2017 TALLAHASSEE BUSINESS JOURNAL AN 850 BUSINESS MAGAZINE SPECIAL REPORT
ATTRACTING BUSINESS
Magnets Now An Economic Force To Be Reckoned With
TOURISM | ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT | INFRASTRUCTURE | EDUCATION | HEALTH CARE | REAL ESTATE
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Tallahassee Orthopedic Clinic’s Dr. Hector A. Mejia with Tallahassee Market President Robert Vice.
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CONTENTS | EDITORIAL DIRECTOR OF EDITORIAL SERVICES Steve Bornhoft EDITOR Linda Kleindienst SENIOR STAFF WRITER Jason Dehart EDITORIAL COORDINATOR Rebecca Padgett ASSISTANT TO DIRECTOR OF EDITORIAL SERVICES Kim Harris Thacker COPY EDITOR Barry Ray PROOFREADER Melinda Lanigan CREATIVE CREATIVE DIRECTOR Lawrence Davidson DIRECTOR OF PRODUCTION AND TECHNOLOGY Daniel Vitter SENIOR ART DIRECTOR Saige Roberts ART DIRECTOR Jennifer Ekrut PUBLICATION DESIGNERS Charles Bakofsky, Shruti Shah GRAPHIC DESIGNERS Meredith Brooks, Sarah Mitchell DIGITAL PRODUCTION SPECIALIST Chelsea Moore SALES & MARKETING VICE PRESIDENT/ CORPORATE DEVELOPMENT McKenzie Burleigh Lohbeck DIRECTOR OF NEW BUSINESS Daniel Parisi AD SERVICES COORDINATORS Lisa Sostre, Tracy Mulligan ACCOUNT EXECUTIVES Bess Grasswick, Darla Harrison, Lori Magee Yeaton, Rhonda Murray, Dan Parker, Linda Powell, Sarah Scott, Brianna Webb INTEGRATED MARKETING SPECIALIST Jennifer Ireland INTEGRATED MARKETING COORDINATOR Bria Blossom MARKETING AND EVENTS ASSISTANT Mackenzie Ligas OPERATIONS ADMINISTRATIVE SERVICES/ HUMAN RESOURCE COORDINATOR Marah Rhone CORPORATE CLIENT LIAISON Sara Goldfarb STAFF ACCOUNTANT Jackie Burns ACCOUNTANT ASSISTANT Lisa Cleaves ADMINISTRATIVE ASSISTANT Lisa Snell
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PHOTO COURTESY TMH/DAVE BARFIELD
PRESIDENT/PUBLISHER BRIAN E. ROWLAND
54 8 TOURISM
Leon County sees more than 2.35 million visitors in 2015, breaking records.
10 E CONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
Tallahassee/Leon County’s first strategic economic development plan gets the green light.
COMMUNITIES INSTITUTE
Economic development is enhanced by cultivating a more engaged community.
Magnets are becoming an economic force to be reckoned with.
A native Tallahassean is taking the lead in forging the area’s economic future.
54 TALLAHASSEE MEMORIAL
Local startups are putting Tallahassee on the national map.
Budding community entrepreneurs are united with students seeking a master’s degree in business administration, to the benefit of both.
49 I NNOVATION PARK
52 N ATIONAL MAGLAB
23 B EN PINGREE
36 F LORIDA A&M UNIVERSITY
The colleges of Business and Human Sciences make students job ready.
Science and business enhance each other and are benefiting the community.
20 K NIGHT CREATIVE
A photography hobby parlays into an international company.
In an entrepreneurial atmosphere, students are educated to get a job — or learn how to create their own job.
RETAIL INNOVATION CENTER
From Gaines Street to Cascades Park, city and county officials join forces to tout successes, plan future.
32 B OB KNIGHT
COMMUNITY COLLEGE
44 F LORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY
12 I NFRASTRUCTURE
26 E NTREPRENEURISM
40 TALLAHASSEE
HEALTHCARE Young physicians enjoy the TMH commitment to progress and community they now call home.
58 CAPITAL REGIONAL
MEDICAL CENTER New physicians are being recruited to ensure Tallahasseans don’t have to leave town to get needed care.
61 REAL ESTATE
The region’s residential housing market is experiencing a resurgence, doubling sales.
ON THE COVER: Tallahassee’s Innovation Park is home to the MagLab, the most powerful magnet laboratory on the planet. An employer of more than 640 people, it generates $90 million in annual economic output in the Tallahassee area. PHOTO BY DAVE BARFIELD
2017 T A L L A H A S S E E B U S I N E S S J O U R N A L / 7
DETECT | | TOURISM
VISIT TALLAHASSEE
Growing numbers of tourists are coming, providing thousands of jobs by LINDA KLEINDIENST
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“These numbers are proof that Leon County’s investments in tourism strengthen our economy and enrich the quality of life for our citizens and visitors alike,” said County Administrator Vincent S. Long. “We are proud of the record year and sustained growth as Leon County Tourism continues to reach new heights.” 8 / 2017 TA L L A H A S S E E B U S I N E S S J O U R N A L
The Leon County Division of Tourism Development lends financial support to signature events, including Springtime Tallahassee, that contribute significantly to bed-tax revenues.
The county collects a 5 percent bed tax from hotels and short-term lodging establishments which fund all tourism promotions and other tourism-related activities. In addition, through Leon County Division of Tourism Development’s grants, $515,000 was invested locally to help fund sports, special and signature events in the county. The Council on Culture and Arts receives $1.25 million in tourism funds for its arts and culture events and capital investments. “There are positive indicators in visitation, spending and tourism-related jobs that frame our goal of achieving even more and reaching new heights,” said Kerri Post, director of the Leon County Division of Tourism Development. “We are closer to becoming a nationally recognized destination acclaimed for our tremendous outdoor recreation, dining, arts and culture, history and heritage, and entertainment.”
Local bed-tax revenue has increased for seven straight years. It presently generates more than $1 million in revenue per penny of tax. 2015–16 $5.3 million (projected) 2014–15 $5.14 million 2013–14 $4.56 million 2012–13 $4.37 million 2011–12 $4.23 million 2010–11 $3.85 million 2009–10 $3.66 million 2008–09 $3.24 million
LAWRENCE DAVIDSON
eon County Tourism continues a pattern of success in Florida’s Capital County as Leon County saw its seventh consecutive year of growth, reaching new heights in 2016. More than 2.35 million visitors — or 6,400 daily — from 47 different states and 36 countries generated $863 million in economic impact to the community last year. Tourism accounts for more than 14,100 jobs in Leon County. “In Leon County, our tourism industry is committed to excellence — and it’s proven by the seven years of growth in a row,” said Leon County Commission Chairman Bill Proctor. “Atop that track record, we anticipate more success in the coming year as we embrace new opportunities in the tourism industry.” Highlights of the 2015/2016 fiscal year include: » Tourist Development Tax (TDT or bed tax) collections through the first 11 months of the fiscal year (at $4.76 million) currently track ahead of last year’s 12-month record of $5.14 million. » National Hotel occupancy for the previous 12 months through August is 61.8 percent, ahead of the previous record year. » Leon County hosted 99 youth and adult sporting events, attracting more than 73,000 visitors and resulting in an economic benefit of $31.6 million in direct spending. » $17.5 million in visitor spending was generated by meetings and leisure groups. » 92 percent of area visitors are likely to return to Leon County, according to an independent research study.
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ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT |
TRANSFORMING ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT Local elected leaders adopt an aggressive plan to boost business and create jobs by LINDA KLEINDIENST
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in the county with its new, unified vision. Part of the plan that calls for an aggressive marketing strategy and development of a brand is designed to combat what consultants said is a negative impression some have of the community. Their report noted: “The area has the reputation for not being business friendly, being isolated, having high crime rates and being economically segregated. More harsh critiques note its persistent lack of investment, slow and siloed decision-making, absence of coordination, little or no discernible strategic planning and even an overall complacence related to local economic development efforts.” With concerns over who would decide how to spend the sales tax money when it starts to flow — and how best to utilize those dollars — city and county leaders decided to join forces early in 2016 to enhance and better coordinate economic development efforts. The move led to the dissolution of the Economic Development Council that had been operating alongside the Greater Tallahassee Chamber of Commerce and had been the prominent force behind the county’s economic development efforts. “Economic vitality efforts will be constantly monitored by our elected city and county commissions, numerous citizen and technical advisory bodies, including broad representation of leaders from our thriving industries, universities, researchers and economic development experts,” Pingree said. “Never have our unique and worldclass assets, resources and quality-of-life attributes been so aligned with a vibrant entrepreneurial ecosystem to leverage the success that is anticipated.” The plan will be implemented through the county’s Office of Economic Vitality under the direction of Al Latimer, a former highranking executive with Enterprise Florida.
The strategic plan sets four primary goals to grow jobs, create businesses and build a collaborative network to expand economic opportunity: » Implement a new, collaborative economic development program of work that stimulates economic expansion in the city and county across all unique opportunities for growth. » Better promote the area as a business generator, an ideal location to start and grow a business. Brand and market the community’s strengths in this capacity. » Better identify, understand and align all available assets, organizations and resources toward shared economic growth objectives. Encourage collaboration among the many entities affecting the economic development environment to work together for maximum competitiveness. » Leverage and maximize the existing framework toward the responsible allocation of resources to achieve today’s goals as well as to refine the foundation for future growth and opportunities.
Tallahassee-Leon County’s Top Assets
» E ntrepreneurial Development »R esources for Personal Sustainability » Talent Pipeline » Quality Education »A dvanced Technology Resources » S mall-Business Development »Q uality Infrastructure » S ocial Infrastructure (Nonprofits) » Business Resources »C ultural Amenities and Natural Resources Source: Tallahassee-Leon County Economic Development Strategic Plan
SEAN PAVONE / SHUTTERSTOCK.COM
J
oining forces in a new, holistic approach to economic development, city and county leaders have adopted a comprehensive strategic plan that will serve as a springboard to change how Tallahassee and Leon County pursue economic growth and job creation. The plan, which is the first of its kind in the county, is designed to help local officials develop and market a new, business-friendly atmosphere while better coordinating local business development efforts and resources. It also sets the groundwork for how Leon County will spend $90 million in sales tax revenue approved by voters for economic development. That money will begin flowing to the county in 2020. “Working in close partnership with our many economic co-creators, partners and stakeholders over the next 20 years, this new strategic plan will guide effective, efficient and transparent economic growth in accordance with specific goals and metrics outlined to exceed industry best practices for stimulating fiscal success,” said Ben Pingree, director of Planning, Land Management and Community Enhancement (PLACE), a joint city-county planning department. The plan was developed by VisionFirst Advisors, which is led by Gray Swoope, the former head of Enterprise Florida, the state’s lead economic development agency. It was approved in late October by the Blueprint Intergovernmental Agency (BIA), a committee composed of the city and county commissions. In its report to the BIA, the consultants stressed the need for “purposeful, measured action and intentional collaboration” and promised that their comprehensive strategic plan will “transform the face of economic development”
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efore retiring as a Navy officer in 2010, Ben Bowersox decided to seek out and pursue a Master of Business Administration (MBA) online from Florida State University’s College of Business.
Bowersox said he chose FSU because of its flexibility. The program allows students to complete coursework at times that work best for them each week. “I found that FSU’s program was fully online with no campus visit required. That made it very pro-military.” Now a wealth adviser for Capital City Trust Company in Tallahassee, Fla., Bowersox encourages fellow veterans to follow his lead. “Sure you can have a great career after the military without a graduate degree, but why not differentiate yourself and add value to your resume?” Move forward today with an MBA from Florida State.
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INFRASTRUCTURE |
ADMINISTRATORS IN A CAR GETTING COFFEE Rick Fernandez and Vince Long tool around town talking about infrastructure by ROSANNE DUNKELBERGER
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12 / 2017 TA L L A H A S S E E B U S I N E S S J O U R N A L
VINCE LONG County Administrator
RICK FERNANDEZ City Manager
Infrastructure provides the underpinnings for neighborhoods of all sorts from the eclectic — think Gaines Street, right — to residential, commercial and industrial environs while exerting a profound influence on communities’ futures.
