encourages employers to inform employees of their mismatch status and how they can attempt to correct it.
Cautious Optimism Of course, no system is without its faults or potential pitfalls. Those concerned with worker rights, such as the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA), claim that, “E-Verify does not effectively root out all undocumented workers. Some undocumented workers will be erroneously confirmed as authorized to work. E-Verify cannot identify counterfeit, stolen or borrowed identity documents. A worker may present ‘good’ documents that check out through E-Verify, but E-Verify cannot confirm that the document belongs to the person presenting them.” Similarly, AILA notes that, “Due to errors in the Social Security Administration
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Human Element
and DHS databases, some citizens and legal workers will receive tentative non-confirmations, or even final non-confirmations, and will not be able to resolve the discrepancy or may not even know about the problem. They will be denied employment and paychecks.” This illustrates the importance of employers following the rules associated with common hiring practices and the need for comprehensive documentation for all employees, not just those known or suspected to be of non-citizen status. What’s more, it’s important to continually update the I-9 documentation you keep on file, since documents change through renewal or update on a regular basis.
A Golden Opportunity Regardless of the legal requirement, I-9 compliance and E-Verify enrollment might be used as a way to market to consumers who want assurance that businesses they deal with hire only authorized workers. Form I-9 compliance and great PR? This can be a boon to companies in the 850 area, and it’s a win-win for many. According to Tallahassee-based employment law attorney Robert J. Sniffen, “The I-9 is a deceptively simple form for which the consequences of non-compliance can mean civil and criminal penalties. If the system continues to be free, if legal workers are not harmed by its use and if Florida businesses can benefit by increasing competitiveness, Florida employers should consider voluntary enrollment.” Likewise, governmental consultant and lobbyist Paige Carter-Smith, with Governance Inc., notes, “The importance of E-Verify enrollment cannot be overstated. The potential windfall to Florida businesses contracting with the federal government is well worth enrollment.” As an online counterpart to the I-9, E-Verify may provide a means of quickly verifying workers’ employment eligibility. Although some are concerned about federal database errors, all state agencies must now use E-Verify, and all Sunshine State employers may soon be required to do so either due to market conditions or state law. Small and mid-sized businesses can get ahead of the curve by taking part in E-Verify and getting their own I-9 houses in order. n Elizabeth Ricci is the managing partner of Rambana & Ricci PLLC in Tallahassee, where she concentrates on employment-based immigration and counsels employers on I-9 compliance, strategy and audit defense. Ricci is an E-Verify Enrolled Employer Agent with the Department of Homeland Security. 26
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New Attitudes Change An Old Town Public and private leaders join forces to breathe a new economic vitality into Pensacola By Linda Kleindienst, Photos by Scott Holstein
Dynamic Duo Blue Wahoos owner Quint Studer (left) and Pensacola Mayor Ashton Hayward are the new energy behind the push to promote economic development in the city.
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Now At Bat Quint Studer’s decision to bring professional baseball to downtown Pensacola has transformed the area and led to the opening of more stores, more restaurants and lots of foot traffic.
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“Five years ago, people didn’t want to move here, they wanted to move out. We were at the point where we couldn’t keep what we had, and we couldn’t attract anything new.” Quint Studer, Owner of the Blue Wahoos
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gentle breeze blows off the Gulf while the aroma of grilling sausage permeates the air. As fans settle into their seats, a loud “Crack!” resounds across the stadium, an unmistakable baseball sound as the bat connects with the ball. Thousands cheer. The inaugural season for the Blue Wahoos is underway — and so is the beginning of a new era for the city of Pensacola. The Blue Wahoos brought the sights, sounds and smells of big league baseball to Pensacola in 2012 — and the team quickly became a symbol of change that residents rallied around as the city embarked on a campaign to change its image and its future, breathing new life into downtown and polishing a pro-business agenda designed to encourage growth.
The winds of change, nourished by a cooperative effort of local business and political leaders, have brought a new energy to this area that city leaders hope will encourage existing businesses to expand and new businesses to locate here.
Play Ball! In 2005, Quint Studer began his push to bring the Blue Wahoos, a Double A affiliate of the Cincinnati Reds, to Pensacola. It was something he had always been interested in, but he was motivated to act as he saw other downtowns becoming vibrant while Pensacola remained “stagnant.” At the time, he remembers, people were still trying to recover from the 2004 onslaught of Hurricane Ivan.
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Economic Facts of Pensacola
“If you have a dead downtown, you have a dead city. My immediate goal was to change the psychology of the citizens. We don’t have to be the red-headed stepchild, any more and we can rally the troops.” Mayor Ashton Hayward
»
The Department of Defense is the largest economic engine in the greater Pensacola area, with more than $5.1 billion in salary and wages produced annually by more than 22,000 active duty and military/ federal employees. The capital investment is $1 billion, with $77,000 average earnings per military job.
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Cost of living is 1.3 percent below the national average. The median home price of $124,000 is lower than Florida and the nation.
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Pensacola International Airport is the 98th largest airport in the country, has up to 80 flights daily, hosts 1.5 million passengers per year (or 4,000 daily).
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Ranked No. 71 by Forbes for the cost of doing business.
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Companies listed among Inc’s 5,000 Fastest Growing: Global Business Solutions Inc.; Hixardt Technologies; Overgroup Consulting; IMS ExpertServices; AppRiver; Absolute Consulting; Bit-Wizards.
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Top industries: tourism; aerospace and defense; software and information technology; renewable energy; financial services and back office support; medical device and life sciences.
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Tourism represents 8 percent of the area workforce (18,698 jobs) and 6 percent of the earnings ($599.2 million) in the Pensacola area. In 2013, tourism officials expect a 12 percent increase in tourist-related revenues over 2012, which in itself was a recordbreaking year.
» Finance and insurance industry is
responsible for employing approximately 10,000 people with $468.6 million in earnings.
»
Medical and life sciences employs 27,000 people who earn more than $1.3 billion.
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Taking Charge (This page) Ashton Hayward won election as the city’s first strong mayor and wasted no time in kicking his visions and economic development efforts into high gear. (Opposite page) Niels Anderson (left) of KAMedData, shown here with John Prumatico, wants the region to become known as the Innovation Coast.
Pensacola “Five years ago, people didn’t want to move here, they wanted to move out. We were at the point where we couldn’t keep what we had, and we couldn’t attract anything new,” says Studer. One of the city’s biggest cheerleaders, he is the president of Studer Group and owner of the team and Maritime Park, which houses the Blue Wahoos stadium. “One of the issues in creating a better downtown is to have something that will bring in lots of people. And I don’t think private enterprise can sit and wait for the public sector to act.” Studer approached the city, and an ensuing public/private partnership agreement saw the city hand over 27.5 acres of unusable land to help kick-start the project. For his part, Studer invested $40 million. Now he is building a nearby 60,000-square-foot, $12 million office building where he plans to headquarter Studer Group, in 2012 ranked No. 4 in a list of 25 best companies to work for by Fortune Magazine. The move will bring more than 200 employees downtown. It’s the first new office building to be put up in about 20 years. Meanwhile, Studer’s wife, Rishy, has opened a popular olive oil store in the neighborhood. Recent studies show that the people of Pensacola are developing a sense of confidence in moving forward.
That confidence is reflected in the success of the 5,000-seat downtown baseball stadium. In 2012 the team led the league in attendance, drawing in 328,000 people in its first year — running an average 95 percent capacity for each game. The Wahoos even beat out the attendance at the new $515 million Miami Marlins’ major league ballpark. “My wife and I have made the investment because we believe in the city, the people, the leadership — and creating a culture for the city to move in the right direction,” Studer says.
Expanding on Success Pensacola already has a lot going for it. There are three healthcare systems in the county, with three full-service hospitals. There’s already a network of small IT and high-tech companies that are expanding. Tourism hit an all-time high in 2012. Military retirees provide a ready-made talent base. “Old Stinky,” the downtown sewage treatment plant that local businesses campaigned to get shut down, is finally gone. The local airport, where a new hotel is going up, offers direct flights to places like New York City, Chicago and Washington, D.C., and boasts lowcost carrier service through AirTran (which will gradually convert to Southwest). The University
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Pensacola of West Florida is expanding its enrollment, a big boost to the local economy. The announcement that Airbus is building a plant in nearby Mobile has generated excitement and sparked hopes that Pensacola will benefit from auxiliary businesses sprouting up to feed Airbus needs. But local leaders have known that more is needed to help the local economy take off. A group of tech company leaders joined forces in spring 2012 in an effort to turn this section of the Emerald Coast into the Innovation Coast, a Florida version of Silicon Valley designed to draw innovators from across the planet to work in the region. “As business entrepreneurs, we can’t sit around and wait. That’s not how our brains work. We can’t expect others to lead. We need to move at the pace of business,” says Niels Anderson, president and CEO of KAMedData and a major proponent of the city’s new downtown technology park. He would like to see the region become a magnet for the world’s best talent, bringing them to work in already-established technology focused companies. “We have really cool companies in the area that are growing and have very highskilled workers,” he says. That, he adds, would be better than focusing so much attention on getting companies to move to the area.
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“We know it costs eight to 10 times as much to recruit as retain,” Anderson explains. “Economic development people want to be best friends with site selectors … but they are looking for sites that have been certified, and it costs millions to get sites ready for certification. It’s a risky proposition, and I don’t know where we’d get the money.” Instead, he would like to see a concentration on promoting research and development. “Imagine if we had 2,000 R and D engineers, each making $250,000 a year,” he says. “We live and breathe product development. My personal philosophy is rapid prototyping. There are other obstacles, hurdles, battles that the cities and state and chamber have to go through to be able to do things that we just plow right through. “We all want something good, and we will take risks to make that happen.”
A Fresh Approach Many local leaders credit Studer and Mayor Ashton Hayward with being the major impetus behind many of the changes. In a sense, they exemplify the idea of the public and the private sectors working in concert to improve an area’s economy. In July 2012, Hayward unveiled the city’s new effort to change its image with a branding campaign that included a
“That’s perhaps one of the significant changes in Pensacola. We have said that we are going to take the reins and control our own destiny.” Jim Hizer, president and CEO of the Pensacola Bay Area Chamber of Commerce
Evolving Landscape (This page) Jim Hizer, president and CEO of the Pensacola Bay Area Chamber of Commerce, is buoyed by new jobs opening in the region. (Opposite page) Collier Merrill, shown here at his Fish House Restaurant, is happy to see downtown come alive again after a long period of shuttered buildings.
new logo and a new motto — Pensacola: The Upside of Florida. At the launch event, Hayward invoked the words of blues singer Bonnie Raitt. “Let’s give them something to talk about,” he urged. “We want to position Pensacola to capture a larger share of the future.” Since 2000, Pensacola has lost 3.9 percent of its residents. It was viewed as an afterthought for companies looking for a new home. But Hayward and business leaders were determined to turn that around. “People are going to know where we are now, and that’s our main goal,” the mayor says. “We have a golden opportunity to put our foot on the accelerator and drive people to Pensacola.” Hayward grew up in Pensacola and went to Florida State University. He met his wife in Miami Beach
and then they moved to New York City, where he got a first-hand look at how positive change to an area can be brought about by a strong elected personality — Mayor Rudy Guiliani. When it came time to start a family, the couple returned to Pensacola where Hayward became involved in politics. In January 2011, he took office as the first mayor elected under a “strong mayor” form of government that voters had approved two years earlier. He quickly went to work on changing attitudes and the face of the city. “If you have a dead downtown, you have a dead city,” he says. “My immediate goal was to change the psychology of the citizens. We don’t have to be the red-headed stepchild anymore, and we can rally the troops.” He championed beautification projects in
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blighted areas like downtown, leveraged the oldest publicly owned natural gas company in the state to partner with the Emerald Coast Utilities Authority and become an environmental pioneer for more use of natural gas, reached out to the state for money to improve the seaport’s infrastructure, pushed for change to the downtown (which at the time he dubbed “an environmental wasteland”), and aggressively courted and then convinced UPS to move its regional sorting operation from Mobile to Pensacola. His attitude is that passion and energy and telling a story correctly can move mountains. “I wanted to bring into office the attitude that we have to cold call, we have to tell people that we’re open for business,” he explains. While his way of doing business has raised
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hackles in some quarters, many praise Hayward for his aggressive pursuit of economic development. “He’s done a great job of promoting the city,” says Collier Merrill, CEO and founder of The Great Southern Restaurant and Merrill Land Company. “He is very pro-Pensacola. If someone wants to locate here, he gets on the plane and goes (to court them).” Julian MacQueen, president and CEO of Innisfree Hotels, says the change from a weak to a strong mayor form of government has been instrumental in helping the city move ahead. “It has given people hope that things can be decided on and issues won’t be polarized by the district approach to government,” he says. “Before, there was no way to get everyone on the same page because there were endless discussions about
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New Ventures (This page) Julia Ussery owns Scout, a woman’s store she moved to Palafox Street about a year ago, and plans to open a new store nearby that will be geared toward younger women. (Opposite page) Julian MacQueen, owner of Innisfree Hotels, is shown at his Holiday Inn. His newest project is a hotel at the busy local airport.
“I think everyone is underestimating what we’re going to do.” Julian MacQueen, Area Hotel Owner and the Chamber’s 2012 business leader of the year
what’s in it for me. The new mayor can do what’s good for the city as a whole — and that has given many people a lot of hope.” Jim Hizer, president and CEO of the Pensacola Bay Area Chamber of Commerce, says Hayward knew that change would only come if things were done differently. The mayor and chamber officials meet weekly to collaborate on projects. “The mayor subscribes to the philosophy that the definition of insanity is to do the same thing over and over and expect different results,” Hizer says. “He is trying to figure out how to do things versus how not to do things.”
A New Downtown Merrill’s office is in the downtown 11-story Seville Tower, which was built in 1907. “We went through a long period of closed-up buildings, but
now downtown has really come alive. Now we’re getting some quality growth,” he says. Julia Ussery is part of that new growth. She owns Scout, a boutique she moved to Palafox Street about a year ago, and is planning to open a younger women’s store nearby. She grew up in Pensacola but moved away for awhile. She returned about 10 years ago. “I’ve seen the growth since I’ve been back, but downtown seems extremely accelerated in the last year or so,” she says. “The Studers have gotten people excited about the downtown area, and I’m on the same block as Bodacious Olives. People are coming downtown, walking the street, shopping the area.” During the summer 2012 tourist season, Ussery said visitors were excited about coming to the area and passing on the information to others about all there is to do. Local leaders hope that will lead to more folks deciding to move to the area. A prime example is one of Ussery’s recent customers, a
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new transplant to the area from Missouri, where she and her husband owned a restaurant. Now the couple plans to open a restaurant in Pensacola.
2015 and Beyond When the bottom dropped out of the economy in 2008, the private sector through the Chamber of Commerce decided to put together a plan that focused on creating jobs, opportunity and investment. It resulted in Vision 2015. The goal was to raise $6.5 million — and they raised $8.77 million. The goal was to create 3,000 new jobs by 2015 and more than half that number have already been announced: 1,658 jobs with an average $52,000 annual salary. About 80 percent of the jobs are coming from companies already in the area, including Navy Federal Credit Union, which is adding 700 positions at an average annual salary of $45,000. But the Chamber’s Hizer concedes that just reaching the 3,000 job mark isn’t enough for the community to reach its economic potential. So it is in the midst of developing a strategic plan on where to go from here. “One of the reasons that Pensacola spun its wheels a bit was because there wasn’t a plan that the private and public sector was behind to guide us where we need to go,” he says. “Communities that don’t plan leave themselves vulnerable to winds of change that are beyond our control. That’s perhaps one of the significant changes in Pensacola. We have said that we are going to take the reins and control our own destiny.” Meanwhile, the city continues to sell itself on other attributes that are already in place. To residents and visitors alike, Pensacola offers the quintessential beach experience. But then you throw in a unique history, beginning with the landing of Spanish ships in 1559 — plus a symphony, ballet, opera, an improving historic district, the Navy’s Blue Angels, the National Naval Aviation Museum and the unique National Flight Academy at Pensacola Naval Air Station, a downtown historic district … the offerings seem far out of proportion to the size of the town, which had close to a 300,000 population in 2011. And, according to Valeria Lento of Visit Pensacola, a majority of businesses in downtown and along Pensacola Beach are locally owned and operated, guaranteeing an experience unique to Pensacola. Collier Merrill sees it as the perfect situation to attract two types of residents who will help create jobs. One is the new “creative class,” workers who want a certain quality of life, who go where they want to live and then have the jobs come to them. The other is retirees who are looking for a vibrant community — and who want to get involved locally. “We have a good quality of life,” he says. “It all comes together here.”
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In June 2012, Mason-Dixon Polling & Research conducted a poll of 800 registered voters in Escambia County over a four-day period. The margin of error is plus or minus 3.5 percentage points. The 2012 results are compared to a poll conducted in 2008.
Generally, do you think that the city of Pensacola is heading in the right direction, or are things on the wrong track?
2008 2012 Right Direction
23%
54%
Wrong Track
52%
29%
Not Sure
25%
17%
What is the most important issue facing the city of Pensacola?
2008 2012 Economy/Jobs
28%
51%
I am familiar with and confident in the vision, plans and leadership for the revitalization of the city of Pensacola Business Challenge.
2008 2012 Agree
42%
66%
Disagree
48%
27%
Not Sure
11%
7%
Recovery Begins With Hospitality The hospitality industry is one of the early indicators of any economic recovery. And, right now, when it comes to booking hotel rooms, people are loosening their pocketbooks — and that’s translating into dollars for local hotels. Julian MacQueen’s Innisfree Hotels owns several of the top local hotels, and he was named the Chamber’s 2012 business leader of the year. He is building the new airport hotel — and he is seeing an encouraging trend in the hotel industry. He is anticipating the effect that Southwest will have on the region, from flights in and out of the airport to hotel bookings. “The Southwest reservations system is the fifth largest booking engine for hotel rooms,” he says. “That tells me there is a big monster out there that is ready to be awakened — and its focus is going to be on Pensacola. I think everyone is underestimating what we’re going to do.” The Chamber’s Hizer wraps up the general attitude that area business leaders have for 2013 and beyond. “The story of Pensacola is one of momentum,” he says. “In spite of a challenging global economy, we have a full head of steam going right now and we’re moving forward.” n
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Taking Charge Newly installed Senate President Don Gaetz gets the feel of the gavel he will use to convene the 2013 legislative session on Tuesday, March 5. 40
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A Conversation with
Florida Senate President Don Gaetz The Niceville Republican talks about his career, his hopes for Northwest Florida and what he hopes to accomplish over his two-year term at the Senate’s helm By Kimberley K. Yablonski g Photos by Scott Holstein
A
s furniture was still being shuffled into the Senate President’s office, Don Gaetz was wasting no time taking on his new role. Despite six years of representing the Northwest Florida area he fell in love with 35 years ago, he does not appear to have waivered in his enthusiasm for the job. Sen. Don Gaetz is part of a line of those called to public service. His father, Jerry Gaetz, was mayor of Rugby, N. D., the small town where Gaetz grew up, and later served as a state legislator. The tradition continues. His son, Rep. Matt Gaetz, has followed in the family footsteps. An old political poster from one of his father’s campaigns hangs on the wall in his new office — a continual reminder of his roots. The slogan: “Unbought! Unbossed! Unbowed!” Gaetz’s wife of 32 years, Vicky, first introduced him to her hometown of Fort Walton Beach while they were dating. When they married, they made a decision they would return to Northwest Florida as soon as they could. So, while he co-owned and operated a healthcare company that was headquartered in Miami, he commuted for 10 years. It was here in Niceville they raised their two children — son Matt and daughter Erin. As a self-proclaimed “student of history,” Senator Gaetz uses what little free time he has to read. He’s usually reading several books at once. His current selections: The final book in the trilogy on Winston Churchill and “Red Pepper and Gorgeous George,”
which is about the 1950 Florida Senate race. His roommate when he is in Tallahassee is son Matt (who is known to steal his ties) and “their” dog Scarlet, a rescue dog from Hurricane Katrina. When back home, he and Vicky love to sit on their deck and watch the sun go down over Choctawhatchee Bay. “We are a team,” Gaetz says. “We love to drink a glass of wine and just be glad we have each other.” Gaetz oozes a genuine eagerness to not just tackle but actually solve problems. He has the distinguished honor of being only the second senator from Okaloosa County to serve as Senate president, the first having done so back in 1949. “I get up in the morning anxious to go to work,” he said. “I don’t grit my teeth when I face the day as a senator. I can’t wait to begin to meet with constituents. I’m not saying this is fun in a frivolous sense. The day I’m not getting personal satisfaction out of being senator, the day that solving a problem or seizing an opportunity in public policy doesn’t warm my heart and bring a smile to my face is the day that I’m out of here — whether my term is up or not.” The new Senate president recently sat down with 850 to share his thoughts on Northwest Florida’s future.
Q: What do you see as the integral factors to growing Florida’s economy? Sen. Gaetz: The road to the future of Flor-
ida’s economy runs right through North-
west Florida. I believe Northwest Florida is perfectly positioned to be the next tremendous growth area in our state. Obviously, we have the best beaches in the world, we have an extraordinary workforce and we have five military bases in my district. We are hip deep in physicists, mathematicians, engineers and scientists. These bases have tremendous testing and development functions. There is a real opportunity to use the labor force that is created by and around our military bases as a significant ingredient to grow mid-tech and high-tech industries in Northwest Florida. We have plenty of space. We have the perfect environment, and it’s a wonderful place to live. We have communities that understand how important it is to have the right kind of industry, the right kind of jobs and the right kind of opportunities. Our counties are very aggressive in recruiting businesses. We don’t have a bi-polarity in our view about growth. There are parts of Florida that really haven’t decided whether they want to grow. Northwest Florida wants to grow but wants to grow in a thoughtful way so our children and grandchildren have a wonderful place to live.
Q: Are there ways state government can help attract companies to the area and expedite business growth?
Sen. Gaetz: For generations, Florida’s economic policy was to wait at the welcome station with a glass of free orange juice and 850 Business Magazine
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a real estate map. That doesn’t work anymore because other states that don’t have some of the natural advantages we have got up earlier in the morning than Florida did and worked harder. That is why we have seen Alabama, Georgia, the Carolinas and Mississippi beating us in some economic development areas. The first thing we have to do, and we are doing, is to go to school on the successes of our competitors. What are they doing either in terms of their regulatory environment, available workforce or tax environment? What are the ingredients that are going into other states getting deals we should get? We’ve begun to do that work. The Senate’s chief policy advisor is Dr. Rick Harper, loaned to us by the University of West Florida. He has been hired to help figure out what makes economic development work. Part of his job here is to look at what we are doing with tax incentives and economic development issues to figure out how we can learn from our competitors. What are we doing that may have worked in the ’80s and ’90s but that has been overtaken by time and events? We need to trade out for a different strategy. The Legislature is at fault for developing tax incentives and then leaving them enshrined in law and not going back and determining whether or not those incentives need to be replaced by different incentives. Are the economic policies of the ’80s and ’90s really the policies we ought to pursue today? If not, then some of the incentives we have in our tax code need to be changed, and that is the job of the Legislature. If the Legislature takes a static approach and we put a tax incentive in law and then leave it there forever, then we’d be incenting buggy whips. In the next two years, we need to look at the investments we are making in economic development, challenge ourselves based on what our competitors are doing and then determine if we need to do something differently based on the types of jobs we need to retain and those we hope to attract. There are plenty examples of that in Northwest Florida.
Q: What impact do you think Airbus will have on the region’s economy, and is the state doing anything to
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encourage ancillary businesses to come to Florida?
Sen. Gaetz: Two years ago, in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, I sponsored and the Legislature passed the Oil Spill Recovery Act, which provided, among other things, that the eight coastal counties of Northwest Florida would have a presumptive preference in the use of tax incentives and economic development initiatives to diversify our economy. Our problem in Northwest Florida is that we are a one- or two-trick pony. We depend heavily on the military, so when things
Poised for Success Senate President Don Gaetz sees lots of potential for economic success in Northwest Florida but wants to make sure regulations don’t overburden entrepreneurs.
like sequestration are threatened or someone in the Pentagon gets the sniffles, we get mortally dangerous pneumonia. It’s important we advance our economic interests in terms of our military bases and defense contractors, but some of our more innovative companies, like L3 in Crestview, are now trying to sell into commercial space. I believe they are perfectly positioned to become a supplier to the Airbus assembly line plant that will be a few miles down the road in Mobile, Ala. For every one job created on the Airbus assembly line, there are five jobs created in the Airbus supply chain. That
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requires us to diversify. We must continue to support our defense-related industries and do so aggressively. We have to use the technology and infrastructure that we have built around the defense support industries to get into the commercial space industry as well.