PHOTOS BY LAWRENCE DAVIDSON (RIGHT), SCOTT HOLSTEIN (LONG), AND COURTESY CITY OF TALLAHASSEE (FERNANDEZ)
lick on a light switch. Take a shower. Drop the kids off at school. Drive to the grocery store. Stroll around Lake Ella. Flush the toilet. Catch a plane. While the word “infrastructure” isn’t on the tip of most people’s tongues, these fundamental facilities and systems are the underpinnings of modern society. Roads, sewers, water pipes, schools, government buildings, parks, sidewalks, electric lines … and the list goes on. Many are unseen, literally underground, while others are so ubiquitous we don’t even give them a second thought — until the lights go out, the toilet backs up, a school is too overcrowded for your child to get in or a favorite road is closed for reconstruction. Two of the people paid to think about such things — so you don’t have to — are County Administrator Vince Long and City Manager Rick Fernandez. Both were born in New York City and each has been working in local government for more than 20 years. They spent a rainy morning in Fernandez’s SUV driving a reporter around, pointing out projects of interest while keeping up a running commentary about the inner workings of infrastructure. By way of background, much of the money to fund infrastructure is included in the annual Leon County and City of Tallahassee budgets — the city’s power plants, wastewater treatment facilities, road repairs and such. In 1989, voters approved an additional one-cent sales tax (on top of the 6 percent assessed by the state and a half percent for schools) in supplemental money for transportation projects — most notably the expansion of Capital Circle Northeast — and law enforcement facility improvements.
2017 T A L L A H A S S E E B U S I N E S S J O U R N A L / 13
DETECT | INFRASTRUCTURE |
Ten years later, voters approved an extension of the penny sales tax through 2019 for infrastructure relating to transportation, storm water and flood control, and greenspace acquisition and parks. And in 2014, voters extended the penny tax for another 20 years, through 2039. It’s often called “Blueprint” money, named for the city/county organization that oversees its distribution. Most other Florida counties assess this penny tax, but how the millions in Blueprint money generated over the years are parceled out is unique to our hometown and a point of pride for the area’s top administrators. Long explained: “Most cities and counties, once that penny is authorized, they’ll come up with a list of city projects and a list of county projects — roads and parks, jails and libraries — all your typical county and municipal type uses,” he said. “One of the things we did as a community here that was so different (is) … the business community and the environmental community … got together and they started thinking: ‘What would be possible if we didn’t just come up with those lists of projects — if we planned holistically and integrated parks and roads, and we FAMU Way and found a way where the Capital Cascades Trail — roads could operate Blueprint-funded as … economic corriimprovements to dors that connected FAMU Way provide a scenic welcome to people with commerthe campus. cial activities and we could create parks that were linear and a storm water facility could become a world-class park.’ It was sort of conceptual at that time.” The city and county commissions at the time caught the vision and assigned staffers to join together with this group, known as the Economic and Environmental Consensus Committee, to start planning. 14 / 2017 TA L L A H A S S E E B U S I N E S S J O U R N A L
“No exaggeration, it was a complete game changer,” Long said. “It’s just a department of the city and county governments but people statewide know the Blueprint philosophy. You can build and design where you get multiple benefits from a single project that (is) planned holistically and without regard to city and county jurisdictions.”
The Gaines Street Effect First stop on the Magical Infrastructure Tour was Gaines Street. Plans had been in the works to upgrade and improve the stretch of road lined with mostly old, mostly industrial buildings and vacant lots, but the timeline was accelerated during the economic downturn. “We did it at time when the costs were the least expensive to the taxpayer and the jobs were needed the most,” Long said. Of course, there was also the little matter
of envisioning how a busy, four-lane thoroughfare could be downsized to two lanes. “People went absolutely crazy, particularly our public works staff,” Fernandez recalled. But $28 million worth of construction that included upgraded underground water and sewer utilities and relocated utility lines carried on. The result today is a collection of wide, stroll-able sidewalks, on-street parking, gas lamps, a roundabout and other amenities that attracted about $250 million in private investment in shopping, restaurants and residences. Parallel to Gaines is the ongoing upgrade of FAMU Way, a city road that runs along a portion of the Capital Cascades trail as well as a small park. “This is an example of what we want (Tallahassee) to look like,” said Fernandez, pointing out a pair of roundabouts — including one providing a second entrance to Railroad Square — gently curving lanes including bike lanes, medians and lots of landscaping. “You could have done two lanes and made it work, but we wanted it to look special.” Instead of a grassy ditch surrounded by a chain-link fence, an adjacent storm water pond is terraced with seating that’s “more like a little park,” said Fernandez. “The idea was if you have little gatherings, a little music or whatever people want to have, they could hang here.” Even the overpass above it was designed to be used as a mini-bandshell.
LAWRENCE DAVIDSON
… In 2014, voters extended the penny tax for another 20 years, through 2039. It’s often called “BLUEPRINT” MONEY, named for the city/county organization that oversees its distribution.
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INFRASTRUCTURE | The area is within eyeshot of the Capital Cascades Connector, a pedestrian bridge over South Monroe Street, scheduled to be completed early this summer. It has taken its knocks for its $5 to $6 million price tag, but its supporters think its modern style evoking a tree canopy will make it a perfect
entranceway to what the administrators consider the area’s most recent infrastructure triumph — Cascades Park.
The Cascades Park Triumph Parked on a hill overlooking the park, the pair took a mental victory lap at what was
once a toxic superfund site, transformed into a massive storm water system with recreational features that help it do double duty a world-class park. In the past, said Long, the so-called highest and best use surrounding the property was parking garages. “Without this park it would just be nasty buildings, warehouse, those kinds of things,” said Fernandez. “You can just imagine how the land use is going to change around this park,” Long chimed in, as he looked at metal buildings and old state office buildings abutting the park. Local arts groups and developers are currently being asked what they envision in their place. “I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see very high quality high-rise residential and mixed use.” As a sidelight, Long pointed out a new, circular sidewalk tunnel under the railroad trestle that runs over Lafayette Street. “The (Cascades Park) project it took us to the bridge … which was one of those artificial barriers. You had to walk out in the street to take your life into your hands,” he said. With improvements made along Lafayette Street, including the tunnel, people from the Myers Park neighborhood can now easily walk to the park.
The Long View
County Administrator Vince Long says the widening and other improvements to Mahan Drive (top) made it possible for the regionally popular Bass Pro Shops (right) to fast track their move to Tallahassee. Long and City Manager Rick Fernandez envision this fenced-in retention pond near Market Square (above) as an attractive, walkable park once improvements are made.
16 / 2017 TA L L A H A S S E E B U S I N E S S J O U R N A L
Just up the street, construction of the Magnolia Multi-Use Trail is in its early stages. Plans had been discussed “oh my god, forever,” according to Fernandez, to improve the stretch of Magnolia Drive between South Monroe Street and Apalachee Parkway. When completed in 2019, the $7.9 million worth of improvements will include covering the drainage ditches on either side of the road with a 10-foot-wide multiuse trail, a traffic signal at Jim Lee Road, sidewalks, and upgraded benches and landscaping. Driving along the section of Orange Avenue between Blair Stone Road and Southeast Capital Circle, the administrators praised it as an example of forward thinking. While it looks like a 230-foot-wide road to nowhere, they envision it lined with easily accessible businesses, similar to what’s popping up along a similarly large Southeast Capital Circle. By contrast, Capital Circle Northeast is about 130 feet wide. Any major widening projects there would
an average of 50 miles and two and a half hours to shop there. So Long knew if and when the regional outdoors mega-retailer came knocking, it was going to be with a list of demands for infrastructure, fast-track permitting and a request for $6 million in economic incentives. One day, a representative of Bass Pro did appear, but the company was in a hurry to plant their flag in the area before their competitor did. So, said Long, no incentive was required and the newly widened and improved Mahan Drive — a straight shot from Interstate 10 — made it easy to fasttrack the retailer into an existing building in Fallschase, formerly occupied by Sportsman’s Warehouse. When it opened in 2013, the 70,000-square-foot store brought 200 jobs to the area. “The reason that store is there is this road,” Long said. “You’ve got to ask yourself: ‘Without that road built to that standard, would Bass Pro have come in that close to town or would they do their usual model, which is to be right there on the interstate?’”
LAWRENCE DAVIDSON
Along the Interstate
entail condemning property and relocating businesses along the roadway. North Monroe Street is even more “constrained.” With businesses built close to the curb, “it’s not like you can go in there and expand sidewalks or medians,” said Long. “You’ll see improvements there. It’s an important gateway and it’s going to continue to get a lot of attention, it’s just you have a lot fewer options.” Surveying Orange Avenue, Long said, “This is how you build a road for the next 50,
60, 100 years. As far out as it sounds, we’ve accommodated what future transportation modes might be. If you’re you’re talking about rail or other things, the right of way is big enough to accommodate it.”
Mahan Drive Lands a Big Fish It’s a fact: City and county administrators get together and compare notes and share intel. In their world, Bass Pro Shops is a huge get, bringing jobs, money, visitors and a certain cachet to a community. Its customers travel
On a quick jaunt up Interstate 10 to the Market Street area, Fernandez pointed out what he called the county’s “hidden gem,” the Miccosukee Canopy Road Greenway, a linear park that meanders from Fleischman Road six miles to the interstate. “I’m there all the time,” he said. He also drew attention to the woodsy area that is slated to become the massive Welaunee community, as well as a spot that could become the newest interchange on Interstate 10. Getting off at the Thomasville Road interchange, both commented on the infrastructure triumph that is the Capital Circle flyover. “It’s pretty awesome, isn’t it? They said nobody would use it,” said Fernandez. However, one shouldn’t expect a quick and easy solution to the hot gridlocked traffic mess below it where Killearn Center Boulevard, Capital Circle and Thomasville Road converge. “Having the interchange to the east could take a load off this interchange,” he said. “To fix the problem here is like a billion-dollar solution.”
Reimagining Market Square The area today known as Market Square started with a shopping center near I-10 — 2017 T A L L A H A S S E E B U S I N E S S J O U R N A L / 17
INFRASTRUCTURE |
soon to undergo a major re-do. Other strips of shops and restaurants popped up independently, growing along with the residential areas in Tallahassee’s Northeast. But there wasn’t coordination in their construction so, even though convenient to each other, they weren’t easily walkable. “You can sort of see the opportunity for pedestrian movement, but it’s not accommodated very well so it creates those artificial barriers,” said Long. Efforts are underway to create a “sense of place” in the area, including a traffic circle at the corner of Market Street and Maclay Boulevard South. But the piece de resistance of the plan is a new rectangular-shaped park that will incorporate the two large holding ponds just south of Premier Health and Fitness Center. People walked under a nearby electric transmission line, creating a trail. “We said OK, everybody’s using it as a walkway, 18 / 2017 TA L L A H A S S E E B U S I N E S S J O U R N A L
let’s create a walkway,” explained the city manager. The city is currently acquiring property, some of it donated. Where there is now an electric substation and wires overhead, a collection of power poles on the ground and a view of the backs of buildings, Fernandez envisions in five years a chain of three ponds and an attractive park. “It’s going to be super gorgeous.”
Economic Development and Infrastructure At the end of the tour, Fernandez and Long did stop for coffee at the Lucky Goat on Capital Circle and discussed a new facet of the latest penny approved for Blueprint. For the first time, funds from the tax will be set aside for economic development — a total of $90 million over 20 years. The pair are suggesting that Blueprint set aside $20 million of that economic devel-
opment money to piggyback on the $400 million investment FSU will be making to build a new hotel, parking garage and business school near the Donald L. Tucker Civic Center. The money, they said, would be used to build 50,000 to 80,000 square feet of meeting space, which would put Tallahassee in the running to host larger gatherings. “We’ve got over 200 state associations (in Tallahassee) and nobody has their annual conference here because we can’t accommodate their floor space.” Rather than trying to grow the economy here by offering incentives to existing outof-state businesses, the two suggest infrastructure is where money is better spent. “The biggest thing we can do for economic development is exactly what you saw today,” said Long. “(Businesses) come for what we do well — parks, schools; they come for something like the amphitheater.”
LAWRENCE DAVIDSON
Built at the convergence of Capital Circle Northeast and Thomasville Road, the “flyover” has helped to keep traffic moving at one of Interstate 10’s busiest interchanges.