Q: How would you like to see the BP oil spill settlement claim money spent in the region?
Sen. Gaetz: There are at least two funds. The act passed by the Florida Legislature established a $30 million economic diversification fund. That act, which I sponsored, also stipulated that 75 percent of any settlement money arising out of the BP oil spill would have to be devoted to the eight coastal counties which suffered the most economic damage. That could be a few million dollars or a few hundred million dollars. We have to see how that plays out. My fear is that some of our local governments may become Saturday night rich. They may get a bunch of money, and they’ve never seen this much money and they will never see this much money again. They will use it on all kinds of pet projects and for brothers-in-law who need jobs, and the money goes away and we wake up in two or three or four years with a bad hangover and nothing to show for it. My hope would be that if a sizeable amount of money comes to coastal Northwest Florida that we could learn from Alaska. With the Exxon Valdez oil spill the economic damages and criminal penalties were less than what we will see from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. But here is what Alaska did. They established an endowment so that every year, long into the future, Alaskans will benefit from jobcreating initiatives that are well thought out in advance. It’s not like it is Saturday night and we got paid and we gotta blow our paycheck because there are all sorts of wonderful attractions so let’s spend it all. Let’s have a bunch of people get together and think up stuff we can spend money on. I think that is a bad approach. I would hope there would be some consideration given to an endowment. My hope is that our local leaders will see the benefit of a long-term economic development and job creation
The hard fact is that we have thousands of unfilled jobs in the state of Florida, and yet we still have high employment. How can these two facts coexist? strategy as opposed to spending a whole bunch of money in a short period of time and hoping it works. We may also consider going for a big, big deal. Why did Boeing choose South Carolina? My son, Rep. Matt Gaetz, went — on his own nickel — to meet with Boeing and ask them. Of course Florida had a lot of advantages, but South Carolina was willing to totally reconfigure their community college system so that when a student walked off the graduation stage of a South Carolina community college they could walk on to Boeing and immediately go right to work. So, I would hope local leaders would consider going for a big, big deal. Why not go for a Boeing-type project or an Airbus-type project that will create hundreds and hundreds of jobs that will be here for dozens and dozens of years? Why not do that instead of just thinking up projects that we can spend money on locally and feel good between now and the next election?
Q: To attract businesses to the state you need to have a welleducated workforce. Is the state doing enough with community colleges and universities to provide the training that is needed?
Sen. Gaetz: There is an extraordinarily dangerous higher education bubble that is about to burst. Fifty percent of last year’s graduating class from American colleges and universities are unemployed or underemployed, meaning their college or university degree did not qualify them for a job or they had to take a step-down job. That’s a greater economic crisis in the making than anything that we’ve undergone in the last three or four years. If our children and grandchildren can’t get real jobs in the real economy, yet we burden them with scores of thousands of dollars in educational debt, we are playing a very cruel joke on those who
will follow us. I believe our higher education system, and our K-12 system, needs to be lashed to the realities and the opportunities of the economy. The hard fact is that we have thousands of unfilled jobs in the state of Florida, and yet we still have high employment. How can these two facts coexist? They coexist because our higher education system has not been connected tightly to the realities of the economy. This may shake the ivy a little bit, but I believe that some folks in higher education are insulted by the notion that a college degree should lead to a job. Now, let me pick on myself. My undergraduate degrees are in theology and political science. That may explain my bi-polarity. But never in my life has anyone ever offered to pay me to opine about political science or sermonize about the gospels. Fortunately, in high school, I had to help support my family. I went to work at a local weekly newspaper. Someone paid me to write so I had to learn how to write. Having a skill is a good thing. Having a marketable skill is an even better thing. We passed a bill last year that provides an economic security report to the parents of every sixth through 12th grader in the state of Florida. It tells people if you have this professional or vocational interest in mind and you go to that Florida college or university here’s your chance of getting a job with that degree from that university and here is the amount of money that you’re going to make. We have all that data. We just haven’t shared it with parents. I think you start education revolutions around the kitchen table and at the PTO meeting. You don’t start them at the top. You start them at the grassroots. This past year we set up a $15 million fund for our state universities to compete for. The fund is to incent those universities to do the best job at preparing students for the most in-demand jobs in our state. The
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I think we ought to pay for results in higher education, not pay for head count and not pay for seat time. We ought to pay for results. most high-wage, high-skilled job that is most in demand — and where we have the fewest Floridians who are qualified to take the job — is in computer technology, which is ironic since we are one of the top five states in the country in computer technology and IT. Yet we have to import people to fill the jobs. The number of students graduating with degrees in computer technology from Florida universities has dropped by 50 percent in the last seven years. We need to make it more attractive for students to get these degrees. I think we ought to pay for results in higher education, not pay for head count and not pay for seat time. We ought to pay for results. The results that Florida moms and dads want from colleges and universities are preparation for their children to be able to take their place as productive citizens in the economy. We want our kids to have a house with a white picket fence and two-and-a-half grandchildren. A college degree no longer guarantees that. Now you actually have to have skills.
Q: Are there any rules and regulations pertaining to business that you would like to trim or axe altogether?
Sen. Gaetz: At a neighborhood meeting where I meet with people one-on-one, a gentleman told me he had started a dive shop in Defuniak Springs. It took him six months to get through the permitting process — some of those six months were eaten up by local regulations, some by county regulations, some by federal regulations and some by the state. He was an Army veteran who had put in 20 years. He told me if he had not had his Army pension to sustain him he would have given up. That he would not have been able to hang for six months through the hoops and scoops of the regulatory process. He asked me what I could do to make sure that the next person who wants to start a small business, and add two jobs to the Florida
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economy, doesn’t give up because they can’t wait through the regulatory process. So the answer is if there is a regulation or a rule that is making it difficult for a small business to keep someone employed or to add a job, I want it gone. If there is something that state government can do better to encourage an employer to keep someone on the job or to add more hours to a job or to hire somebody else then I want to make sure that we seize that opportunity. That means looking at everything from the tax code to economic development and local permitting.
Q: Gov. Scott wants to tinker with the corporate tax rate again, eliminating more businesses from having to pay it. How do you feel about that, and can the state afford the financial hit?
Sen. Gaetz: Florida needs to be the best place to start a business and to grow a business. We have lots of natural advantages. We need to give ourselves more competitive advantages. I spent 30 years in the healthcare field. Most of those years, I was signing the front side of paychecks. The company that I co-founded and that became a national company (VITAS Healthcare Corporation) does business in 19 states. I don’t remember ever asking about the tax structure of a state as my first question when we were considering locating there. The first question I asked was about the regulatory environment. The second question was about the labor market and the third question was about the competition and the opportunity to expand within the market. Maybe I am a bad businessperson, but I figured if we made money we would pay taxes. The governor is a much more successful businessperson than me, so maybe he is right. But we have eliminated the corporate income tax for small and medium businesses. I don’t think Disney is leaving Florida or Publix. I think we need to focus on all of the ingredients
that go into site decisions. I am not sure if eliminating the last vestige of corporations paying taxes is the most important aspect.
Q: As co-founder/vice-chair (retired) of VITAS Healthcare Corporation, you bring a unique perspective to a national debate on health care and the new federal law. What do you see as the state government’s role in health care?
Sen. Gaetz: I opposed ObamaCare, but it’s the law and I swore an oath to uphold the law. Doesn’t mean I have to like it. Doesn’t mean I can’t try to get it changed. But as long as it’s the law I have an obligation to implement it faithfully. Most states waited until after the election to make final decisions about how to proceed with ObamaCare. I think that was smart. Why create the architecture for something that may have disappeared? But now, the state will have to make a decision about a health insurance exchange by either letting the federal government dictate terms of a healthcare exchange, creating a state-run exchange or, a third option, creating what we call a partnership exchange which might involve using Florida Health Options and Florida Healthy Kids, two healthcare exchange-like entities which are already created. One option is to ask the federal government whether those exchanges would meet federal requirements. There are a hundred unanswered questions about the implementation of ObamaCare. Sometimes it is good to be the second or third person in the water, and this may be one of those cases. We will also have to make a decision on whether to expand Medicaid. If we expand Medicaid as much as the president wants us to expand it, one out of every four Floridians will be on Medicaid. That is a huge increase in dependency on the state government let alone the federal government. It is also a significant financial burden on the state. We are going to have to have an adult debate with Democrats and Republicans about that decision. The federal government says it will pay 90 percent of Medicaid expansion and then a declining percentage over time. I’m a former superintendent of schools. I remember when a well-meaning U.S. Congress passed
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the IEDA law that provided a wide array of educational and healthcare services to children with disabilities. They promised to pay 100 percent of the cost. Just bite into the apple, you’ll like it. In the best year, the feds have paid 40 percent of the costs of IEDA and have transferred 60 percent or more of the costs to local school districts and states. I’m not saying the folks in Congress misled us, but things change. What if the Chinese won’t lend us any more money? What if in four years, when President Obama is term limited, the next president comes in and says health care was great but now we have to deal with the environment, and that is the big cost. We said we’d pay 80 percent, but we have to cut it down to 50 percent. What do you do then? Do we go back to the people who have become dependent on their friends and neighbors to help pay their healthcare costs and take back their Medicaid cards? Have you ever tried to take back an entitlement? Or, do we then have a terrible squeeze play on other parts of the budget — education, the environment, law enforcement. It’s not a bumper sticker issue and doesn’t yield bumper sticker solutions. I want lots of political DNA on the decisions we make about ObamaCare, because if there comes a time when the costs of ObamaCare begin to squeeze out other budget priorities like education I don’t want political amnesia to set in. I want everybody to be an investor in those decisions.
Q: As a member of the Policy and Steering Committee on Energy, Environment and Land Use, what is your position on nuclear energy and the possibility of a nuclear power plant in the region? Sen. Gaetz:
I’m a supporter of nuclear energy. I’m a supporter of clean coal and gasification. I’m a supporter of natural gas. I think it takes a long time to establish a nuclear plant. It takes a long time to find energy opportunities. My home state of North Dakota in the 1950s was a big oil producing state and then all the wells were capped. But now, North Dakota is a huge oil producing state because the technology changed and because the costs are no longer prohibitive, and the technology is much more advanced. There are a lot of capped wells in Northwest Florida, not in the ocean but in the ground, and I think there are opportunities there. I think there are opportunities for the development of other forms of energy like nuclear. Alternative forms of energy ought to be encouraged — wind and solar. But, I believe we ought not to ask small business people and families who have pinched domestic budgets to subsidize someone else who decides they want to use alternative energy. If alternative energy costs more to begin with, then the people who use it should pay more for it. Computers used to cost a lot more than
they do now. But I didn’t ask my neighbors to subsidize my first computer. The cost of alternative energy will come down. The initial cost of alternative energy needs to be paid for by the people who produce it and use it.
Q: You have been a senator for six years, what do you hope to achieve as Senate President?
Sen. Gaetz: The Florida tradition is to be suspicious of concentrations of power held in the same hands for a long period of time. Florida Senate presidents don’t hang around for 10 or 15 years. I don’t plan to run for reelection. I have a two-year term as Senate President. It’s almost a drive-by presidency. People who come into this job with a long list of things to do I think get frustrated and are not as successful as they could be. My job is to make 39 senators successful, because if they are successful, Florida is successful. My personal interests are job creation and growth, tying our higher education system more closely to the realities of the economy so graduates can get jobs and, thirdly, a passion I share with Speaker Will Weatherford, to raise the standard of ethical conduct in public life. I grew up in my father’s house believing that public service was an obligation not an opportunity for personal enrichment. I think there is more we can do. I expect this will be a heavy lift, but it is something I would like to do. n
Family Business Raised in a political family, Don Gaetz believes public service is an obligation, not a time for personal enrichment. And he sees it as his responsibility to make sure the Senate’s 39 other members are successful. 850 Business Magazine
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Capital Corridor
Gadsden, Jefferson + Leon Counties
Staying Informed Recession’s impact still being felt in how state government news does (and doesn’t) get into your hands By Audrey Post
F
ive years ago, every major daily newspaper in Florida had a state capital bureau, a team of reporters covering not only issues of statewide importance but also digging into issues of special concern for readers back home. Mid-sized newspapers under common ownership pooled their resources to support statehouse bureaus that served entire groups. Chains of small community newspapers usually managed to have one reporter in Tallahassee, at least during the legislative session. What a difference a few years and a recession can make. Widespread newspaper layoffs beginning in 2008 have shrunk newsrooms across the country, many to one-half or one-third their former size. Those reductions in staff have taken a toll on state government coverage. When forced to choose between covering the Legislature and covering school boards and courts back home, Capitol Bureau staffing was an expendable luxury. “It’s part of an evolution of journalism,” said Bob Gabordi, executive editor of the Tallahassee Democrat. “There’s no question that news organizations are smaller. Companies did what they had to do to survive. We did what we had to do to survive.” Some newspapers have shut down operations in Tallahassee completely. Others made adjustments to save money. The Democrat and its parent company, Gannett Corp., closed their
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Florida Capital News bureau, save one broadcast reporter, and created a new model for statehouse coverage for its other three Florida papers that is based out of the Democrat’s main newsroom on Magnolia Drive. Jacksonville’s Florida TimesUnion closed its bureau but still has a reporter in town. The Tampa Tribune retains space but not staffing in The Florida Press Center on College Avenue; the office sits empty most of the time. The Miami Herald and the St. Petersburg Times, now the Tampa Bay Times, decided to stop competing and created a super-bureau. Before they joined forces in late 2008, the Times had reduced its staff from four full-time reporters to three, and the Herald had downsized from three to two. The Times-Herald bureau continues to be a leader in state government coverage, particularly on issues of accountability, but you can’t buy copies of either newspaper in Tallahassee anymore. You have to read them online. It’s the same with other newspapers around the state. “One of the things I used to love about Tallahassee was that you could go buy every major paper in the state, the Atlanta paper and all the national papers, like the New York Times and the Washington Post,” said Lucy Morgan, the Times’ senior correspondent who has covered legislative issues since 1979 and state government full-time since 1985. “Our newspaper was delivered to the governor and the legislative leadership, but not anymore.”
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Who’s Listening? The once crowded House press gallery has dwindled over the years as newspapers have cut Capitol Bureau staffs. Far fewer look on during a House of Representatives session in 2012.
There is evidence that statehouse coverage is beginning to rebound. Dean Ridings, president of the Florida Press Association, which owns the building where most news organizations lease office space, said there are a dozen active news
Photo Courtesy Florida House of Representatives: Mark Foley
organizations in the building, including three new players who weren’t there five years ago. Bloomberg News opened a Tallahassee bureau two years ago and hired an experienced Florida statehouse reporter, Michael Bender. Two onlineonly news bureaus, News Service of Florida and Sunshine State News, are both headed by veteran journalists, former Associated Press reporter David Royse and longtime Stuart News managing editor Nancy Smith, respectively.
“It’s nice to see a vibrant Capital Press Corps, especially since it had gone down a few years ago,” Ridings said. “I’ve actually seen an increase in the number of bodies working the building.” As the overall economy improves, Ridings expects to see an increase in Capitol news coverage. “Florida real estate plays a significant role in the economic conditions in general,” he said,
“and it affects newspaper and media financial health just like it affects furniture sales.”
Consolidation of Ownership Further Reduces Staff Mergers and acquisitions also have changed the face of Capitol coverage, further reducing the number of reporters keeping an eye on state government and how its decisions affect the lives of people from the Florida Keys to Northwest
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Florida. Take Halifax Media Group, for example, founded in 2010 by a group of investors with other media interests to purchase the Daytona Beach News Journal. The News Journal was beset with financial and legal problems and under court supervision at the time of the sale. In early 2012, two years after buying the News Journal, Halifax bought The New York Times’ 16 regional newspapers in the Southeast, including four in Florida — The Gainesville Sun, the Ocala Star-Banner, The Ledger in Lakeland and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. Last summer, Halifax added to its roster of Florida newspapers with the purchase of Freedom Communications’ 10 properties in Northwest Florida, including newspapers in Fort Walton Beach, Panama City, Destin, Milton, Crestview, Bonifay, Chipley, Apalachicola and Port St. Joe. With the addition of the Freedom newspapers, Halifax now has 15 newspapers spread across Central Florida from the Gulf of Mexico to the Atlantic Ocean, through North Florida to the far western Panhandle — and one reporter in Tallahassee. Five years ago, NYTRNG, The New York Times’ regional group, had a staff of three covering state government for its four Florida papers, while Daytona Beach and the Freedom newspapers each had a bureau of one. By the time of the NYTRNG sale, layoffs had whittled its bureau down to one person and both the Daytona and Freedom bureaus were long closed. The former NYTRNG bureau functioned during the last legislative session much as it had before the sale. Sarasota sent a reporter to Tallahassee for the duration of the session, and Lakeland and Gainesville provided reinforcements to cover certain issues, particularly higher education. If and how the addition of the Northwest Florida newspapers will affect staffing and coverage remains to be seen. Newspaper editors across the state still rely on the Associated Press for coverage of major issues. After being down one writer for more than a year, the bureau has the same number of writers it had 12 years ago, when Correspondent Brendan Farrington moved to Tallahassee to lead the bureau. “We did lose a photographer and a tech position, and a three-person video operation that we started after I got here was discontinued,” he said, “but we still have four full-time writers, including me. And we always brought in extra help during the legislative session.” However, two veteran AP writers in Tallahassee are retiring within the next few weeks. Bill Kazcor plans to leave before the legislative session begins in March; Brent Kallestad
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will depart by April 1. Asked whether he will be able to replace them, Farrington said he wasn’t authorized to discuss personnel decisions.
A New Way of Doing Things Even with positive economic indicators, it seems unlikely that news organizations, and newspapers in particular, will return to previous levels of state government coverage, both in terms of staffing and substance. “There’s no doubt there are fewer people representing newspapers here, and fewer photographers,” Farrington said. “AP has tried to be more distinctive in our journalism, covering things with a broad focus and not just covering issues incrementally. There are still a lot of good reporters in Tallahassee and I think they do a good job of keeping an eye on government, but when you have fewer reporters, you can’t do as much.” The Times-Herald bureau’s Morgan agrees. “It’s a very odd situation that we’re in,” she said. “There are probably more news organizations than ever covering state government, but the depth is not what it used to be. Coverage is splintered. We all have to blog and take photos and shoot videos, and that makes things quicker for readers, but it does take time away from digging into the story or doing the follow-up work, making one more call to verify what someone at the Capitol told you.” Bill Cotterell — another longtime member of the Capital Press Corps who covered state government for UPI in the 1970s, for the Tallahassee Democrat from 1985 to 2012 and now for the online-only Florida Current — said a lot of coverage now is “shallow and superficial.” “For aggressive coverage and investigative reporting, it’s the combined Miami HeraldTampa Bay Times bureau,” he said. “For the rest of the press corps, it’s bills affecting their regions. With smaller staffs, it’s all they can do to keep up with their local delegations.” Business coverage in particular has suffered, he said, with many newspapers focusing on “business boosterism” instead of regulatory issues. That lack of vigorous coverage limits accountability as well as participation in the process, said Tallahassee businessman Kim Williams, owner of Marpan Supply Co. and Marpan Recycling. “It puts a cloak over a lot of the activities that are taking place until it’s too late to do anything about it,” Williams said. “And you can’t go home and read about what’s going on in your newspaper anymore. A lot of what I got came out of the Democrat, and it doesn’t have the coverage that it used to.”
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Williams, a longtime state government vendor, has built a network of contacts over the years and uses it to keep informed and to make his concerns known. Finding other business people with similar issues to “share a podium” and raise awareness is one tactic he uses; he also makes use of lobbyists on occasion. “If I’ve got a special issue, I’ll go find someone to work for me,” Williams said. The reduction in regulatory coverage has had limited impact on Panama City Beach banker Brian Robinson, who said most of the governmental action that affects his business comes at the federal level or the local level. But he, too, uses networks to stay abreast of what’s going on in Tallahassee. “We (BB&T) are federally regulated, and our customers are most affected by millage rates and local taxes,” he said. “If there is a state issue, our Chamber of Commerce’s legislative affairs committee stays on top of it.”
Online: The Future of News As traditional news organizations find themselves fragmented, serving both their core product — print or broadcast — as well as online platforms, online-only news services are carving a niche for themselves in substantive reporting. “The online services are producing fairly short, tight stories, but they’re complete stories,” Cotterell said. “And some of the online coverage is delving into the lobbying corps and the interests there, the kind of thing the bigger papers used to do.” Some of the success of the online operations can be attributed to smart hiring; plenty of experienced reporters found themselves unemployed, and others were willing to change jobs. The News Service of Florida was created in 2008 by partners who operate a similar news service in Massachusetts and is led by Executive Editor David Royse, a veteran of the AP Tallahassee bureau. It has press corps veterans Michael Peltier, Jim Saunders, Margie Menzel and Brandon Larrabee on staff. Like Ridings and Morgan, Royse sees as many reporters covering state government as ever, even though traditional newspaper staffing has dropped. “We’re starting to pick up some of the slack, with more newspapers around the state subscribing,” he said. “Every public radio station in the state subscribes, and we provide print for their websites as well as audio. That’s a part of our business model, and I don’t think it is part of our competitors’. And unlike the AP, which is a big, global organization, we’re more affordable for smaller news outlets, as well.”
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News Service also focuses on business-oriented coverage, Royse said, particularly business-related stories that have a nexus to state government. “We cover the Public Service Commission fairly extensively and the public utility companies,” he said. “That’s something that Tampa Bay and the South Florida papers do cover, but no one else is.” For better or worse, Royse said, online news is here to stay. “The newspaper industry is still trying to figure out the online world,” he said. “Those of us trying to navigate it without the shackles of an existing organization or product have an advantage.” Since he took a buyout from the Democrat and Gannett a year ago, Cotterell has joined the staff of The Florida Current, a news operation founded in 2010 by Lobbytools, an online legislative research, tracking and analysis service. The Florida Current offers a free daily email service containing links to stories about the previous day’s activities at the Capitol; Lobbytools’ subscribers get the stories a day earlier. “Our subscribers care about the niche of policy and politics,” said Sarah Iarussi, company president. “With newspapers in transition, there was a glut of talent on the market — veteran journalists with policy knowledge.” Those veterans include James Call, whose experience spans newspapers, radio and magazines; Bruce Ritchie, a former wire service reporter and newspaper environmental writer; Bill Prescott, a 25-year veteran of The Tampa Tribune who started his newspaper career at the Democrat; and Gray Rohrer, who broke the story that Hunting Deutsch, Gov. Rick Scott’s director of economic opportunity, had taken several trips to Europe while collecting unemployment benefits himself. “We had two purposes in adding the news service: to provide more value to the customers we already had by adding context to the data, and to attract new businesses and give them an entrée into our research,” she said. Although most of its customers are lobbyists, local governments, associations and others involved in the legislative process, Lobbytools will allow newspapers to license its statewide news content and will provide coverage of regional issues for a fee. Newspapers can then use their own staffs to add the local flavor, a costeffective option for newspapers with shrinking staffs, she said. “For businesses, we’re an affordable, intermediate step. Information services like Lobbytools were started to serve the core lobbying faction,”
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Iarussi said. “What has changed is the number of Florida businesses we serve who don’t employ a lobbyist.”
Who’s Driving the Bus? The proliferation of online news coverage hasn’t been without controversy. Two years ago, the Times-Herald’s Morgan wrote a story about how online news operations were springing up to fill the void in state government coverage. She noted there was no standard definition of “news organization,” quoting Sterling Ivey, press secretary to then-Gov. Charlie Crist, who joked that “we recognize anybody who has a pen and a piece of paper and says they write.”