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KCCI |
BRANDING A CITY
“Community Catalysts” have been changing the Tallahassee landscape for 10 years by JASON DEHART
B
efore there was the artsy and edgy “Gaines Street,” there was simply Gaines Street — a gritty, workaday industrial corridor near Tallahassee’s downtown. Before there was “Midtown,” there was simply a midtown area in the triangle formed by North Monroe Street, Thomasville Road and East Seventh Avenue. And before there was the vibrant amphitheater and family playground known as “Cascades Park,” there was Cascades Park, an old industrial wasteland languishing for redevelopment. No doubt, these parts of Tallahassee were destined for better things. In 2007, the Knight Creative Communities Institute came to town and worked with city leaders, committees and various partners to guide these developments and improve economic development. “KCCI enhances economic development by helping cultivate a more engaged community, and then, through that, implementing projects that enhance the sense of place in Tallahassee,” said Betsy Couch,
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executive director of KCCI. “What we’re doing is we’re building upon (existing) assets. We’re taking something that we already have in town and looking at how can we make it better, how can we make more people aware of it? And you’re creating new places.” The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation picked Tallahassee in 2007 as the incubator for a pilot economic development program driven by the “creative class” principles espoused by economist Richard Florida. According to his theories, economic growth is fostered by creating a “sense of place” that is attractive to a wide range of artists, musicians, engineers, educators and other assorted intellectuals. In short, if you have the right kind of atmosphere and amenities, you will attract the right kind of people who drive the economy. “Research shows that strong communities with a strong sense of place have strong economic development growth,” Couch said. “Areas with a strong sense of place appeal to the ‘creative class,’ and that fosters an environment of growth in entrepreneurship, of
BY THE NUMBERS
Creating a Sense of Place Gaines Street
The Get Gaines Going team worked with the city of Tallahassee to revitalize Gaines Street and push the development timetable up by 11 years. Gaines Street now has become an economic development engine. A total of $11 million has been invested by the city of Tallahassee Community Redevelopment Agency since 2011 in large-scale incentives to support major redevelopment projects in the Gaines Street area. This money resulted in approximately $195.8 million in private investment, most of which was used locally. The estimated increase in post-development taxable value is nearly $150 million.
Midtown
ALICIA OSBORNE
Betsy Couch, executive director of KCCI, stands in Cascades Park, which is a venue for concerts, festivals and everyday enjoyment.
creative ideas, and it fosters areas that appeal to a wide variety of talent.” KCCI depends of a diverse set of volunteers, called “community catalysts,” to serve on various project teams. There are between 10 and 16 volunteers on each team; over the past 10 years, more than 200 catalysts who have served on 20 or more projects. KCCI trains volunteers on Richard Florida’s principles, reminds them of the city’s assets, and gets them to work together on projects that further enhance those amenities, Couch said. “One of the nicest unintended consequences is it fosters a deeper connection and creates future leaders,” she said.
The Identify Tallahassee team enhanced a sense of place and instilled civic pride in current and future residents in Midtown. The Midtown Action Plan was the basis for including a large-scale Midtown placemaking project as part of the Blueprint sales tax extension. The project includes a number of key improvements totaling $22 million. More than $500,000 has been secured for enhancements to the Midtown area.
Cascades Park
The Cultivate Cascades team conducted research on Cascades Park, pushed for a more extensive amphitheater and collaborated with community partners to develop Discovery, a unique “playscape.” To date, 28,349 people have attended paid concerts in the amphitheater. The economic
impact of the 2015 Avett Brothers concert alone was $620,200. The total economic impact for Word of South Festival 2016, which took place in Cascades Park, was $871,700. On any give day, you will see a variety of people, from all walks of life, enjoying Discovery in Cascades Park. The Discovery project connected more than 35 private and public partners to bring the playscape to life. This resulted in more than $300,000 in cash donations and more than $250,000 in of-kind donations.
Explore Outdoors
The Explore Outdoors team worked to promote Tallahassee and the surrounding areas as a premier outdoor recreation destination. In 2010, the team worked with Visit Tallahassee to create the Explore Outdoors Task Force, which worked to promote the Big Bend region as a premier outdoor recreation destination with world-class, nature-based resources. The team’s efforts ultimately led to the branding and marketing of Trailahassee.com, which attracts nearly 20,000 unique annual visitors; 25 percent of the 2.3 million annual visitors to Tallahassee-Leon County participate in outdoor activities. (Data from Visit Tallahassee)
EllaVate
The EllaVate Lake Ella team made improvements to Lake Ella, including lighting, landscaping and porch swings. They also helped coordinate events such as Food Truck Thursday to drive more traffic to Lake Ella merchants and truly make it a “place to be.”
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Quality and Compassionate Care
Capital Regional Medical Center is Committed to the Care and Improvement of Human Life. Capital Regional Medical Center is a fully-accredited healthcare facility with more than 1,100 employees and 500 physicians. A 266-bed, acute-care hospital that offers 24/7 Emergency Services in Leon and Gadsden Counties including; a Pediatric ER, Senior Care ER and an Express Care ER. We also offer a Bariatric Center, Behavioral Health Center, Cancer Center, Chest Pain Center w/PCI, Comprehensive Breast Center, Family Center, Heart & Vascular Center, Orthopedic Center, Physical Therapy Services, Seniors First, Stroke Center, Surgical Services, Wound Healing Center, Network-of-Care Affiliated Physician Practices, and more.
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BEN PINGREE |
THERE’S NO PLACE LIKE HOME
Ben Pingree’s goal is to make Tallahassee-Leon County thrive by ROSANNE DUNKELBERGER
ALICIA OSBORNE
B
en Pingree is bullish on Tallahassee. As the new Director of PLACE — an acronym for TallahasseeLeon County’s department of Planning, Land Management and Community Enhancement — it’s kind of his job to envision a rosy future. But when the affable 41-year-old speaks, he exudes good vibrations. Tallahassee, he declared, has come a long way, and is about to come into its own as a nationally recognized center for culture and commerce. “This is a community that has gone far and wide to find out who we want to be,” Pingree said. “We went to Madison, Chattanooga, Raleigh, Austin and last year we went to Boulder. They were great trips and we learned different things, but I think finally Tallahassee is realizing that the secret sauce to our success is that we’re going to be ourselves. We’re going to utilize … our greatest assets and attributes and resources and craft a tomorrow that other communities will travel to come and visit when they want to have a glimpse of who they want to be. “All of the key ingredients that we need have been here. But they have never been so well aligned as I see them right now,” he continues, “Yeah, I’m excited about it … you betcha.” In his new position at PLACE, which began Feb. 1, Pingree initially was in charge of the city/county planning department and the Blueprint intergovernmental agency.
Ben Pingree walks FAMU Way, which was one of the projects revamped and reformed by PLACE.
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BEN PINGREE |
Pingree takes seriously the opportunity to bridge Tallahassee’s present and a robust future.
“We have never seen in this community the playing field so ready for significant private-sector economic investment and vitality.” — BEN PINGREE, DIRECTOR
OF PLACE, TALLAHASSEE-LEON COUNTY’S DEPARTMENT OF PLANNING, LAND MANAGEMENT AND COMMUNITY ENHANCEMENT “Over the years, I have worked with Ben on complex, important and high profile policy, program and management issues that face our community,” he said. “Ben is a team player, a problem solver and a proven rare talent with a distinct understanding of the unique environment of local government and an ability to consistently achieve results for the community.” In 2006, Pingree left the county to serve as Wakulla County administrator. Thirty-two years old at the time, he was the youngest city or county manager in Florida. His ambitious plan to build a team and pass a county charter were realized within two years. But by year three, as an “outsider,” he realized his time in the rural community was up. He moved to Miami to serve as the president and CEO of the Zoological Society of Florida (now known as Zoo Miami). His duties included meeting with members of 20th Century Fox to encourage a billiondollar theme park to be called Miami Wilds. But three years later, in 2013, “I realized that as much as I enjoyed it, I wanted to come back to my hometown,” he said. And he wanted to bring to Tallahassee his family including his wife, Alexandra, an IT consultant who works as a contractor for the
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state Department of Agriculture; daughter Elle, 21, now a student at the University of Florida; and sons Philip, 16, a rising senior at Maclay; and Harrison, 10, who attends Riversink Elementary. Pingree led the area’s Economic Development Council at the Greater Tallahassee Chamber of Commerce until leaving there for his current position. Since his return, Pingree said he has seen the “hundreds of hours of meetings and planning and charettes” that he attended at the turn of the century produce results in the form of the Gaines Street revitalization, Franklin Boulevard and Cascades Park, and the creation of local Community Redevelopment Agencies. “In just the last 2½ years, the progress has been force multiplied yet again,” he said. “We have never seen in this community the playing field so ready for significant privatesector economic investment and vitality.” But Pingree’s praise veers back to the personal when talking about his own reasons for coming home again: “Tallahassee has an amazing draw. I’ve left it, and I’ve come back twice. And I’ve always been sad to go and happy to come. “It’s always been home.”
ALICIA OSBORNE
Less than a month later, the newly created Office of Economic Vitality also came under his purview. The latter group is in charge of encouraging economic development throughout the county and, starting in 2020, will administer an estimated $94 million to support those efforts, paid for with a portion of an extra penny in sales tax. Pingree was born in Tallahassee, his parents both steeped in state government. His father was twice secretary of the Department of Health and Rehabilitative Services under Gov. Bob Graham, while his mother was a senior official with Secretary of State and Florida Cabinet member George Firestone. His parents divorced and he moved with his mother to Miami, where he would attend middle and high school. After that, he went to Boston University, parlaying his baseball talents into a year in Australia starting a team at the University of Queensland. He would also spend a semester in Spain training with the Spanish Olympic baseball team. Before graduating BU in 1996, he landed a “dream job” in the front office of the Philadelphia Phillies. But life got in the way. He turned down the position to move back to Miami to help his mother, who was undergoing cancer treatment. Pingree would spend a year as a social worker there. “I loved the work, I loved caring for my mom but I knew that I needed to get back to graduate school,” he recalls. He returned to Tallahassee and Florida State University to pursue a master’s in public administration. His plan was to go into the family business — state government — but “a chord was struck” when he took an elective class in local government, taught by his one of his now bosses, County Administrator Vince Long (his other boss is City Manager Rick Fernandez). Within months after graduation, Pingree was working for the county, first in the budget office, and then in a variety of other positions throughout the early 2000s. “I was, to use the baseball term, a utility player,” he said. “I was doing things like helping create the EMS system, helping create an uninsured health care program, a lot of program development, program creation, budget management. Periodically I would be called on to run different departments. … I loved every minute of it.” Long sings Pingree’s praises.
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ENTREPRENEURISM |
GROWING STARTUPS
Local entrepreneurs have put Tallahassee on the national map by ROCHELLE KOFF
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Gabe and Saralyn Grass, owners of Grasslands Brewery, brewed up a business that pours business into Tallahassee. ALICIA OSBORNE
hen Gabe Grass was conjuring up tasty beers in his backyard, the idea of becoming one of Tallahassee’s prime brewmasters was still a fantasy. But in February 2015, he opened the Grasslands Brewing Company taproom on Gaines Street, and the business has been evolving ever since. Grass will tell you that transforming malted barley, hops, yeast and water into a quality craft beer isn’t easy, but it may be less challenging than crafting a great beer into a business. “It’s easier to make beer,” he said. “It’s been said that running a brewery is 5 percent making beer and the rest cleaning and paperwork. But I’m doing something I’m passionate about. And I care about the community and adding to it.” Grass said he is grateful for the opportunity to turn a dream into a reality, a common theme in Tallahassee’s growing entrepreneur community. Tallahassee was named a Top 50 City for Entrepreneurs by Entrepreneur Magazine in the publication’s August issue. The ranking was part of a partnership between Entrepreneur Magazine and Livability.com. Tallahassee ranked 46th on the list and was one of only three Florida cities. (Orlando was No. 15 and Miami No. 33.) There’s more. The “In Real Terms” column for Five ThirtyEight, the statistical analysis company from numbers wizard Nate Silver, reported in September that Tallahassee was No. 9 on a list of 20 cities with the fastest-growing rate of startups from 2009 to 2014, based on U.S. Census data. While a 1.1 percent increase doesn’t seem dramatically different, it represents a sign of hope, said those in Tallahassee’s entrepreneurship universe. What’s more encouraging is that there has been a lot of progress since that time, with numerous factors fueling the entrepreneurial spirit in Tallahassee. “Overall, the community has embraced the culture of entrepreneurship,” said Keith Bowers, regional director for the Florida Small Business Development Center at Florida A&M University. “Everything started to sink in after the Great Recession. When the economy started to hit rock bottom, every industry suffered across the board.”