“One of the things I used to love about Tallahassee was that you could go buy every major paper in the state, the Atlanta paper and all the national papers, like the New York Times and the Washington Post … ” Lucy Morgan, the Times’ senior correspondent who has covered legislative issues since 1979 and state government fulltime since 1985. It wasn’t the competition that troubled Morgan, who knows full well that robust competition breeds better journalism. What bothered her was the lack of transparency about who — and whose money — was behind some of the new ventures in the Capitol Press Corps and the slant given to the coverage under the guise of straightforward, unbiased reporting. “Any blogger that wants a press credential can get one, and that doesn’t bother me if you know who they are and who owns the blog,” she said. “In some ways, there are more voices coming out
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of here than ever, and that’s not a bad thing. But you need to know who’s behind it. “Take Fox News. I don’t question its First Amendment right to do what it’s doing, because everyone knows who those people are and where they’re coming from, “ Morgan said last fall. “But when you won’t disclose your ownership, it’s a problem. It could be the Koch brothers; it could be sugar (industry); it could be any business group that’s looking to influence what happens in Tallahassee.” In particular, Morgan is critical of Sunshine State News, and she’s not alone. “It says right on their website that they serve the business community and conservative causes, but they won’t disclose their ownership,” Morgan said. “Nancy Smith, the managing editor, trashes the rest of us in her columns, refers to us as the ‘mainstream media.’ ” Smith acknowledges her news organization leans to the right, and that she thinks the mainstream media in general and the Tampa Bay Times in particular lean left and just don’t admit it. “I think people misinterpret what we do,” Smith said. “When I look back on the coverage before Sunshine State, I’m struck by how much alike we were all writing. We were all taking the same approach. We still write stories that I hope are factual, but we tell the stories no one else is telling.” Smith, who describes herself as a “Teddy Kennedy liberal who once worked for moveon. org,” said that much like a debater can take either side of an issue, she and her staff can report the news from different perspectives. She knows who owns the organization, but she said no one else on staff knows. And she considers that a good thing. “We’re not bloggers. We’re a legitimate news source,” she said. “I see Sunshine State as a permanent fixture in the Capital Press Corps. I’ll just be glad when we figure out how to make more money from it.” Longtime media attorney Florence Snyder has represented many Florida news organizations — including Palm Beach Newspapers, Gannett and WSVN-TV in Miami — and was a trustee for The Poynter Institute for Media Studies, a school for journalists that owns the Tampa Bay Times, before becoming an administrative law judge. Now in private practice and a columnist for Florida Voices and www.tothevillagesquare. org, she sees what’s happening in the practice of journalism — and what isn’t. “There is a business opportunity for crusading editors,” she said. “There’s plenty of content; there’s just nobody writing it.” n
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EMERALD COAST Corridor
Coastal Escambia, Santa Rosa, Okaloosa + Walton Counties
Joining Forces for Good Members of the Pensacola Bay Area Impact 100, (back row, left to right) Cyndi Warren, Holly Jurnovoy, Marny Needle and Belle Bear, with Kristin Fairchild (foreground), executive director of Chain Reaction. Chain Reaction is a nonprofit, volunteer center for youth in Escambia and Santa Rosa counties that received funding for computers and software.
The Female Philanthropists S
Northwest Florida women compound time and dollars to strengthen communities By Ashley Kahn
he was doing the same thing you’re doing right now — reading a magazine. Ten years ago, a Pensacola woman came across an article that inspired her so deeply she shared a big idea with three friends. Those four women invited their sisters, colleagues, dermatologists and neighbors to a
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luncheon promoting a brand new club — and the Pensacola Bay Area IMPACT 100 was born. A 501(c)(3) with an exclusively female membership, IMPACT 100 collects $1,000 from each woman for the sole purpose of distributing substantial $100,000 grants to deserving charities with plans for visionary projects. With no paid staff and an abundance of gratis services,
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every dollar from every member goes directly to the community. The Pensacola Bay Area IMPACT 100 has grown from 233 members at its inception to 728 today. Since 2004, the group has awarded a total of $4.315 million to nonprofit agencies in Escambia and Santa Rosa counties. Now, their good works have inspired a group of ladies
Photo by SCOTT HOLSTEIN
Pensacola Bay Area IMPACT 100
just down the road. In December 2012, IMPACT 100 of Northwest Florida — serving Okaloosa and Walton counties — awarded its first grant of $128,000.
The Impact of IMPACT From that first meeting in 2003, the women of IMPACT had a strategy. They formed a board. They brainstormed. They opened membership. “It was a matter of inviting not only our best friends, but women who could help in different geographic areas, different professions, different social circles, because that’s what you need to have success,” says Holly Jurnovoy, attorney and incoming president of Pensacola Bay Area IMPACT 100. In its first year, the group gave away two grants. In 2012, it gave away seven. Membership has grown nearly every year, sustaining even a hard hit economy. So what is it about IMPACT 100 that motivates so many women to part with a thousand dollars? It’s the feeling of being part of something bigger than yourself, according to Marny Needle, consultant and past president. “Yes, $1,000 is a lot of money. Other than for a mortgage or a big expense, most of us had never written a thousand-dollar check,” Needle says. “Once you do that, it’s kind of empowering. When you realize that you are part of a $100,000 project, there’s nothing like it.” That contagion has taken the group far. The Pensacola Bay Area IMPACT 100 now is the largest group of its kind in the nation. “There are a lot of cities that are large, so there are a lot of cities that could eclipse Pensacola,” Needle says. “But the fact is, Pensacola as a community has rallied around this concept, and women from all walks of life and all areas of the two-county region have joined us.” There is a common misconception that women must be invited to join or that only wealthy women are encouraged to participate, a falsehood that Dechay Watts, CEO of Sprout Content and an IMPACT board member, wants to dispel. “Not everyone is wealthy and can just write a thousand-dollar check. Lots of women budget
and set aside the $85 a month,” she says. “That amounts to a couple dinners out. When you look at that number, it becomes a little more tangible.” Watts says the most rewarding aspect of membership is reaching out to like-minded women, inviting them to experience IMPACT and grow as a result. “It’s not about any one organization, it’s the collective impact,” she says. “It’s empowering women to do collectively things they could never do on their own.” Jurnovoy credits Pensacola’s success with a prideful, philanthropic community that truly wants to learn about the need and the great things nonprofits are doing to meet it. The IMPACT 100 grant process gives women an outlet for their common desire to help. Women of IMPACT not only accept and review grants on paper, but also send committees on site visits to immerse themselves in the true mission of every agency that applies. And they want every agency to apply. The very act of applying can be momentous for a nonprofit, say IMPACT’s impassioned board. “We call it the ‘impact of IMPACT,’ ” says Jurnovoy. “By applying for our grants, organizations have the opportunity to tell their stories, and they benefit regardless of whether they win because we bring them to the attention of women who would not otherwise have known about them.” Coming into its 10th year, Pensacola Bay Area IMPACT 100 has set two landmark goals: to welcome 1,000 members and receive 100 grant applications.
Timeline
IMPACT 100 of Northwest Florida Mission
Timeline
Good Begets Good On the other side of the bay, IMPACT of Northwest Florida has just completed its inaugural year. The newly founded team reached 128 members in 2012 and already has admirable ambitions of its own. The Okaloosa-Walton group is determined to hit 300 members in 2013, which would allow them to award three grants. They hope to welcome applications from at least 50 nonprofit organizations, with focus areas of Arts
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dollars are staying here. It helps us to be able to say we’ve achieved some sort of improvement in the lives of our neighbors,” Anchors says. “When our neighbors are applying for grants, they know they are going to get a fair shake. We’re real people just like they are.” Members of IMPACT 100 attest they identify more with their communities. The opportunity for nonprofit organizations to explore new possibilities gives the women of IMPACT a chance to explore where they live. “The questions are going to be asked, the interest level is there, the need is presented,” Barr says. “It’s not a matter of knowing the charities exist, but how and why they exist. It’s knowing now you are part of a vehicle that will make life better.” IMPACT members are business leaders, mothers, women who are working and women who are not. They are women who have the luxury to write that big check, as well as women who save all year to earn that ability. All of them want to better themselves and their communities by bettering others. “It’s a mindset of generosity. That’s what this is. It’s women supporting other women. It’s not exclusive, it’s just inclusive of all women,” says Needle. “There’s nothing like that feeling of us all working together toward a common goal. We don’t know what the outcome will be, but we know it will be good.”
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Woman Power Contributors can choose their level of involvement, from just attending the annual meeting to chairing committees and doing site visits at nonprofits seeking help.
Photo courtesy impact 100
& Culture, Education, Environment, Family and Health & Wellness, which were adopted from the Pensacola group. Familiar with the success of their neighbors, a core group of Okaloosa-Walton women who had never met began reaching out independently to form an IMPACT board. When they realized they were not alone in their quest, they came together with a heart for developing an organization that could serve all the nonprofits in their two-county region. “We know our nonprofits have strong missions and are fulfilling those missions, and we don’t compete with them,” says Michelle Anchors, attorney with Keefe, Anchors & Gordon and founding IMPACT board member. “What they do need is funding. To help them be more successful helps our communities collectively be more successful.” Sandy Sims, another founder of the group who is public affairs manager for Gulf Power Company, believes one draw of the IMPACT 100 model is each member’s freedom to choose her level of participation. “It’s not another thing on their ‘to-do’ list. They can write that $1,000 check and not even attend the annual meeting and know they’ve done something good,” Sims says. “Or they can meet once a month and head committees and do site visits. At the end of the day, they know they’ve made a difference.” With no advertising and just one meeting before the grant process opened, IMPACT 100 of Northwest Florida received 34 applications in its first year. They credit their success largely to Pensacola’s excellent example — and the fact that women talk. “Women have been the first networking group always. Women knew how to network before the word was ‘network,’ ” says Ginny Barr, executive director of the Mental Health Association of Okaloosa and Walton Counties. “In many ways I believe women have a much firmer grasp on how operations of agencies run than many other funding groups do.” The women’s savvy is a boon to the communities they serve. Every organization that applies for an IMPACT grant, whether in Okaloosa-Walton or Escambia-Santa Rosa, is encouraged to provide a list of their most pressing needs. Fulfillment of these “wish lists” can have an immediate impact on an agency, for sheer publicity of its mission. “One of the interesting and unique characteristics of being a member is to know the
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Panama City, Panama City Beach + Bay Counties
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Worth the Rumble Motorcycle rallies buoy Panama City Beach’s shoulder seasons By Steve Bornhoft
Ready to Roll Bikers who come to Thunder Beach are an older crowd with money — and they patronize local businesses.
photo Courtesy Lee Ann Russo
T
hey arrive twice each year, in the spring and again in the fall, some traveling singly and others in pairs, as, uniformly dressed in black, they fill the tourist corridors of Panama City Beach. We refer not to love bugs, those inescapable insects whose bodily juices undo automotive paint jobs and whose attachments are anthropomorphically seen to be emotional. Rather, we refer to the bikers of Thunder Beach, whose contributions to the local economy are almost universally seen to be worth the rumble. In some, including an employee who works a register at Express Lane No. 44 a couple of blocks off the Gulf of Mexico, the riders even inspire jealousy. Turning to a familiar customer for whom she has pulled down two packs of discount cigarettes, she confesses, “I am always envious this time of year. My vehicle has four wheels, and it doesn’t go very fast.” “I know what you mean,” the smoker replies. “I like the wind in my face, too. But I also like to be able to get to sleep at three in the morning.” The fall 2012 edition of a recurring tropical disturbance formally known as the Thunder Beach Motorcycle Rally has downshifted into town. Bikers began to trickle in at midweek, but that presence of a few meant that a swarm was sure to follow. Now at the weekend, Thunder Beach is full throttle and in full throat. To city leaders, tourism industry officials, hoteliers, restaurateurs and the proprietors of watering holes newly accessorized with bikini bike washes, it sounds like money. “We systematically made decisions about who we wanted our audience to be,” says Joe Biggs, the president of Thunder Beach Productions. “Not that we’re prejudiced, but we wanted to avoid the 1 percent of riders, certain motorcycle clubs,
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that are likely to create trouble. To do so, we have targeted an affluent demographic.” That is, people who have no interest in camping out, unless in a tricked-out RV, who eat three meals a day in restaurants while on vacation and who have the capacity to return to the beach at other times of the year, with their kids and without their leathers. “Our target audience is the same as the HarleyDavidson target — mature, well-established people, 35 to 65,” points out Biggs, who owns a direct-mail business in Tallahassee. “Those who try to appeal to a greater cross-section of riders are likely to have more issues. My goal is to bring in an audience that will spend as much money in market as possible with as little disruption as possible.” To that end, Biggs has worked to establish and maintain close communication with both the Panama City Beach Police Department and the Bay County Sheriff’s Office. Drew Whitman, Panama City Beach’s police chief, a motorcyclist both on and off the job, finds that rally-goers may occasion a few complaints due to excessive revving of engines or bikes cutting through residential neighborhoods, but he credits Thunder Beach riders with policing themselves well. “We’re talking about an older crowd, people with money, who watch one another’s backs,” Whitman says. Throughout rally weekend, Beach Police who are stationed in a trailer at Frank Brown Park, Thunder Beach’s largest venue, dispense information on local laws and advice on how best to get along with the community. But the rally
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weekend is otherwise business as usual. While they have the discretion to do so, shift supervisors will not find it necessary to authorize any overtime hours. “It’s good business,” Whitman says in summing up the rally. Precisely how much business is hard to say. It’s impossible to segregate bed tax revenues attributable to Thunder Beach because rally venues are free and not gated. “We do know the impact is substantial, equating to many millions of dollars, especially in the spring,” Biggs says. “It used to be that hoteliers on Panama City Beach would move to their summer rates at Memorial Day. Now, the seasonal rates kick in with our rally in early May.” Meanwhile, Thunder Beach has started to become a victim of its own success. The rallies are sustained by three revenue streams: advertising on its website, vendor space rental and the sale of official merchandise. Businesses that Biggs dismisses as “bottom feeders” have emerged as sellers of T-shirts designed to look like the real deal, affecting one of those streams. Too, Biggs has found that lodging establishments who know that they will be full during rally weekends regardless as to whether they participate as a Thunder Beach advertiser, get around to not advertising, affecting another stream. Biggs hopes now to replace local advertising dollars with national accounts: Geico, Progressive, Jack Daniels, Budweiser. “For me, Thunder Beach is a passion,” says Biggs, who is an avid biker. “It’s not about the money. It’s about growing a quality event for
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vendors, the community and participants. But I’m not a public service. Some people think the rallies occur organically, that they just happen. I’m here to tell you; that’s not the case.” Kickstarting Thunder Beach in the first place wasn’t easy. It originated in 1999 as a modest get-together founded by a group of bikers from Macon, Ga., with a Panama City Beach habit. The “Bike and Beach Bash” was staged at the Sandpiper Beacon Beach Resort, a property with a reputation for biker friendliness. The fledgling event was enough to attract the attention of Bob Hopper, then the assistant director of the Bay County Tourist Development Council, who believed that a motorcycle rally might flourish on the “World’s Most Beautiful Beaches.” The TDC contracted with a couple of promoters to advance Hopper’s vision, and the first Thunder Beach rally was conducted in the spring of 2000. About 2,500 bikers, many of them local, participated. (Attendance was easily calculated at the time.) But mistakes were made. The rally took place over nine days, including two weekends. The support required by an event of that length wasn’t there. Biggs fell in with the promoters in connection with an event, Blues on the Beach, held during the Labor Day weekend in 2000. It bombed. Biggs didn’t get his investment back, but he strongarmed the dubious promoters into awarding him Thunder Beach. In the spring of 2001, Biggs tried to make the nine-day format work. He struggled. In the fall, he brought about a gated camp-in at a drag strip
rendering Courtesy Harley-Davidson
Coming This Spring Harley-Davidson is expected to open its Panama City dealership in April, a move that should give Thunder Beach a boost.
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Gearing Up Official merchandise sold from booths like this one is one of three revenue streams that sustain Thunder Beach rallies.
make both his spring and fall rallies profitable. Thus far, he has found it necessary to rob from Peter to pay fall. In 2012, the spring rally attracted 200 vendors versus the 145 who participated in October. Some things will not change, however. Biggs will continue to promote an event that attracts lots of characters without bringing around any bad actors. At the welcome center for the fall 2012 rally, there are more ponytails than exist in the whole of Marion County, but there is not an Outlaw or a Hell’s Angel to be found. Quite to the contrary, one finds Terry Gable, a fixture at these events and the president of the Panama City chapter of the Christian Motorcyclists Association. He stands before his Kicker 5150 motorcycle, which he built from a kit shipped in four boxes. On its gas tank, he has painted crosses. “For the biker who may be lost, we are here when he decides he needs us,” says Gable, a Lockheed Martin engineer Monday through Friday. “We’re not in your face. We will wait for you to raise a hand.” Gable is joined at the CMA booth by Scott Cagle, who introduces himself this way: “I’m Scott, I coached high school football for 34
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years in Fort Worth, Texas, and don’t you know every little town in Texas has two things — a Dairy Queen and a recruiter from the University of Oklahoma.” Cagle finds that many of the riders who approach CMA have been ostracized or otherwise judged by organized religion. “Here, everyone is welcome,” he says. There is room beneath the big Thunder Beach tent for Ben Collins, too. He retired from the Air Force after 20 years and is today a gun-seller and the assistant rabban at the local Shrine Temple. He’s back at Frank Brown Park for another rally, retrieving beers from an ice bath. Standing in front of him on an impromptu platform is Lindsey, an FSU-Panama City student clad in heels, a bikini and a floral tattoo that takes up most of her torso. Lindsey is working for tips, and 100 percent of the beer proceeds go to the Shriners’ Children’s Transportation Fund. When interviewed, the presidential election was not far off and Collins was of two minds about it. An Obama victory might be good for business, he reasoned, but Collins is no Democrat. More people, he says, need to recognize the need to arm themselves. But no one here at the park is packing heat, at least not outwardly, and Lindsey, who identifies herself as a newlywed, feels completely safe. “Even my husband is good with this,” she says. “Everyone here is so nice.” Just the way Biggs drew it up. n
photo Courtesy Lee Ann Russo
north of Panama City and secured professional Harley dragsters as entertainment. The event was overshadowed by 9/11, the turnout was slight and Biggs entertained thoughts of bailing on Thunder Beach. Before doing so, however, he resolved to try a free, three-day event closer to the water. “I looked around for a venue and hooked up with the property manager at the Shoppes at Edgewater in 2002,” Biggs recalls. Ever since, that location has served as the Thunder Beach welcome center. “Our spring event that year was fairly successful. Feedback was positive, the audience was bigger and I figured we were onto something that made sense.” Thunder Beach began to add more venues — the Spinnaker Beach Club, the Boardwalk Beach Resort. Marketed through its first successful years primarily via motorcycle magazines (and now increasingly via social media and word of mouth), the whimper grew to a roar. The training wheels were off. Soon, Thunder Beach will have outlived an unwanted distinction as the only motorcycle rally of consequence in the country hosted by a community without a Harley dealership. Groundbreaking ceremonies for a dealership on U.S. Highway 98 at a five-acre site not far from Frank Brown Park coincided with the fall 2012 Thunder Beach rally. Beth Oltman, then executive director of the Panama City Beach Chamber of Commerce, was there. “October 12th was a groundbreaking day,” Oltman says, then acknowledges her unintended pun. “For years, Harley-Davidson dealt with economic, environmental and regulatory hurdles on their way to project feasibility and approval. This dealership is a great fit with our demographics. Our spring and fall Thunder Beach rallies are going to be bigger because of it. Throughout the year, people will come from throughout the region to learn to ride here, buy their bikes here and have them serviced here.” Gary Bang, a co-owner of the soon-to-be dealership and vice president of the Tampa Harley Group, says Panama City Beach appealed to him given its “strong promise of population and economic growth and a growing tourism industry.” He is confident that the business, including 38,000 square feet of retail space and service bays, will attract riders from throughout the world to vacation in Northwest Florida. Construction is expected to be complete in April 2013. Biggs is, of course, delighted, anticipating that Harley’s impact will make his pursuit of national advertisers easier and that it may be enough to
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forgotten coast Corridor
Gulf, Franklin + Wakulla Counties
Serving A Community Ronald Fred Crum has stayed in business for more than four decades by changing with the times to provide what customers want to buy at his Panacea mini-mall. 62
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Marketing to the Market Ronald Fred Crum survives by reading the tea leaves and going with the economic flow By Jason Dehart
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onald Fred Crum, a big man in his mid-60s, leads a reporter through a maze of fishing poles, souvenir racks and yard tools to get to his office at Crum’s Mini-Mall on U.S. Highway 98 in Panacea. The office is the inner sanctum of Crum’s business empire, but he’d prefer being on the deck of a shrimp boat bringing in bait to sell. This large “mall,” like the small town around it, has that lived-in, works-for-a-living look about it. Crum has tried his hand at many different businesses from this location, and has adapted his business model to fit whatever the market calls for. “I market to the markets,” he said. “The thing that business has to do today is keep a very strict set of records and be able to read those records, and when you read into it, it will tell you where your markets are, the trends and the changes. Your business will tell you where your markets are. That’s the way I’ve stayed in business.” That’s how he looks at it. He must be doing something right because he’s managed to stay in business for 44 years — and counting. “My family built part of this business back 54 years ago, but I actually have run it myself for 44 years and been total proprietor of it,” he said. Over the years he has used the building as a tire store, automotive service center and a lumber supply company for the construction industry. Today, it’s a good place to buy live and frozen bait, beer, ice, a rod and reel (choose from 3,000!), beach and sportswear, souvenirs, marine supplies, Yeti coolers, newspapers, drinks, snacks and even some home hardware supplies. Back in the office things are a little bit more peaceful, and he can sit down and talk about how he’s managed to stay in business for so long. It’s an uncanny feat considering how the economic tides have risen and fallen over the years. Tourists driving through the small town on their way to Apalachicola may not realize it, but Panacea was a bustling seafood community when Crum took the reins of the company. “You know, (Panacea) probably worked 1,500–2,000 people in the crab industry,” he said. “Heavy fishing. The dominant part of the economy was seafood. But we still had tourism, too. Over the years, tourism and sport fishing have taken the majority of the economy.” But the local crab industry was the first to go, no thanks to foreign competition. Crum said that at one time, there were some 1,500 workers throughout the eight or 10 processing plants that were here. Those people were all part of his customer base, but times changed. “What brought an end to the crab industry was Venezuela,” he said. “The fishermen over there buy their fuel for pennies, and over here we’re at three dollars and so you just can’t compete. So the plants closed.”
Photos by SCOTT HOLSTEIN
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It hurt everybody, including Ronald Fred Crum, who once made a living keeping the seafood trucks rolling. The gas and diesel pumps are still there, but it’s no longer a garage. “Back 40 years ago, I had a very large tire store in the beginning. One of the first stores I had was a tire store, bait and tackle shop and service center,” he said. “I worked two wreckers, four mechanics and because of the seafood industry you had heavy trucking. We had a lot of trucking and it was enough of the economy to service that portion.” Once the seafood plants closed, though, the trucks that needed tires stopped coming through. Rather than just fold up, he “marketed to the markets.” “The way I’ve stayed in business is, I try to look into the near future and then just take care of that market,” he said. “So as the time evolved, seafood became less of a determining factor. And we went more into the community-oriented home hardware, building supplies and sporting stuff. Targeting the sports fishermen. We’re still catering to the limited commercial industry, but a major portion of the business went to targeting tourism and sport fishing.” Up to about 2008 Crum and his family catered to the local building contractors by providing lumber supplies, but then the bottom fell out of the construction industry as the real estate bubble burst. That forced them to leave the industrial market, and “we just pulled our wings in.” Now, they scaled back things a bit to the point where they target the homeowner who needs a rake, a shovel, hammer and other bits of hardware. “We’ve now evolved to just hardware,” he said, but there’s more to it than that. Far more. They also try to cater to the sportsman and tourist with fishing gear, T-shirts, Florida souvenirs and food. “We’re trying to cut the overhead. And that seems to work. It’s profitable with a limited amount of overhead.”
Overcoming Adversity During the past 40 years Crum has come to expect man-made economic disasters, but living so close to the coast makes you vulnerable to natural ones as well. Crum shrugs it off. “We’ve had to accept the effects of storms,” he said. “There have been a lot of storms and hurricanes in 40 years, but it’s a natural happening. We’ve learned how to handle that issue.” While natural phenomenon is something that can be dealt with through preparation, some disasters are unpredictable and can have farreaching consequences. Naturally, the BP oil spill comes to mind. “The biggest single upset we ever had that we were not trained for or had any experience with, was the BP disaster,” he said. Ironically, the oil spewing from the broken wellhead wasn’t to blame for the downturn. Rather, panicky headlines spewing from the press caused the problem. “It wasn’t from the oil, it was (bad) publicity. It devastated us during the middle of our summer season. July of 2010 was the worst July we ever had. It was a ghost town,” he said. “Now, BP oil didn’t hurt us, but they put out oil booms a few weeks before (July) 4th. And once those booms were seen by the tourists, there was a total drop-off. That affects us businesswise, because we couldn’t plan for it. We never experienced it before.” Crum said that from the sound of things, Panacea was going to be up to its neck in oil.
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“But in reality, all we had was a downturn in business due to adverse press,” he said. “Another issue that became very evident was the true value of the commercial seafood harvest to the economies of the (Gulf) states. That became very apparent. You have to very carefully protect the marine environment.”