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He pointed to a “a laser-like focused effort” to promote new businesses, vital since “98 percent of the jobs created each year are created by small-business owners,” Bowers said. “A light went on somewhere and the city, county, FSU, TCC, FAMU, the Chamber of Commerce and the then-EDC (Economic Development Council) got on the same page for the first time and said, ‘We’ve got to work together to drive economic growth through entrepreneurial programs,’” said Larry Lynch, director of the Entrepreneurial Excellence Program. “We have a lot of smart people here, and they weren’t staying in Tallahassee.” Aside from the Entrepreneurial Excellence Program, FAMU’s Small Business Center and the local brainpower, business leaders point to a growing interest from investors and The Jim Moran Institute for Global Entrepreneurship. The institute, which is under the FSU College of Business, will move to a standalone building in 2017 as part of a $100 million gift from Jan Moran and The Jim Moran Foundation, along with expansion of the institute’s programs statewide. The gift will also enable FSU to create what will be one of the nation’s largest interdisciplinary, degree-granting schools of entrepreneurship. Another crucial step has been the opening of the startup incubator Domi Station. Domi Station was launched in 2014 in a former warehouse building provided by the county off Railroad Avenue. Domi’s mission has been to drive entrepreneurship in a variety
of ways. The nonprofit venture offers collaborative work space, which varies in price depending on the amount of time needed and space required, with individual desks and eight offices. All participants can take advantage of Domi Station events, activities and mentorship. “There’s so much value when people plug into an entrepreneurial or community space,” said Lucas Lindsey, Domi Station’s executive director. “We push the idea that you’re not just building a business, you’re building a city, too.” Tallahassee has developed an infrastructure to spur the entrepreneurship community, said Jay Revell, vice president for the Greater Chamber of Commerce. “We have a trajectory that continues to grow,” he said. Domi attracted a handful of startups from the get-go, and last year 35 teams, 18 of them student-run, went through the facility’s sixmonth incubator program. The program offers three months of intensive training, called a boot camp, that emphasizes the development of a business, financial and marketing plan, followed by three months of implementing the plan, accountability and growth. The program also encourages mentors, with 25 mentors volunteering their time. “We work together,” Lindsey said. “There’s a lot of collaboration.” Much of that collaboration is organic, a sharing of information that naturally occurs when sharing space with other dreamers. “Domi started at a time when people were hopeful of what could happen,” Lindsey said.
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“There were some people launching startups here and there, starting tech businesses and flying under the radar. Over the last few years, we’ve had more tangible examples of people whose stories have created a lot of excitement and inspired more and more people.” One of those people was Mark Powell, who founded a Tallahassee startup called HWind, which grew from a one-man effort Domi Station provides to a team of 12 in collaborative less than two years. workspaces, HWind was the first workshops and mentorships company housed to flourishing at Domi Station to entrepreneurs. become acquired by a larger company, RMS, a Silicon Valley-based firm that specializes in risk modeling. Powell went to RMS as vice president of model development, brought his team and opened a Tallahassee office. Powell began developing his datatracking system while working as a scientist for the federal National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. He switched from flying into storms with hurricane hunters to analyzing ground data, creating a system to be used in real time. But the research was shelved for years, which nagged at Powell. He eventually petitioned NOAA for the commercial rights to the process he invented during his 30-plus years there. After about 18 months, he received the rights to his work. “I had the benefit of over 30 years with a research organization and the ability to develop technology here,” Powell said. “The organization (NOAA) valued getting technology out and bringing it to the private sector.” When Powell left NOAA to start his own firm, he took advantage of courses at the Small Business Development Center at FAMU, attended the Entrepreneurial Excellence program and was a member of Domi, using its office space. “Tallahassee has a lot going for it,” Powell said. “There’s a rich talent pool here. And there’s a rich ecosystem of advisers and people and groups who want you to succeed.” Despite all the advances in entrepreneurship, the city is still lagging behind in encouraging more diversity in business. Tallahassee tops the list of the most economically segregated cities in the United States, according to a report released in February 2015 by the University of Toronto’s Martin Prosperity Institute.
LAWRENCE DAVIDSON
ENTREPRENEURISM |
YOUR DOWNTOWN DISCOVERY BEGINS AT TALLAHASSEEDOWNTOWN.COM 2017 T A L L A H A S S E E B U S I N E S S J O U R N A L / 29
ENTREPRENEURISM |
“Like most communities, we have challenges when it comes to diversifying our economy. Our greatest hope for doing that is to create a thriving entrepreneurial ecosystem.” — JAY REVELL,
VICE PRESIDENT FOR THE GREATER TALLAHASSEE CHAMBER OF COMMERCE Participants could include catering, spice or sauce makers, bread or jelly makers. “You move out of that space and you develop a business,” she said. “People are looking for a way to make their passion a full-time job, and that’s what a commercial kitchen provides. It has the potential to diversify our economy and change our situation for the better.” Lynch, of the Entrepreneurial Excellence Program, said starting a business helps people escape dependence on an employer. Both Powell and Grass attended the Entrepreneurial Excellence Program, which started in 2011 and has worked with 130 startup teams in nearly six years. The 10-class program, with classes offered twice a week, is housed under the Leon County Research and Development Authority in Innovation Park. The cost is $400 for a team of two people and includes dinner provided by one of its alumni, Vale Food Co. Participants “get a feel for teamwork, and a lot of discussion happens in that half-hour before class,” Lynch said. Classes taught by local business pros help students develop a business and financial plan and includes a “Shark Tank” pitch experience. “We talk to several other companies in the same boat, and we learn from each UberOps CEO Eduardo Gonzalez, other,” said Jodi tracks data on Chase, CEO of health concerns in F u l l S c a leNA NO. Florida including Zika, the flu and “Tallahassee has a bioterrorism. culture of helping each other. There’s a culture of cooperation, not competition.” FullScaleNANO is one of Tallahassee’s relatively new, cutting-edge startups. The company was started in 2012 by Jeffrey Whalen and a team of scientists. The firm works with nanotechnology, which sounds like it belongs in a science fiction movie but
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has a growing number of uses, from touchscreens to monitoring bodily functions. Tallahassee entrepreneurs continue to be a pretty varied bunch, including the under-theradar UberOps (not related to the car service). UberOps, a data integration and cloud computer company, helps the U.S. Centers for Disease Control track data on health concerns including Zika, the flu and bioterrorism. The firm recently traveled to Vietnam to assist that country’s health ministry. “Not many people know we exist,” said UberOps CEO Eduardo Gonzalez Loumiet. “We deal with some of the most sensitive information in the United States. And we’re here in Tallahassee.” Within the past year, UberOps formed the startup Bloomdot, which prevents deadly delays when a baby is born by utilizing “seamless electronic communication” for screening test orders and results. Attracting investors is another key challenge for Tallahassee startups. Angel investors have invested in 10 Tallahassee-based companies, providing more than $1.7 million over the past year in a variety of fields including software, technology, medical devices, agriculture and aquaculture, said Matt Johnson, of Tallahassee’s new chapter of the Florida Angel Nexus. All members have to be accredited and meet standards, including income and net worth. “Angel investors are high-net-worth individuals who invest their own money into highgrowth companies,” Johnson said. “Venture capitalists invest other people’s money.” “Raising capital is incredibly difficult and demanding on an entrepreneur,” Johnson said. “We feel this is our moment to create a long-term sustainable investment group in Tallahassee. It would be nice to be able to find great companies that deserve investment in our own backyard.”
SCOTT HOLSTEIN / ROWLAND PUBLISHING FILE PHOTO
“Like most communities, we have challenges when it comes to diversifying our economy,” Revell said. “Our greatest hope for doing that is to create a thriving entrepreneurial ecosystem.” One promising endeavor is Tallahassee’s first food-based incubator to be housed in the historic neighborhood of Frenchtown. Entrepreneurs with a passion for cooking can utilize the space of a commercial kitchen to develop a business in one of the city’s poorest neighborhoods and food deserts. But applicants don’t have to live in Frenchtown to be considered for the program. KitchenShare, expected to open in summer 2017, will be inside the West Georgia Street Heritage Hub, where a farmers market is located. KitchenShare will be accessible 24 hours a day, with space available for up to 40 clients paying $15 an hour rent. Participants can also take advantage of resources in learning the food business. “Tallahassee has the willingness and interest to purchase locally grown food, so the foundation is here,” said Michelle Gomez, director of Heritage Hub. Residents see the project as a way to help an area burdened by sluggish growth. “We have people knocking on the door, wondering when it will open,” Gomez said.
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BOB KNIGHT |
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ICONS OF THE PHOTO BUSINESS Bob and Gail Knight have created millions of memories by KAREN MURPHY
Bob and Gail Knight take their turn in front of the camera after 40 years of photographing others.
BRUCE PALMER
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nyone graduating from a Florida high school or college or crossing the finish line at one of the world’s prestigious endurance races — or simply placing a child on Santa’s lap at the mall — is probably doing business with Gail and Bob Knight. For 40 years, the Knights’ firm has photographed iconic events in people’s lives and captured the pride, excitement and drama of those defining moments. What started with Bob Knight photographing sorority parties for beer money as a Florida State University freshman has grown into a multimillion-dollar company, now known as Iconic Group. It provides professional photography services at 10,000 events worldwide and takes 53 million consumer images per year. The company’s beginnings were modest. With only a Minolta SLR camera, one flash unit, 20 rolls of film and a $5,000 loan from his dad, Bob’s first big job was sorority bid day in 1976. He ran his business, known as Bob Knight Photo (BKP), from his one-bedroom apartment near campus and sorted photos on his coffee table. His business quickly expanded to six other college campuses throughout Florida. In 1977, Knight approached Leon High School’s principal about photographing its commencement. “At the time, no one was doing that,” he remembers. “There were plenty of portraits but no graduation pics.” The principal loved the idea, but Knight had to figure out how to do it. He says he and his “intrepid team” figured out how to run 100 yards of electrical extension cords out to two cameras in the middle of the football field where commencement would take place. The photographer would shoot and change cameras while the other one was reloaded. 2017 T A L L A H A S S E E B U S I N E S S J O U R N A L / 33
BOB KNIGHT | “It worked,” Knight says. “It was wildly successful. Parents loved it.” Today, his company is the world’s largest commencement photography business, with 77 percent market share of Florida high schools and 96 percent market share of Florida colleges, as well as substantial market share all over the country. In 1979, Knight began dating Gail Fitzgerald. She graduated from FSU in 1982 with an accounting degree, then moved to Miami, where she worked with Peat Marwick Mitchell & Co. and became a Certified Public Accountant. Gail returned
5,000 people and you need them all photographed and identified and products sent out in a short period of time, that was what we were good at.” In 1986, those abilities landed BKP the opportunity to work with the Walt Disney Company. The company was hired to photograph Disney’s Grad Night. Over a fournight period, BKP photographed 12,000 students a night and mailed the photos within 48 hours. BKP then took on Disney’s Cast Christmas party and ticketed events such as Mickey’s Very Merry Christmas Party and Mother’s Day at Epcot.