The Net Man Cometh Crum definitely has ideas about saving the environment and making sure fish harvests are healthy and profitable. He generally supports the net limitation (the so-called “net ban”) that was passed by Florida voters back in 1994. But he thinks the design of the net could be improved to reduce undesirable by-catch. In his opinion, the size of the net holes is wrong, and fishermen are basically spending most of their time catching fish they can’t sell. He’s taken the issue to court many times over the years and was back in court as recently as last summer, but so far no changes have been made. Still, he keeps at it. “I want (fishermen) to go out there and leave no footprint and use 100 percent of their labor to make a living,” he said. “I want the law to guide the fishermen to have zero by-catch. To do that, we use a mesh size that catches the marketable, harvestable fish and leaves the rest alive and unharmed.” In his view, the more mullet a fisherman can bring to market, the more money a fisherman can earn. Those are dollars that can be kept — and spent — locally. “The way I keep my business strong is I fight for justice for the economy. The proper way that this economy is going to survive is to let the fisherman only take what he’s going to take to market. He saves his labor and he saves the life of the future harvest,” he said. “The coastline can remarket itself. In 1890 this town right here was a bustling sea town because of seafood and tourism. We need to go back to that. The way I keep my business here, I try to keep a customer base. Not only do I market to the market, I try to create a customer that has the money to buy that product.” n
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i-10 Corridor
Northern Escambia, Santa Rosa, Okaloosa + Walton Counties and Holmes, Washington, Calhoun, Jackson + Liberty Counties
Joint Effort Left to Right: James Wise, Rick Pettis, Jim Dean, Richard Williams, Bill Stanton, David Melvin, Chuck Lockey and Ted Lakey worked together to score a big economic victory.
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Photos by SCOTT HOLSTEIN
Marianna’s Battle for Family Dollar How a small town brought a distribution hub to Northwest Florida By Wendy O. Dixon
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arianna is an official Florida Main Street town, having been restored to resemble its distant past. Antebellum homes line the quaint streets. Famous underground caverns draw tourists, if only for a day trip. The leading industries traditionally include education, health and social services. Russell Corp., a fabrics manufacturing company, which closed in 1999, was also a vital source of employment for more than 1,000 workers. “We were really hurting when textile and apparel left the area. This region was very dependent on it,” says Bill Stanton, executive director of the Jackson County Development Council. “We needed to jumpstart a new industry sector we could target and build upon.” With a population of around 6,200 people and little growth over the years, this small town needed an economic boost. It was then that Marianna and Jackson County officials banded together to persuade a Fortune 500 company to build a $50 million distribution center amidst miles of cotton fields. Family Dollar, a consumer discount retailer with more than 7,200 stores in 45 states and 50,000 employees, offers convenience goods and basic food items. The company needed to increase the coverage of distribution center facilities as it expanded the number of stores throughout the country, the focus being on an ability to reach a large number of stores within a day’s roundtrip. As Family Dollar began its search for sites for a new distribution center that would cover much of the Southeast, there were 118 potential communities in the region up for consideration. The list was narrowed by focusing on certain criteria that included: highway access, market reach, land cost, public support for infrastructure improvements and workforce availability. After slicing the short list again and again, the final two locations in the running were Cordele, Ga., and Marianna. In a highly publicized battle between the two towns, Marianna won out due to many factors, including a direct on-ramp access to Interstate 10 and the ability
to serve all of Florida’s markets, as well as key markets in Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi. But perhaps the strongest determining factor was the passionate public support from the local community, as well as the organization of local officials who impressed the company representatives with their well-thought-out plan. “I think one thing that helped us is that once we found out what their layout and requirements were, we came up with a plan to meet their infrastructure needs,” says David Melvin, CEO of Consulting Engineers. “When they did the site visit, we had drawings of their building, parking lot and roads laid out. I think it surprised them that we were that prepared.” Ted Lakey, Jackson County administrator, who came on board just as the project was being pitched to Family Dollar, says the teamwork and shared ambition of the city and county paid off big. “It was the county and city working together that got it done,” he says, adding that the distribution center was a huge boost to the local economy. “It helped diversify the employment in addition to the prison and agriculture.” Adds Stanton, “I think they were confident they were going to deal with a better town. They pretty well said that.” Family Dollar officials found the local support and commitment to economic development to be impressive and were confident in building the facility in Marianna. “We love having our distribution center in Marianna,” says Josh Braverman, communication director at Family Dollar. “It’s been a great partnership, and we look forward to a continued strong relationship with them.” In addition to their charm, the team leaders used several creative tactics to induce the company to choose Marianna as its distribution center site, including tax incentives, supportive construction and cooperation from the state and federal government. “We had to pledge to do some things that were pretty tough,” Stanton says, pointing to two three-inch binders full of charts, lists and data related to “Project Raven,” as it was known.
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Project Raven The secret project local officials worked on turned into this familiar site alongside I-10 in Jackson County.
Several organizations were in play, including Enterprise Florida, Chipola Workforce Development Board and Florida Public Utilities, in addition to the City of Marianna and Jackson County. Former Gov. Jeb Bush, U.S. Congressman Allen Boyd and the local legislative delegation were also involved. The local, state and federal government incentives added up to $24 million. The city and county donated the 75 acres for the site, as well as a 90-acre public buffer. The company also received a 10-year ad valorem tax exemption, which expires in 2014, and about $4.7 million in lower taxes. Because of the tax incentives, the facility paid the county $666 in 2011, but nearly $300,000 to the Jackson County School Board. “It is the most difficult project we have ever done in this area, the whole
region,” says Stanton, who led the drive. “The complexity was magnified by having to ultimately do it in an undeveloped area.” The City of Marianna and Jackson County both contributed financially and also built roads with truck lanes and turning lanes with access to Interstate 10 and Route 276, a fire station, an electric substation, a 300,000-gallon petasphere and two more 300,000-gallon water tanks, as well as a regional storm water retention pond, with hopes that a successful acquisition of the one distribution center would entice other companies to move in later. The facility opened in January of 2005 as the eighth distribution center developed by the Family Dollar company. The massive building is a 75-acre site within a 351-acre distribution park. The center has 26 acres of space under one roof with 1.2 million square feet and 32-foot-high ceilings. With anywhere from 300 to 400 semi trucks loading or unloading daily, the D.C., as it’s called, is always busy. The community was ecstatic about the addition, with 6,000 people applying for the 515 jobs available at the center. “We’ve never had that kind of response,” says Chipola Regional Workforce Development Board Executive Director Richard Williams. The average wage is $13 per hour. Three shifts keep the place running around the clock. Williams says the addition of the distribution center has had a trickle effect, adding jobs indirectly and bringing whole families to the area. “Obviously there are the jobs at the distribution center, but beyond that it’s brought in jobs related to the center,” he says. “It also opened up the industrial park to other businesses and put Marianna on the map. We’re a net exporter of labor so getting those jobs is big for us. It got other (companies) to look at us that wouldn’t have done so before.” Two other companies
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— Arizona Chemical distribution center, which employs 45 people, and Oldcastle, a pre-cast concrete pipe company with 110 employees — built at the distribution park, as a direct result of Family Dollar coming on board. The distribution center’s impact has also had a synergistic effect economically. As Williams explains, “There’s the ripple effect, people were leaving local jobs to go to Family Dollar,” he says. “Those other companies then started providing better benefits, which led to people returning to those jobs. Then Family Dollar increased their benefits, so all the employees in the area benefited.” In addition, whole families have relocated to the area, he adds. “Families who shop here, who buy their gas and groceries here, and contribute to the economy.” Florida State Rep. Marti Coley says the Family Dollar Distribution Center is vital to the overall economic growth of the community. “The distribution center is an incredible asset to our area,” Coley says. “It has created new jobs that helped stimulate our local economy and brought a sense of pride and purpose to those it employs. I am tremendously proud to have such a business in the region.” Many products are manufactured in China and shipped to major U.S. seaports such as Long Beach, Ca., and Savannah, Ga. The goods are then sent by rail and or truck to the suppliers, who then deliver their products to the Family Dollar distribution centers. The Marianna site services Tallahassee, Jacksonville, Orlando, Tampa and Miami, as well as Mobile, Ala., and Atlanta and Savannah, Ga. The Mariana Jackson County Distribution Park, which was built for Family Dollar with plans to entice future companies to build distribution
centers there, is the only such park in the state of Florida. But in the last five years there have been no new projects. “One big hit from the recession was construction, the other was distribution,” says Stanton. “Essentially, for the last four or five years there has been little additional capacity in the form of construction and distribution.” As the economy slowly recovers over the next decade, Marianna and Jackson County have a place for new projects and hope to draw on the success story of the Family Dollar center. As Stanton says, “We’re ready.” n
Family Dollar Marianna Distribution Center Facts Opened: 2005 Square Footage: 1.2 million Location: M arianna, 66 miles west of Tallahassee, 40 miles south of Dothan Company Investment: $55 million Government Incentives: $24 million Traffic: 3 00 to 400 trucks loaded or unloaded daily
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Calling Tallahassee’s Young Professionals 2nd Annual Golden A.C.E. Awards and Gala Saturday, March 23, 2013 Are you an emerging leader in your field? A superstar for our community? We are looking for you! For the second year the Network of Young Professionals will be recognizing the top 20 young professionals under 40 in our community. All applications are due no later than Friday, March 8, 2013.
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BUSINESS NEWS
Capital Local Honors >> Leon County Tax Collector Doris Maloy was installed as president of the statewide Florida Tax Collectors Association during its annual conference and education forum in Orlando last fall. In her capacity as Maloy president, Maloy will lead tax collectors from each of Florida’s 67 counties. In Florida, tax collectors are independently elected constitutional officers.
>> David Faulkenberry, president of FBMC Benefits Management, has been appointed to serve as secretary/treasurer of the Florida Sterling Council. He has served as deputy secretary of the Florida Department of Management Services and CFO of the Florida Lottery and has owned a private consulting firm. FBMC Benefits Management Inc. is a national employee benefits broker and administrator. >> The Association of Florida Colleges (AFC) was recently recognized as Association of the Year during the annual meeting of local, state and national associations headquartered in Florida’s capital city. The award recognizes an organization that has demonstrated outstanding efforts, excellence and innovation related to its ongoing or special programs and services, which benefit their industry, profession or the public at large. AFC is the professional association for member institutions of the Florida College System, their boards of trustees, employees, retirees, associates and the Division of Colleges.
>> Two of Ajax Building Corporation’s projects were named to the list of winners in the ENR Southeast’s 2012 Best Projects competition. Conducted annually, the competition recognizes the industry’s best construction and design achievements. Both winning entries are for Florida projects — Lynch Replacement Elementary School for Pinellas County Schools in St. Petersburg and the University of North Florida Science and Humanities Building in Jacksonville.
>> The graduate program of the Department of Interior Design at Florida State University has been named the most admired program of its kind in the country in a national survey of 122 deans and department chairs.
Events and Promotions at Honey Lake Plantation Resort & Spa. She most recently served as director of meetings and events at Tallahassee’s Hotel Duval.
>> Dr. Lisa Conti has been named deputy commission-
Bridges
>> After serving three years as president of the Florida Chamber Foundation, Dale Brill left his post at the beginning of the year to start an economic development practice.
>> Beth Kirkland has left her post as executive director of the Economic Development Council of Tallahassee/ Leon County after serving for 10 years. Sue Dick, president of the Greater Tallahassee Chamber of Commerce and EDC, will assume the executive director responsibilities until a replacement is identified. A search committee is being chaired by EDC chair Karen Moore.
>> Andrew McClenahan has been named public
er and chief science officer at the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services. She most recently worked with Global One Health Solutions on educational services focused on improving human, veterinary and environmental health.
>> Ellen Anderson, most recently chief of staff to state Senate Minority Leader Nan Rich, is the new director of state advocacy for the Florida Hospital Association.
>> Former state insurance regulation official Claude Mueller has joined the lobbying and law firm of Colodny, Fass, Talenfeld, Karlinsky, Abate & Webb, where he will work with clients on regulatory compliance and legislative lobbying. >> After 22 years as the executive director of Tall Timbers Research Station & Land Conservancy and the Tall Timbers Foundation, Lane Green has retired to pursue his passions: time with family, hunting, travel, playing baseball and managing his family land.
safety director of the U.S. operation of SmartWater CSI, LLC™, a high technology company with an established track record of crime deterrence and theft reduction in the United Kingdom. McClenahan served in various capacities with the Tallahassee Police Department before joining the Florida Department of Environmental Protection. Prior to joining SmartWater CSI, he retired as an investigative captain in the Office of the Inspector General for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.