“It is an amazing story. We had a lot of help along the way and we had some great people working for us, some really smart people. It wasn’t just me and Gail, it was the team that Gail and I were able to put together that was key.” — EVENT PHOTOGRAPHER AND ENTREPRENEUR BOB KNIGHT
to Tallahassee in 1983 and married Bob the following year. “At this time, BKP was doing $2 million in revenue, shooting 100,000 graduates,” Gail Knight says. In January 1985, Gail Knight left the local accounting firm she was working for and joined BKP full time. “We had vowed we would never put all our eggs in one basket,” Bob Knight recalls. “We didn’t know how long this gig would last. We thought it might be a house of cards and any moment come falling down. For both of us to be in this fledgling business was risky.” But the risk paid off. BKP rapidly expanded through the 1980s and ’90s and became a solid regional firm. Bob Knight says the best advice he was given was to find that one thing he was really good at and do that one thing better than anybody in the world. “That really helped us focus,” he says. “My business is all about large volumes of pictures for large volumes of people, no family pictures or portraits. If you have
For 15 years, Disney was BKP’s single biggest client. Annual revenues were $500,000. “(Disney’s) Michael Eisner sent us a letter when we crossed the 2 million photo mark,” Bob Knight recalls. “We were adding them up like McDonalds’ (hamburgers).” In 2005, the Knights purchased a California graduation photography business. “We were then shooting 300,000 graduates and were a $10 million firm,” Bob Knight says. The couple soon realized that future growth would have to come through acquisitions. “But every time we bought, Bob and Gail were on the line and as we went on, we realized we didn’t want to risk everything we had on these acquisitions,” Gail Knight explained. So they began looking into private equity investment, with the goal of taking on acquisitions but using someone else’s money. Their new private equity partners recapitalized their business by buying BKP. “BKP sold in March of 2007 and Event Photography Group (EPG) was born on the
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same day. That allowed us to buy the rest of the country,” Gail Knight says. “Within three months of that deal, we had more than doubled the size of our portfolio because we bought two key businesses, the biggest ones in the country, with the help of our private equity friends. “Now instead of 300,000 graduates, we had 1.4 million graduates, all within that first year, which made selling Bob Knight Photo look pretty smart.” Between 2007 and 2013, EPG purchased 15 other firms. Gail Knight was heavily involved in the accounting process and Bob Knight in the acquisitions. One of those acquisitions was MarathonFoto, the largest endurance-race photography company in the world. Another is WorldWide Photography, which sends 600 naturally bearded Santas to malls in 48 states. These brands join GradImages and University Photo. “Gail and I are still major stockholders,” Bob Knight says. “We replaced ourselves in 2013, and that was always the goal, to put management in place so we could step away. One day we woke up and we had done it. It was like, ‘OK, clean out your desk.’” The Knights still sit on the board, and Bob Knight walks through the Tallahassee office about once a week on behalf of the board, to see how things are going. Most of BKP’s management team remains with the company, now called Iconic Group. A new CEO, Denise Conroy, was recently brought on to lead it. “Bob and Gail’s partnership and marriage is legendary and has left an indelible mark on Iconic Group’s business, even to this day,” Conroy says. “From the moment you walk into our Tallahassee office, you feel their presence. They’re the perfect combination of ‘left brain/right brain,’ with Bob building the foundation for the business’ sales and marketing ethos and Gail complementing that with her financial acumen and analytical genius. They continue to advise and propel our business forward.” When Bob Knight steps back to reflect on the birth and growth of the business as objectively as he can, he admits, “It is an amazing story. We had a lot of help along the way and we had some great people working for us, some really smart people. It wasn’t just me and Gail, it was the team that Gail and I were able to put together that was key.”
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F AMU |
SERVICE LEARNING
FAMU consultancy projects unite students and businesses by STEVE BORNHOFT
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COURTESY TALLAHASSEE SEGWAY TOURS (RIGHT) AND JENNIFER COLLINS (LEFT)
T
im Nettles came to refer to them as his “MBA Girls” and intended not the slightest of slights in doing so. “They got to know my business inside and out,” said Nettles, the owner of Tallahassee Segway Tours at 1500 S. Monroe St. “They took a sincere interest in my product and made very clear recommendations about pricing and what they thought we could offer the market. They were especially helpful with suggestions about how we could best reach a younger demographic.” The MBA Girls are Britanny Boyer, Ana Parra, Andrea Soriano and Erica Thomas, four women who were closing in on their master’s degrees in business administration at Florida A&M University when they joined with Nettles in an MBA Candidates Consultancy Program project designed to mutually benefit both the students and the participating business. The consultancy is the final class taken by students in the MBA sequence at FAMU. As a capstone course, it requires that students employ concepts and tools that they become familiar with throughout their postgraduate studies. Dr. Jennifer Collins is the assistant dean at the Division of Management Services in the School of Business and Industry at FAMU. She was in on the ground floor when the consultancy program was established five years ago. “It used to be that a professor occasionally would find a business for students to interview,” Collins said, “or students might be asked Dr. Jennifer Collins, assistant dean to focus on a publicly traded at the Division of company that they could Management Services gather information on. The in the School of consultancy gives students an Business and Industry opportunity to interact closely at FAMU
Ana Parra, Erica Thomas and Andrea Soriano were closing in on master’s degrees in business administration at FAMU when they served as consultants to Tallahassee Segway Tours and helped get the business rolling. They were joined in the project by Britanny Boyer, not pictured.
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FAMU | with an actual business and see how everything in their curriculum comes together in making real-world business decisions.” The Florida Small Business Development Center at FAMU, headed by Keith Bowers, identifies businesses interested in taking part in a consultancy. Students are then matched by the FSBDC with businesses based on their “entrepreneurial DNA,” Collins said, and a survey completed by both the consultants and their client. Bowers said the FSBDC has a “vested interest” in the businesses it assists and endorses the consultancy program because it encourages his clients to harness new technologies and helps them repay their loans and create jobs. “We provide businesses with the perspective of diverse and very creative minds,” said Dr. Shawnta Friday-Stroud, dean of the School of Business and Industry at FAMU. “We work with businesses that, if they had to pay for the findings and recommendations our students give them, they probably wouldn’t get them. “Our program gives them the opportunity to vet ideas in a non-threatening environment.” Friday-Stroud makes the point that
“Our program gives them the opportunity to vet ideas in a non-threatening environment.” — DR. SHAWNTA FRIDAY-STROUD, DEAN OF THE SCHOOL OF BUSINESS AND INDUSTRY AT FAMU consultancy work may be especially helpful to students who have aspirations about one day becoming entrepreneurs, themselves. “They get to see a business through the eyes of an entrepreneur,” Friday-Stroud said. “It is one thing to read about starting a business in a book or to see something from afar, but in this program, students spend a fair amount of time closely interacting with the entrepreneur, and they get insights and nuggets that you cannot get in a textbook.” The consultancies culminate in a written report given to the client as a deliverable, and students make a presentation of their findings to an audience that includes the client, representatives of the FSBDC and Dr. Collins. “I look for evidence that the students have
demonstrated mastery of concepts from class and that they exhibited a high degree of professionalism in their dealings with the client,” Collins said. “They need to demonstrate strong written communication skills and come up with recommended strategies based on data. It is all about making data-driven decisions.” A couple of projects stand out for Collins. “When the Lofts on Gaines Street apartment project was in the building phase, students put together a wine-and-cheese event to attract potential buyers of units,” Collins recalled. “They shared floor plans of the apartments to those who attended and delivered prospective purchasers to the developer. Our students gained hands-on experience in event marketing.”
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FAMU | As part of another memorable project, students developed a Kickstarter campaign for NaughTeas, a distributor of ready-to-drink iced teas, and conducted taste tests at Cascades Park. “We were instrumental in helping that business launch,” Collins said. “Now, I see their product whenever I am at the airport.” In the case of Tallahassee Segway Tours (TST), students began with an assessment of the big picture before eventually arriving at the tactical level. They conducted a PESTEL analysis, which takes a look at “macro-environmental” factors in six areas that affect an organization: political, economic, social cultural, technological, environmental and legal. As a product of that analysis, TST was encouraged to consider variables ranging from the weather to lifestyle trends to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission. The “MBA Girls” divided TST’s target market into three segments – tourists/visitors, local residents and college students — and recommended strategies and tactics specific to each segment and applicable to the market as a whole.
Be the Blue #StandOutTally
Overall strategies were: » Establish and maintain a strong social media presence. » Increase visibility. » Create and market shorter and more varied tours. Recommended tactics related to those strategies included:
» Creating and taking “social media breaks” during tours. » Posting selfie pictures and videos with guests and using
upbeat captions featuring emojis. » Having a presence at activities including FSU tailgate parties and Springtime Tallahassee. » Establishing a “Ghouly Glide” tour with stops at “ haunted” locations in Tallahassee including the Lively Building, the Knott House and the Old City Cemetery. Collins was pleased to have heard recently from a member of the “Segway Team” who had accepted a job with a small business in Memphis. She was hired before the employer learned about the former student’s experience and expertise in business development. “The business needs some time and attention in those areas and the employer learned that they were getting in our graduate more than they thought they were getting,” Collins said. Nettles said that he was well served. “The students were very enthusiastic and very thoughtful,” Nettles said. “They weren’t just checking a box and getting a grade. They were invested in what we were doing. This was an opportunity for them to get involved in the real deal.” Would he recommend the consultancy program to other budding businesses? “Without a doubt,” Nettles said. Friday-Stroud said the consultancy program is consistent with the “service culture” at FAMU. “It is one of the ways in which we can give back to the community,” she said. “When we can help businesses succeed, the community benefits. The program is a win-win-win for the students, the clients and the community as a whole.”
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T CC |
GO GETTERS At TCC, entrepreneurship is just good business by ROSANNE DUNKELBERGER
LAWRENCE DAVIDSON
Y
ou can’t open a magazine or scroll through your social media feed without coming across a business story making reference to entrepreneurship. Whether it’s self-actualizing millennials looking for quality of life, the gig economy or tech startups, the DIY work life is the new, new thing. The times, they are a-changin’. Change — and entrepreneurship — is something Tallahassee Community College is wholeheartedly embracing, as it has throughout its 50-year history. TCC primarily serves as the two-year springboard to a four-year academic degree, still the chosen track for 75 percent of its students. But throughout its history, the college also has been the path forward for those who choose to blaze their own trail toward success. And in today’s fast-paced world, the community college is nimble enough to quickly evolve with changin’ times. “We want to educate students for a reason — and the reason is to get a job,” said TCC President Jim Murdaugh. “And if that’s the case, then we need to educate them to create their own job or educate them to go to work for someone else. We want to do all of the above.” The world, he said, “is changing quickly, the kinds of jobs the future will need are changing quickly … The jobs we’ll see in the next 10 years, many of them don’t even exist today.” Murdaugh served up an example: “How long ago was it that we didn’t even talk about a drone?” he said. “We put together a
TCC President Jim Murdaugh sparks and kindles the ideas of student entrepreneurs.
class to teach people how to pilot drones. It didn’t take us very long, it was a very popular offering, (and it’s) something we intend to expand.” Ditto for 3D printing. TCC’s Spark program is dedicated to entrepreneurs, with a wide array of credit and non-credit classes as well as opportunities for mentorship and collaboration with other locally based partner organizations — what TCC Vice President for Workforce Development Kim Moore calls Tallahassee’s entrepreneurship “ecosystem.” Oftentimes, people equate entrepreneurism with the words “young” and “startup.”
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And TCC offers plenty to its traditional students. The college’s Eagle Business Club has more than 200 student members who already have a business. And TCC reached down to the high school level, co-sponsoring entrepreneurial training and a competition for 1,600 Leon County students. “We want this to be a destination for budding entrepreneurs,” Moore said. But another important part of the equation, she said, is offering services to existing small businesses. “Whatever cycle or phase you are in in your business, that is where we work to
LAWRENCE DAVIDSON
support you,” Moore explained — all the way to the end with succession planning. TCC has always been plugged in to the business community, and now most notably with Corporate Solutions, which provides customized services to existing businesses to expand, from market surveys to getting down to nitty-gritty issues such as the number of employees to hire, their pay and work shifts, “and all the modeling that goes along with that,” Moore said. The college also works hand-in-glove with other groups promoting entrepreneurism locally, such as Domi Station, Florida State University’s new Jim Moran School of Entrepreneurship and Florida A&M University’s Small Business Development Center.
“We realize businesses have different needs. For instance, with Domi, there’s more of a focus and emphasis on technology,” Moore said. “There’s no reason why we’d want to duplicate that effort.” If a business is more manufacturing-oriented, “I know that our partners (will refer) them over to me because I have a manufacturing center.” And so, when it comes to an entrepreneur with a need in Tallahassee, “there’s really no wrong door … We really can create an entrepreneurship ecosystem where, wherever you go, your business is able to receive that support,” she continued. While espousing the virtues of entrepreneurism throughout its varied curricula,
Murdaugh thought it only right that TCC should practice what it teaches. “In addition to the work we’re doing with our students, which has been remarkable, I’ve challenged our leadership team to look at what we’re doing and try to find ways to be
“We want this to be a destination for budding entrepreneurs.” — TCC VICE PRESIDENT FOR WORKFORCE DEVELOPMENT KIM MOORE
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T CC | creative and entrepreneurial in running the college,” Murdaugh said. For example, the college’s Florida Public Safety Institute sits on 1,500 acres of land. TCC hired a forester several years ago to provide environmental stewardship of the property, ultimately including the harvesting of trees. “Last year, after we paid the forester, I think we netted in a quarter of a million dollars simply because we made a decision … We needed to manage that asset in a better way, and so we were both environmental in our approach and entrepreneurial in looking for additional ways to bring revenue into the college,” Murdaugh said. In a second instance, TCC is about to become something of an accidental business owner. When talking with city officials about what might be a “new and different” addition to TCC’s Capital Center, the idea of a coffee shop to promote foot traffic in Tallahassee’s downtown area was floated. After a few local companies passed on the offer, the college reached out to Starbucks, Murdaugh said. When the company suggested getting a franchisee, TCC decided take on the role — the only state college to be an owner/operator of its own Starbucks. The coffeehouse is set to open along with the college’s new Center for Innovation in December 2016.
What’s Your Entre-Personality? According to TCC’s Spark program, “entrepreneur” isn’t a one-size-fits-all moniker. Here’s a sampling from the Spark website (tccspark.com) of how different sorts of people approach creating their own business: ENTREPRENEUR You organize, manage and assume all the risk of your business or enterprise. This means you’re “all in.” INTRAPRENEUR You pursue an idea while maintaining the security of a full-time job. Most often, it translates into your business coming together on evenings and weekends.
BOOMERPRENEUR You guessed it — you’re a baby boomer tackling a startup idea. Most typically this occurs during retirement.
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FSU RETAIL INNOVATION CENTER |
RETAIL REV
FSU Retail Innovation Center prepares students for an ever-changing industry by TISHA CREWS KELLER
W
hat’s a high-tech, global, $5 trillion industry offering tremendous opportunities for career and income growth? Retail. As the Florida State University College of Business explains it, the modern retail industry is far more expansive than meets the eye, encompassing everything from product development to changing technologies and customized supply chains. The need for retail managers has never been greater, and the opportunities never so ripe for bright college graduates to launch a career in the retail world. In a somewhat rare partnership, the FSU colleges of Business and Human Sciences have joined forces to cross academic lines and create the FSU Retail Innovation Center. The mission behind the joint venture is to make students job-ready, and to build upon a shared concept of integrating real-world experience into the science of retail. FSU’s College of Human Sciences already runs the Retail, Merchandising and Product Development Center — or FSU Retail Center for short — under the leadership of industry veteran and Retail Center director Ann Langston.
Jim McLaughlin founded the Retail Innovation Center through the College of Business.
Luke Hopkins, assistant chair of the college’s Department of Marketing
Currently, the Retail Center mainly focuses on providing a point of synergy between retailing and related industries, the faculty and the students of the college’s Department of Retail, Merchandising and Product Development (RMPD). In addition to hosting speakers and recruiters on campus, the center sponsors annual events focused on professionally developing the RMPD students: the Scholarship Dinner, where companies provide scholarships and networking opportunities for students; the Retail Summit, an intense conference with lectures featuring insider perspectives on the future of retailing and product development; and the Retail Focus Panel, which features FSU graduates with careers in the retail industry sharing advice with students. The FSU College of Business, recognizing the value of such industry-studentfaculty interactions, has for years had a cross-course requirement with the RMPD department, so students in either program are exposed to both the business and creative sides of retail management. For Retail Center founder Jim McLaughlin, developing a next-generation Retail Center as a collaborative project was the natural next step in this fruitful partnership with his new “home” at the College of Business. He set the idea into motion, and colleague Luke Hopkins, assistant chair of the college’s Department of Marketing, worked with Langston to bring it to life. “The Retail Innovation Center was fueled by a $350,000 investment from the Florida Retail Federation,” Langston explained. “Its members were interested in expanding the offerings for retail programs across academia and tying together the two approaches at FSU.”
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The new Retail Innovation Center will build on what Langton’s team is already doing and add in more collaborative retail industry partners, investments from the industry and focus on bringing a more in-depth experience for the two programs’ students. “It will be the one of the only centers of its kind in the U.S.,” Hopkins pointed out. “That is, a collaboration between the retail programs of two colleges in one university.” Students in the College of Business’ Retail Management program learn the business side of retail — management, supply chain, marketing, etc. — while the College of Human Sciences’ RMPD scholars focus more on the merchandising function, including business strategy, design, product
COURTESY FSU COLLEGE OF BUSINESS/KALLEN LUNT (MCLAUGHLIN AND HOPKINS) AND COURTESY FSU COLLEGE OF BUSINESS/THE VITAMIN SHOPPE
Twenty-three FSU college of business students visited The Vitamin Shoppe on a recent NYC Retail Management Corporate Tour.
development, planning, allocating, buying, distribution, personnel management, floor merchandising and sales. In addition, College of Business students get exposure mainly to the grocery, home improvement and service sub-industries in retail, while Langston’s RMPD students focus on “softlines” and lifestyle products such as clothing and home department stores. “The Retail Innovation Center provides a resource for cross-exposure for students and retailers,” Hopkins said. “We already work very closely with the FSU Career Center, and our internship programs are very strong. With this Innovation Center, we can dig down and cover the breadth of the major (from both sides) but also drill down into the specialties.”
Industry partners such as HSN, Stein Mart, Ashley Furniture, Southeastern Grocers, ALDI, The Vitamin Shoppe, Ross, Kohl’s, Macy’s, Aveda and Turner Fine Furniture invest in the project through their annual dues and other fundraising events. They also provide internship placements for students in both programs, which is something retail graduates — and the retail industry — both need. “We have a very strong partnership with FSU that has come from our membership with the Retail Center,” said HSN’s Sandy Soto, vice president of talent acquisition. “This has led to a strong internship program at HSN, which has become a very strong pipeline for our entry-level positions for our Merchandising and Planning organization.
The strength of our internship program and the experience it provides to the students has received great recognition.” Bringing the two halves together in one Retail Innovation Center is a win-win for students and faculty in both programs, and it’s an idea that also excites the industry members of the Retail Center. “The ability to work with the school’s faculty and influence the school’s curriculum is an incredible opportunity for us,” Soto noted. “The business world — and the retail world at large — has and continues to change. The consumer, in terms of how they shop; the product and how it gets to market; pricing, presentation, the world of technology and shopping, are intersecting and evolving at rapid speed. Being a part
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Samantha Lisowski (graduated 2015) did a summer internship in NYC with the retail marketing/public relations agency Lippe Taylor. Samantha is now Inside Sales Manager for Cre8tive Technology and Design in San Diego.
of the Retail Center has allowed HSN to share current business changes and trends that could be integrated in curriculum, coursework and lectures. In turn, this allows the schools’ programs and students to be current in their business knowledge.” Besides fueling innovation at the academic level — Langston and Hopkins will bring the research side of retail academics into the center at a future point — Soto also points out that influencing students early in their career prospecting and collaborating with other retailers in the center are big bonuses for the company. “Even though we are all competitors, we are all advocates of this great retail industry,” she explained. “We all want great talent, and we want the students to see what the industry offers — opportunities, careers, longevity and great partnerships.” When the College of Business moves into the new building it has planned, the Retail Innovation Center will have new digs, complete with centralized offices for co-directors Langston and Hopkins, as well as facilities for training and meetings. For now, though, the Retail Innovation Center will begin its expansion in programmatic ways, bringing together industry leaders to give feedback and roundtable discussions at events such as the annual Seminole Futures employment event and developing an advisory board packed with center partners. Hopkins and Langston recognize that this innovative — and non-traditional, academically speaking — approach to academia-industry partnership is an accomplishment in itself. But they are quick to talk about the visions they have for its future, and the leadership above and around them that brought it to life. “FSU is very entrepreneurial,” Hopkins said. “The deans at both colleges have the same philosophy — thinking outside the box — and that’s what’s allowed this idea to grow. I think the issue will be how to keep the reins on it once it gets going.” For partners such as HSN’s Soto, that will be a welcome challenge. 2017 T A L L A H A S S E E B U S I N E S S J O U R N A L / 47
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INNOVATION PARK |
INNOVATION PARK Where science and business enhance each other
by TABITHA YANG
PHOTOS BY MATT BURKE (PAPER) AND COURTESY FSU PHOTOGRAPHY SERVICES (ZENG)
A
t Innovation Park, science and business dwell together in a symbiotic relationship. Located in southwest Tallahassee, the land that Innovation Park occupies was set aside by special charter in 1978 by the state of Florida so that university researchers and private tech companies could be housed side by side. The goal was for researchers, in addition to pursuing independent work, to help companies develop new products or improve existing ones. Being able to show examples of commercial applications for their work would also make it easier for the researchers to apply for grants. There are 17 buildings within the park, nine of which belong to Florida State University, two to private owners, one to Florida A&M University and five to the Leon County Research and Development Authority (LCDRA), which manages and oversees the park. Today there are 35 organizations and businesses that make their home in Innovation Park, most of which are university-affiliated. They employ about 1,900 people. The park has an additional 44 acres that could be developed to house future businesses or research facilities, as well as a 12-acre outparcel that could be used for a housing development. Innovation Park is not only an asset to the business and science communities, the 208-acre property is also a beautiful greenspace where wild deer, turtles and birds dwell in the woods and ponds next to the research facilities and high-tech manufacturing. While the park is currently a workplace, the LCDRA hopes to eventually build housing for graduate students and scholars and add nature trails to make it an attractive place to live and work.
Marvel in Real Life One of the notable tenants based in Innovation Park is FSU’s High Performance Materials Institute (HPMI). Some of the materials
HPMI is developing sound like they came straight out of a Marvel superhero movie. Take buckypaper, for instance. Thanks to carbon nanotube technology, this paper-thin, black material has the potential to be 500 times stronger than steel, is flame-resistant, and has energy storage and electromagnetic shielding properties. Amazing, right? Potential uses for buckypaper could include lightning-strike protection on aircraft. Buckypaper prototypes are currently being created on site by HPMI. At present, FSU is waiting for a viable private company to enter into a licensing agreement with it and begin manufacturing buckypaper on a wider scale. Another recent invention that has come out of HPMI is auxetic foam. Developed by FSU Associate Professor of Manufacturing and Industrial Engineering Changchun “Chad” Zeng, this foam has special shapechanging properties. When it is compressed, auxetic foam moves toward the point of
Changchun “Chad” Zeng took his talents outside of the FSU classroom to develop a foam with shape shifting elements. The manufacturing and industrial engineering professor makes and tests foams in hopes that they will prove worthy of the medical industry.
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LAWRENCE DAVIDSON
INNOVATION PARK |
Heat, ventilate and cool all with one machine. Danfoss Turbocor joined Innovation Park to further develop the first oil-free refrigerant compressor. Through collaboration with other companies, the mechanics and aerodynamics have vastly improved.
impact rather than away from it. This makes it perfect for absorbing impact; potential uses for the foam include body armor, prosthetic limb lining, hospital beds and football helmet lining. A private startup company, Auxadyne LLC, based out of Keystone Heights, Florida, signed a licensing agreement with FSU in 2014 and has begun producing and sending foam prototypes to interested companies. Auxadyne’s CEO, Joe Condon, said his company will focus on developing auxetic foam for use in athletic shoes and equipment, protective gear for first responders and medical device applications.
Aeropropulsion, Mechatronics and Energy Center Another of Innovation Park’s notable tenants is FSU’s Aeropropulsion, Mechatronics and Energy (AME) Center. The aeropropulsion sector of its research deals with air flow, which refers to how air travels over the parts of an aircraft or other vehicle or object. Researchers at the center want to find ways to change aircraft design to make airplanes quieter and more efficient. The mechatronics portion of the center
deals with robotics, seeking to design robots that can maneuver easily and efficiently over difficult terrain, such as sandy or rocky areas, as well as robots that can run, climb or fly. The AME Center is equipped with dynamic motion analysis equipment and sophisticated manufacturing tools that researchers can use to build and test their designs. The energy research the center engages in is designed with an eye toward finding ways to store and provide energy that is affordable, efficient and causes minimal harm to the environment. Current research at the center includes a project to develop a highly efficient, inexpensive portable PEMFC (proton exchange membrane fuel cell) system and some research into lithium-ion batteries, which could potentially be used one day to power electric cars.