>> Charles D. Johnson has been named vice president of human capital management at Citizens Property Insurance. He came from American Express Inc., where he led human resources support for approximately 15,500 employees throughout North America and 15 other countries,
>> Following four years as manag-
>> Monte Stevens has been hired by the Florida Medi-
ing director of Tallahassee-based CoreMessage, Jennifer Fennell has been promoted to vice president. She also recently earned her Certified Public Relations Counselor credential through the Florida Public Relations Association. Jamie Mongiovi has joined CoreMessage as an account executive. She previously served as a spokeswoman for the Florida Department of Education.
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cal Association as director of payment advocacy. He comes to the doctor lobby from the Office of Insurance Regulation, where he had served as director of governmental affairs since 2008. Rebecca Matthews has assumed the governmental affairs role while continuing as the agency’s deputy chief of staff. Fennell
>> Christa Calamas, the chief health policy staffer in the Florida House of Representatives and a former secretary of the Agency for Health Care Administration, has been appointed to the First District Court of Appeal Judicial Nominating Commission.
Caldwell has been selected as “Lawyer of the Year” by Best Lawyers in America in the area of Criminal Defense: Non-White Collar.
>> Michael Campbell is the new director of the North Florida Outreach Initiative for The Jim Moran Institute Mongiovi for Global Entrepreneurship at Florida State University. A financial advisor and entrepreneur, he is the former owner of Statement Analysis Corp. and Trusteria Services Inc.
>> For the fourth consecutive year, Carlton Fields has
>> Fort Lauderdale-based public relations pro Stan
received a perfect score – 100 percent rating – on the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) 2013 Corporate Equality Index (CEI). Carlton Fields is one of 71 law firms in the country that scored 100 percent. CEI provides an indepth analysis and rating of large U.S. employers and their policies and practices pertinent to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender employees.
for the Florida House of Representatives, to the Supreme Court Nominating Commission.
Smith, who helped create MyFlorida.com, is working with award-winning television producer Steve Hull to open a new office of Smarter Story LLC in Tallahassee.
Emerald Coast
>> Richard A. Greenberg of Rumberger, Kirk &
PHOTOS PROVIDED BY PROFILED INDIVIDUALS
recently announced as a co-host of the syndicated political talk show “Usual Suspects.” Kristen Bridges has been promoted to senior vice president of BCC. She will continue her role as a lead communications consultant for Bascom and will also oversee the Web & Graphic Design Division and serve as a member of the firm’s senior leadership team.
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New Beginnings
>> Ian Macdonald has joined the Tallahassee office of
>> Sarah Bascom, president and owner of Bascom Communications & Consulting LLC, was recently named to the board of the Economic Club of Florida. Bascom was also
>> Bass Pro Shops is opening a 70,000-square-foot Bass Pro Shops Outpost® store in Tallahassee. The new store will be located in the Fallschase Development at the intersection of Mahan and Buck Lake Roads and is targeted to open in 2013. Clark, Partington, Hart, Larry, Bond & Stackhouse. His practice area is focused in commercial litigation, creditor’s rights and real property litigation.
Bascom
>> Pam Monnier has been hired as director of Resort
Appointed by Gov. Scott >> Charles L. Frank, 47, of Crawfordville, an operation review specialist at the Florida Division of State Fire Marshall, to the Florida Building Commission. >> Daniel E. Nordby, of Tallahassee, general counsel
Local Happenings >> Innisfree Hotels has broken ground on a new $25 million, 152-room Holiday Inn Resort development beachfront on Air Force property on Holiday Inn Fort Walton Beach, marking an unprecedented collaboration of regional hotel development
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JIM THOMAS
MEET YOUR MATCH
Brian Baker Winner of the 2012 French Open Wild Card
Attend the final tournament of the Har-Tru USTA Pro Circuit Wild Card Challenge and see the greatest tennis stars face off for a chance to earn a Main Draw Wild Card into the French Open. Bring your family and watch the action on our new stadium Hydro-Court. April 27–May 4, 2013 at Forestmeadows Tennis Center in Tallahassee, FL. For more information about tickets, sponsorships or volunteer opportunities, visit our website or call the TMH Foundation at 431-5389. TALLAHASSEECHALLENGER.COM
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BUSINESS NEWS powerhouse Innisfree Hotels, Poarch Creek Indians, regional credit unions and the US Air Force. Revenue generated from the lease will be contributed to the Eglin Air Force Base budget and the resort will contribute approximately 4,000 discounted room nights to active duty and retired military members.
>> Melinda Crawford, director of the city-owned
>> Navy Federal Credit Union, the world’s largest credit union, is expanding. The Brian L. McDonnell Center Campus, where 2,700 of the company’s employees are already based, will grow by 700 new jobs, thanks to the credit union’s additional $6.75 million investment in the area.
>> Fort Walton Beach Medical Center, an affiliate of
>> Gulf Winds Federal Credit Union has merged with SCORE Federal Credit Union in Tallahassee. On Jan. 1, SCORE FCU became Gulf Winds. The merger will add more than 5,500 members and three branch locations in the Tallahassee area to Pensacola-based Gulf Winds. >> L-3 Crestview Aerospace plans to create 340 jobs within two years through the expansion of its aircraft manufacturing operations in Okaloosa County. The project marks an investment of more than $13.7 million, which will include $7 million in facilities upgrades and the retrofit of hangar space at Bob Sikes Airport in 2013 and 2014.
Pensacola International Airport, plans to leave this month to take a position as the executive director of Charlottesville Albemarle Airport in Charlottesville, Va. The city is expected to launch a national search for her replacement. HCA, has named Mitch Mongell, FACHE, as chief executive officer. Mongell brings more than 30 years of hospital administration experience to the role.
>> The Emerald Coast Association of Realtors® has selected Anne C. Rendle as its new association executive. She will start in her new role on Feb. 18. Rendle has been the chief executive officer for the Northeast Association of Realtors® in Westford, Mass., since 1998. >> Brut Campbell-Work has joined the Pensacola office of Clark, Partington, Hart, Larry, Bond & Stackhouse. His practice focuses on assisting clients with estate planning and administration of trusts and estates, as well as real property matters.
>> James A. Natalie, a board-certified physical medicine and rehabilitation physician, has joined the Andrews Institute and Baptist Medical Group team of experts.
>> Summit Bank has formed a five-person advisory board to help guide the bank’s Pensacola growth. Members of the team are: Tommy Tait, Pensacola market president; Steve Jernigan, FAIA, Bay Design Associates Architects; John L. Hutchinson, director of Public Affairs and Economic Development, Gulf Power Co.; Justin Beck, president, Beck Property Company; and Bill Wein, IMS ExpertServices.
>> Trauma Intervention Program of Northwest Florida has been awarded the 2013 “Goodworks” grant from Ideaworks Inc., which will provide in-depth support — strategy, public relations, graphics, interactive marketing and social media. Ideaworks, now 17 years old, picks one nonprofit per year to help with total marketing support. TIP serves Escambia, Santa Rosa and Okaloosa counties, training volunteers to answer calls from emergency responders who need additional support for victims or survivors of traumatic events.
New Beginnings >> Larry Sassano has been named interim president of Florida’s Great Northwest, the 16-county regional economic development organization for Northwest Florida. Sassano formerly served as president of the Economic Development Council of Sassano Okaloosa County. He has 31 years of experience in economic development in Florida, including 13 years with the state as a supervisor for the Bureau of Industry Development. The organization has relocated its offices to the Northwest Forida State College Niceville campus. >> Hilton Sandestin Beach Golf Resort & Spa, the largest full-service beachfront resort on Northwest Florida’s Gulf Coast, has named J. Brian Lee as regional sales manager. >> Robert McFarlane has joined The St. Joe Company as a senior vice president leading sales for the company’s commercial real estate, residential real estate and rural land sales segments.
Local Honors >> Legendary Marine, the Gulf Coast’s largest boat dealership with sales and service locations in Destin, Fort Walton Beach, Panama City and Gulf Shores, Ala., was named as 2012 “Dealer of the Year” by Boating Industry magazine. The award is presented annually to only one dealer during a gathering of the marine industry elite. >> In December the state awarded $1,581,245 in Defense Infrastructure Grants to local community organizations that support Florida military installations. The grants work to protect a $60 billion economic impact and more than 686,000 direct and indirect jobs. Among those receiving grants were: Bay County Board of County Commissioners, Santa Rosa County, Greater Pensacola Chamber of Commerce and Okaloosa County Board of County Commissioners. (Okaloosa received awards for both Hurlburt Field and Eglin Air Force Base.)
>> Two local businesses were winners of the 2012 Governor’s Innovators in Business Awards. They are: Santa Rosa County’s AppRiver — Governor’s Export Excellence Award for Florida companies with new or significant increases in documented export sales in 2011; and Escambia County’s Hewes & Company, LLC, Allan Bell, partner — Governor’s Innovators Under 40 Award, a new award that recognizes Florida residents under 40 who own or lead a Florida company with annual revenue of $1 million or more and who have created at least 10 jobs since January 2011.
>> Caldwell Associates Architects and Greenhut Construction Company’s recently completed renovation of Building 1500 at Pensacola NAS has been selected for a “Platinum Award” by Building Design & Construction magazine’s 29th Annual Reconstruction Award Program. The project was submitted because it exemplified the collaboration and partnering required to deliver a complicated renovation to a historic structure. The 63,000-square-foot, four-story structure, which is the old Navy School of Photography Building, was
SoundByteS renovated for use as the new Command Headquarters for Pensacola Naval Air Station.
>> Hilton Sandestin Beach Golf Resort & Spa has been honored with the 2012 ConventionSouth Readers’ Choice Award — the third year it has received the award. >> Sacred Heart Hospital on the Emerald Coast in Miramar Beach has earned The Joint Commission’s Gold Seal of Approval® for its Joint Replacement Program by demonstrating compliance with the commission’s national standards for healthcare quality and safety orthopedic joint replacements.
Appointed by Gov. Rick Scott >> Sam Seevers, 74, mayor of Destin and owner of Life’s A Beach Publications, to the Florida Commission on Community Service.
Forgotten Coast Appointed by Gov. Rick Scott >> Samuel “Bo” R. Spring, 36, of Port St. Joe, to the Governing Board of the Northwest Florida Water Management District. Spring is the managing member of Big Fish Construction LLC and Cape Concrete LLC. He currently serves as director of the Port St. Joe Downtown Redevelopment Agency and chairs the Gulf County Planning, Development and Review Board.
Bay New Beginnings >> Jennifer Conoley has left the Bay County Economic Development Alliance to join Gulf Power Company as an economic development representative for the Bay County region. She will work with local, regional and state economic development organizations to focus on recruiting new businesses to the region as well as help existing businesses be successful.
Conoley
>> Leida Bilby, a 25-year mortgage lending professional, has been named by Summit Bank NA to head up its mortgage lending team and now serves as vice president/mortgage loan officer. Headquartered in Panama City, Summit Bank NA is Bilby a community bank that offers a full range of banking services and has offices in Pensacola, Crestview and Fort Walton Beach. >> Northwest Florida Beaches International Airport has named John Van Etten as the new deputy chief of police. He has 28 years of experience in law enforcement, including the past eight years as police chief for the Panama City Police Department.
Local Happenings >> The Panama City Port Authority last fall held a groundbreaking ceremony for its Intermodal Distribution Center on Hwy 231 for a $6 million, 150,000 square foot state-of-the-art distribution warehouse. Compiled by Linda Kleindienst
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LINDA KLEINDIENST, EDITOR lkleindienst@rowlandpublishing.com
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Photo by Kay Meyer and courtesy State archives of florida, florida memory
The Last Word
(From left to right) Dolly Evans; Darlene Syvertsen; Thomas Harrison, CEO Tallahassee Primary Care Associates; Julia Leland, Laboratory Technician; and Paul Watts, COO Electronet Broadband Communications
RE AL CUSTOMERS . RE AL ISSUES . RE AL SOLUTIONS . TPCA has used Electronet for years. Electronet constructed fiber-optic cables and connected each of our offices together. It is mission critical for our communications platform to be solid 24/7. We have had excellent results with Electronet over the years. If we have a problem or a question we simply call and it is handled. No auto attendant … just a polite member of their team anxious to assist in any way. We would highly recommend Electronet to any company that is looking for a more reliable and stable communications solution. Thomas Harrison, CEO Tallahassee Primary Care Associates
Recipiant: Electronet
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