Exporting Cool Air to the World The biggest private business in Innovation Park is Danfoss’ compressor manufacturing center. Danfoss, a large Danish company with manufacturing centers all over the world, creates a variety of machines and parts that are necessary for such applications as heating and cooling, refrigeration and
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industrial automation. The company’s goal, according to its website, is to “do more with less,” creating effective and sustainable technological solutions. Danfoss Turbocor, a member of the Danfoss Group, has developed the world’s first totally oil-free commercial refrigerant compressor specifically designed for the heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC-R) industry. Thanks to the opportunities to collaborate with researchers and engineers in Innovation Park, the manufacturing facility currently in Tallahassee was moved from Montreal to Innovation Park. Since then, according to Danfoss Turbocor President Ricardo Schneider, Danfoss has collaborated with several of the research and development entities in the park, including the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory, the FSU High Performance Materials Institute and the AME Center, which helped the company improve the aerodynamics of its compressors. Their facility in Tallahassee employs more than 160 people. “I know that just the proximity to the MagLab … has been fantastic for us, but also having lots of R&D (research and development) support from FSU has been probably one of the most valuable things in our manufacturing,” Schneider says.
Planning for the Future The LCRDA would like to make Innovation Park even more successful by adding more private businesses. “The challenge that we’ve had at Innovation Park is that there’s been more research facility development than there’s been private sector development, and that is something that we’re trying to remedy,” LCRDA executive director Ron Miller says. The LCDRA has a number of programs in place to encourage startup companies, including the Entrepreneurial Excellence Program and tech grants. The authority also wants to put a business incubator in the park, which would provide space for startups to house their companies, as well as equipment they could use to develop and test products, and other forms of support. Speaking of the park’s current $500 million annual impact and future prospects, Miller says, “It is really a tremendous economic resource that’s only going to grow.”
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NATIONAL MAGLAB |
There are at least four other spin-off businesses and research institutes that have sprung up in recent years, touching on everything from nanomaterial measurement software to researching renewable energy and difficult-to-refine oils for fuels.
Yuri Corilo of PetroOrg works with software that assists chemists in classifying petroleum.
THE MAGLAB
An economic force to be reckoned with by TABITHA YANG
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agnets strong enough to lift refrigerators. Cryogenic labs with gases colder than the coldest winters in Siberia. The National High Magnetic Field Laboratory, or MagLab, headquartered in Tallahassee’s Innovation Park, has these and more. It is the largest and most powerful magnet lab in the world and the only lab of its kind in the United States. In addition to its Tallahassee headquarters, the MagLab has two branch campuses, located at the University of Florida in Gainesville and at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. Together, they comprise the largest magnet lab in the world. Thanks to research done at the MagLab, science has moved forward on a number of fronts. Researchers are expanding our knowledge of the building blocks for quantum computers, for instance, as well as uncovering unique properties of a compound 52 / 2017 TA L L A H A S S E E B U S I N E S S J O U R N A L
called samarium hexaboride, which can behave simultaneously like a conductor and an insulator. Using powerful MRI technology, researchers at the MagLab have also advanced our understanding of strokes
New Businesses in Its Wake The work done at the MagLab has spawned a number of spin-off companies and research institutes. Omics LLC is one such entity. The company, which is based out of Innovation Park, markets PetroOrg Petroleomics Software, which enables chemists to quickly classify petroleum samples by chemical composition. Another spin-off company is Specialized Crystal Processing Inc., also based out of Tallahassee. The synthetically grown crystals the company produces have applications in commercial and military electronics, such as infrared sensors and magnetic random access memory chips.
In addition to contributions the MagLab is making to the scientific and business communities, it is also a valuable economic resource. Statewide, the MagLab generates $51 million in income annually and $121 million in economic output, according to a study published in 2014 by Florida State University’s Center for Economic Forecasting and Analysis (CEFA). It has also created more than 1,200 jobs. Over the next 20 years, the MagLab is forecasted to generate $2.4 billion in economic output and $1 billion in income, as well as create more than 25,000 jobs. CEFA’s study also shows that for every $1 invested by the state into the MagLab (the state contributes 23 percent of the MagLab’s annual $55.8 million budget), the lab yields $6.57 in economic activity in Florida. In addition, the 1,200 or so scientists “We are proud who visit and spend of the role the weeks in Florida National MagLab each year to do their plays in our community, both research generate in growing our another $2,821,673 local economy but for the state in also in provideconomic output and ing a stimulating $977,450 in income. environment in which entrepreIn the Tallaneurial scientists hassee area alone, can thrive.” — LAB the MagLab generDIRECTOR GREG ates $90 million in BOEBINGER economic output. Its facilities in Innovation Park employ more than 640 people. “We are proud of the role the National MagLab plays in our community,” lab director Greg Boebinger commented, “both in growing our local economy but also in providing a stimulating environment in which entrepreneurial scientists can thrive.”
PHOTOS COURTESY NATIONAL HIGH MAGNETIC FIELD LABORATORY ( CORILO) AND BY DAVE BARFIELD (BOEBINGER)
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Neurosurgeons Dr. Adam Oliver, left, and Dr. Matthew Lawson inspect images in a cath lab at Tallahassee Memorial HealthCare, where they helped introduce a “coiling” technique for arresting blood flow to aneurysms.
BUILDING THE TEAM Wave of new physicians reflects TMH’s commitment to excellence
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he call came in during a shift change. At 5 in the morning on July 2, a bus carrying migrant farm workers and members of their families sailed through a blinking red light at the Woodville Highway’s intersection with U.S. Highway 98 and slammed into a tractor-trailer rig carrying a load of munitions. Wakulla County and Leon County ambulances carrying a dozen seriously injured persons would be arriving soon at the Bixler Emergency and Trauma Center on the Tallahassee Memorial HealthCare campus at Magnolia Drive and Miccosukee Road. Personnel who were about to depart for the day were ordered to stay, ensuring that the center would have double the usual complement of nurses and technicians on hand to address an emergency of a sort that is often addressed in faux catastrophe exercises, but is not often real. Dr. Devin Bustin, 31 and two years removed from his residency at the Carolinas Medical Center in Charlotte, was on duty when it became clear that the Bixler ER was about to become a M.A.S.H. unit. Bustin took a call from the senior manager at Leon County EMS. Immediately, he recognized the voice. Steve Suarez and Bustin attended the same high school in South Florida. In short bursts, Suarez told Bustin what he knew about the accident scene to which he was hurtling. “Sixty to 70 people on the bus. Fire. No seat belts. It’s a mess. No one speaks English. Expect at least 20 traumas.” In response, Buskin initiated TMH’s mass casualty protocol. “It brings in resources from the rest of the hospital,” Buskin explained. “We called all the residents down. We called the ER doc who was due in at 6 and told her to get her butt up; we needed her.
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by STEVE BORNHOFT
We called in the medical director; a trauma surgeon, Dr. (Shelby) Blank; a neurosurgeon, Dr. (Adam) Oliver; an orthopedic surgeon, Dr. (Hector) Majia. Everyone was a on a short leash.” Before the first patient arrived, a system was in place. Buskin would triage cases as they came in through the ambulance bay, determining if they needed immediate attention or could wait 10 or 20 minutes and directing them where they needed to go. Residents performed procedures including sewing up lacerations. The orthopedist went from room to room setting fractured bones. “An anesthesiologist came down and put a breathing tube in one of my patients because I was doing a chest tube in another room,” Buskin recalled. It was, Buskin said, controlled chaos. “But a lot of things went right,” Buskin said. “We even had four people close at hand who speak Creole — a cleaning lady, a registration tech, a Red Cross volunteer and a trauma resident who had started with us just a day earlier.” The Wakulla collision occurred less than a month after the massacre at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, an event that led Buskin to ask himself how TMH would do in response to a similar situation. “Everyone got appropriate care,” Buskin reflected. “No one had a bad outcome due to something being neglected or missed, and that is remarkable when you have that kind of an influx. I mean, we had a plan in place, but that doesn’t guarantee that things are going to go well. I was pleased.” Tested, the community that is TMH came together in service to the larger community in a way that validated decisions made by talented young physicians to make Tallahassee their home. Four of those physicians are profiled here.
Devin Bustin, M.D. For Devin Bustin, who completed undergraduate studies (psychology) and attended medical school at the University of Florida, Tallahassee always had been enemy territory. So it was that Bustin, when he learned that Tallahassee Memorial HealthCare had an opening for an emergency room physician, decided to interview for the job “just for the experience.” That experience, however, would sell him on TMH. Bustin had completed his residency at the Carolina Medical Center, one of the top-five busiest trauma centers in the country and home to doctors who “wrote the books on emergency medicine.” “I could have gone anywhere,” Bustin said. He began to consider TMH seriously when he found himself interviewing not just with a doctor or two, but with the hospital’s CEO and chief medical officer. He was impressed by their pledge to stay out of physicians’ way and let them “do the right thing.” And he was excited by their willingness to help him establish at the hospital an ultrasonography program — “basically, it’s using an ultrasound machine at bedside to rapidly obtain information to guide your case management.” Bustin recognizes about TMH that “we’re not a big academic center, so we’re not going to be as cutting edge as Shands (in Gainesville) might be, but that’s OK. “What cutting edge facilities do best is cutting-edge stuff. A doctor treats you for a condition that he discovered and named. We do the bread-and-butter stuff and more very well, and meanwhile we’re very close to the cutting edge. When we have that rare bone tumor, we’ll transfer you to Shands, but otherwise, we’re all you could ask for in a community hospital.”
PHOTO COURTESY TMH/KIRA DERRYBERRY PHOTOGRAPHY (BUSTIN) AND TMH/DAVE BARFIELD
Matthew Lawson, M.D. Dr. Matthew Lawson displayed a device that essentially resembles a miniaturized plumber’s snake. Called a microcatheter, it is actually a delivery device that is inserted in the femoral artery in a thigh and run up into the brain. Upon arrival there, it is used to place tiny platinum coils in unruptured aneurisms. Several coils may be delivered, forming concentric circles that cause an aneurism to clot off. The procedure, developed in the 1990s, has through recent years mostly replaced the earlier practice of entering the brain through the skull and clipping aneurisms. Repeated studies have established that coiling consistently produces better outcomes than clipping. Coiling was introduced to Tallahassee in 2012 thanks largely due to the efforts of Lawson, an endovascular neurosurgeon. Practicing in Gainesville, where he had attended medical school and completed his residency and fellowship, Lawson, now 39, found
that many of his candidates for coiling were North Florida residents. On that basis, he perceived the need for his subspecialty in Tallahassee and began discussions with the neurological clinic here and with Tallahassee Memorial HealthCare. “I met with (TMH CEO) Mark O’Bryant and he assured me that the hospital was interested in building a room for endovascular work,” Lawson said. “So, the hospital wanted to do it and the clinic wanted to do it and, while I didn’t have anything in writing and we’re talking about a $3 million project, I committed to moving here and Mr. O’Bryant lived up to his word.” Lawson regards Tallahassee as a big little town when it comes to medicine. “New techniques and new producers come along and most community hospitals are slow adopters, but that’s not true at TMH,” Lawson said. “We recently became licensed as the only comprehensive stroke center in the region. We’re incredibly busy and we’re doing good things for people from Pensacola to Dothan to half of the way to Jacksonville.”
Adam Oliver, M.D. As a student of history, Dr. Adam Oliver — at this writing, he is reading a large tome on the lives and times of the Apalachee Indians — may have been especially susceptible to a parallel offered him by a neurologist he met while attending the medical school at Louisiana State University. For Oliver, 37, who grew up as the son of a physician, the language of doctoring has been part of his vernacular since childhood. Medicine always has been approachable; he never considered that it was something he could not do and, for a long while, he assumed he would be a family-practice doctor, just like dad. (Whit Oliver practiced in Blountstown when Adam was in elementary school and continues to practice in Tallahassee.) Oliver, however, was to become fascinated with neuroscience when he observed at LSU a Parkinson’s patient undergoing deep brain stimulation, a procedure that had the effect of restoring the patient’s ability to speak. “I saw that and I said, ‘That’s what I want to do,’” Oliver recalls. But the prospect of neurosurgery was intimidating. He was warned that the specialty is so consuming that “you won’t see your family, you will wind up divorced, you won’t have a life.” Dr. Jose Bermudez, who Oliver counts as a chief mentor along with his father, would cure the student’s reluctance with a story about Cortez. “Cortez’s troops were so diseased and sick and afraid of the Indians that they were going to mutiny,” Oliver began to repeat Bermudez’s story. “He was on the beaches at Vera Cruz and they were going to start their march to Mexico City and there were some Indians who were willing to help them. But the troops were afraid they were going to die there and wanted to return to Spain. So Cortez got up in the middle of the night and he burned his own ships. “If you want to become a neurosurgeon, burn your ships.” That, Oliver said, is some of the best advice he ever received. “Faced with adversity, you don’t dig trenches that you can fall back into,” he said. 2017 T A L L A H A S S E E B U S I N E S S J O U R N A L / 55
CHILDREN NEUROSCIENCE The Panhandle’s most advanced neurosurgery program, including brain and spinal cord injury care in addition to stroke and aneurysm treatments without opening the skull. Home to North Florida’s only Comprehensive Stroke Center and the region’s only Neurological Intensive Care Unit.
The Children’s Center is home to the only Pediatric Intensive Care Unit and Child Life Specialist in the region. More pediatric specialists and services are also coming to Tallahassee through a new affiliation with Wolfson Children’s Hospital.
WOMEN & BABIES On track to become Tallahassee’s first Baby-Friendly Hospital and focused on building better bonds between moms and babies. Home to the region’s only Newborn Intensive Care Unit.
TALLAHASSEE MEMORIAL HEALTHCARE
HEART & VASCULAR
TRAUMA
A leader in the Southeast for exceptional heart and vascular care and advanced clinical research. Home to the region’s only Structural Heart Program, Heart Failure Program and Certified Atrial Fibrillation Clinic.
The only Level-II Trauma Center in the region with the area’s highest accreditations, including a Comprehensive Stroke Center and Chest Pain Center with PCI.
TMH FOR LIFE Promoting health beyond our walls by challenging our community to be active, eat healthier, know their numbers and find their happy through free events, screenings, programs, classes and educational opportunities.
CANCER
ORTHOPEDIC Offering the most experienced orthopedic team in the area with custom joint replacement procedures, orthopedic trauma care and compassionate rehabilitation.
The most powerful cancer program in the Big Bend region with medical oncology, hematology, radiation oncology, surgical oncology and gynecologic oncology all in one facility. It is the longest continuously accredited comprehensive community cancer program in Florida.
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PHOTO COURTESY TMH/DAVE BARFIELD
Dr. Greg Hartlage Dr. Greg Hartlage is an image maker, not that he has anything to do with public relations. Rather, he works in cardiovascular imaging, a specialty that may prevent the need for cardiac procedures and ensures that surgeries, when they do become necessary, are a lot less invasive than they used to be. Hartlage, 35, is a Tallahassee native whose father, a family practice physician here, encouraged his son to go to law school. But Hartlage always has been of a mind to defy his father’s wishes, even if that meant following in dad’s footsteps. For his rebellious nature, his patients might well be grateful. The tools of Hartlage’s trade are cardiac magnetic resonance imaging, computed tomography and ultrasound machines. He turned to CT to illustrate what imaging can do for patients and their doctors. CT, he said, largely has eliminated the need for invasive cardiac catheterization. Now, it’s possible to assess plaque buildups without having to admit a patient to the hospital and run a tube into his heart. “We just put an IV in the arm, you lay on the scanner, we inject some dye and, in 30 to 45 minutes, you’re gone and we can look at the whole heart, inside and out — and we’ll have more information than a heart cath would supply,” Hartlage explained. Lots of people, Hartlage said, may experience symptoms that they fear may be attributable to heart disease — or they may result from acid reflux or a pulled muscle. “CT is a good way to prove that either a person has nothing to worry about or that he has plaque levels that have advanced to a point where preventive measures — diet, lifestyle, exercise, cholesterol medicine, aspirin — are warranted,” Hartlage said. “People need to know.” In asymptomatic patients, Hartlage employs a screen that looks for calcium, a marker for plaque. “A calcium score of zero puts you at an exceedingly low risk of developing any cardiac problems over the next five to 10 years,” Hartlage explained. In working with the structural heart team at TMH, Hartlage uses CT to precisely determine the size of a value that needs replacing. No longer is it necessary for a surgeon to cut through the chest, open the heart, remove the bad valve and take measurements. “That’s pretty cool,” Hartlage said with characteristic reserve. But he does not disguise his enthusiasm for TMH, its relationship with his employer, the Southern Medical Group, and its commitment to supplying doctors with the best tools available. “For a city of its size, Tallahassee is an exceptionally advanced place and TMH has put a lot of resources into keeping it that way with a ‘build it and they will come’ philosophy,” Hartlage said. “We get patients referred here from Gainesville.”
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CRMC |
BRINGING DOCTORS TO TOWN Community needs guide hospital’s recruitment efforts
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hey’ve lived through natural and economic disasters. They’ve waded into political and social turmoil. They’re energetic and proactive, but they’re also cautious and maybe even a little tight-fisted. They’re millennials, and they love Tallahassee. From boardrooms to emergency rooms, companies throughout Florida’s capital city are benefiting from the tenacity, compassion and maturity that characterize the wave of vibrant 30-somethings that has descended upon our corner of the Big Bend. Mark Robinson, president and CEO of Capital Regional Medical Center, says that the hospital receives “myriad resumes from young physicians who are coming out of their residencies and fellowships. Some
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by KIM HARRIS THACKER
of them grew up in Tallahassee and are looking to come back home; some are not satisfied with their current situations; some are looking to settle in a city where they know they can live for the rest of their lives. Tallahassee presents itself as a place where you can have a great lifestyle without the headaches that come with living in bigger cities.” Heather Lowery, physician recruiter for the North Florida division of Hospital Corporation of America (HCA), of which Capital Regional is a subsidiary, agrees that Tallahassee is an up-and-coming community; but the city’s appeal isn’t the only thing that is important to physicians who are hoping to settle down. “When we’re looking to attract physicians, we talk about the growth of the hospital and how we keep up with technological
PHOTO BY SAIGE ROBERTS AND COURTESY CRMC/RAY STANYARD AND CRMC/SCOTT SMITH OF CADE & ASSOCIATES (ALLEN)
On Feb. 29, 2016, Capital Regional Medical Care opened its new, full-service clinic on Bannerman Road. The clinic has extended hours and welcomes walk-ins.
advancements,” says Lowery. “We also talk about community involvement and the number of patients we serve. We have a busy ED (emergency department), which physicians like to hear.” The life of a doctor won’t always be busy days in the emergency room, but Robinson and his colleagues at Capital Regional have a plan for that, too: “We’ve developed an attrition plan for all of our doctors, which means we work directly with them to help them plan their future. This helps us plan for the hospital’s future, which then helps us know the future of the entire community.” And at Capital Regional, it’s all about the community. “Everything we do from a recruitment perspective, especially when it comes to physicians, is based on community need,” Lowery says. “It’s our goal to keep patients in Tallahassee, so they don’t have to travel to find quality health care and to provide patients with the best care possible.”
Keeping patients in Tallahassee is one reason why Capital Regional recently opened Capital Regional Medical Care, a primary care clinic located in the Bannerman Crossings shopping center in north Tallahassee. The clinic takes walk-ins and has extended hours, since, as Robinson puts it, “Life extends beyond Monday through Friday, nine to five.” Currently serving at the new clinic are Dr. Brian Allen, who specializes in family medicine; nurse practitioner Lynn Steele and a new hire: pediatrician Dr. Maci McDermott. The new clinic is not the only Capital Regional facility that has benefited from recent hires. Family practice physician Dr. Shamil Castro joined Capital Regional Medical Group at SouthWood in October. When asked about the challenges that arise while recruiting young physicians like Dr. McDermott and Dr. Castro to the area, Lowery replies that she doesn’t care for the word, “obstacles.” “I like to think in terms of ‘opportunities,’ ” she said. “Yes, we’re experiencing a physician shortage in this part of the country. Less people are going to medical school and less are graduating from residency programs; but our parent company, HCA, is addressing this shortage by creating more residency programs.” Dr. Bruce Deighton, HCA’s Vice President of Graduate Medical Education, is quoted on the company’s website as having said, “As the nation faces a worsening physician shortage, it’s vitally important that medical school graduates have access to quality residency programs. At HCA, we are using our scale and expertise to support sustainable pipelines of superior, patient-centered physicians who will care for our communities for generations to come.” The Nashville-based company’s “Training Program Outreach” assists residents and fellows with the transition from medical training to medical practice by offering them financial assistance along with seminars on the business side of medicine. Hospital Corporation of America’s commitment to excellence is echoed at Capital Regional. “We want people to be comfortable and to trust their physician at all times, but especially when they’re injured or sick,” Robinson says. “It’s at those times when they are the most vulnerable.” A positive experience, whether during an operation or a routine checkup in the clinic, is a physician’s best form of advertising. “When people are looking for a physician, they do two things,” Robinson says. “One, they ask people for recommendations. And two, they go to the internet and check ratings. The quality of the health care we provide at Capital Regional Medical Center speaks for itself.”
Dr. Shamil Castro
Dr. Maci McDermott
Capital Regional Medical Center President and CEO Mark Robinson
Nurse Practitioner Lynn Steele
Dr. Brian Allen
2017 T A L L A H A S S E E B U S I N E S S J O U R N A L / 59
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There’s a new vibe coming from the north and it’s a divine mixture of daily needs meeting lifestyle tastes. OPEN NOW: Abby & Taylor Boutique • American Fitness • AT&T • Barber & Salon • Batteries Plus Bulbs Blu Halo • Capital Regional Medical Care • Diva Pops • Dunkin Donuts • Earthwise Pet Supply & Grooming Firehouse Subs • Giggles Indoor Playground • Lucky and Charmed Boutique • Mary Madison Boutique Marco’s Pizza • McGowen’s Hops & Grapes • Miyako • Moe’s Southwest Grill • Nail Bar • New Leaf Market • Nihao Panhandle PC • Red Eye Coffee • Sweet Blue • Verity Health • The Wharf • Wing Stop • UPS COMING SOON: Painting With A Twist • Sunglass Authority • Silver Linings Boutique • Subway Cafe MultiStone • Doa Restaurant • Dick’s Grill & Wings
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REAL ESTATE |
LAWRENCE DAVIDSON
Velda Oaks, a newly developed Premier Fine Homes community in Northeast Tallahassee features move-in ready homes.
RESIDENTIAL RESURGENCE New construction is on the rise by JASON DEHART
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allahassee’s residential housing market appears to be heating back up after years of experiencing a slow burn, according to prominent brokers and builders. “We are finally seeing signs of life. The market has been steady over the last eight years, but we are finally entering a growth market,” said Thomas Asbury Jr., internal operations manager for Premier Fine Homes. “From a new-construction perspective, yes, there has been a resurgence in the residential home market. We have almost doubled our sales for 2016 compared to 2015.” Over at Naumann Group Real Estate, broker/owner Jason Naumann concurred that there is a big demand for new construction. “The residential single-family housing market has been busier this year so far than we ever had for our company,” Naumann said. “To
give you an idea, we have more transactions and more dollar volume year-to-date than we had in 2005-2006. Now, the prices obviously are not where we saw them in 2005 and 2006, but they’re climbing back up. So the activity is by far there.” First-time homebuyers, downsizers and seniors are all looking for new homes, according to Naumann and Asbury. “Every market segment we have is buying. You have first-time homebuyers, downsizers, empty-nesters, professionals, move-up buyers,” Naumann said. “What I primarily have been focused on personally is an active lifestyle-type product with great location for people who are wanting to downsize. More of that niche, park-like neighborhood, not these big projects.” Asbury said that Velda Oaks, a Premier development and a highvolume community located off of Velda Dairy Road, started out as a neighborhood for all demographics, but it now appears that more people in the 55-plus age tier have bought homes there. “As we build our final two homes, we have found that over 85 percent of the homeowners in this community turned out to be ages 55-plus. Velda Oaks transformed into a front-porch, active adult community all on its own,” he said. Meanwhile, Ox Bottom Crest, another Premier development off of Ox Bottom Road, allows for all types of families, with the popular amenities everyone looks for. “For example, the schools zoned for this area cater to families, (and) low-maintenance living caters to active adults and emptynesters,” Asbury said. “Ox Bottom Crest has an HOA (homeowner 2017 T A L L A H A S S E E B U S I N E S S J O U R N A L / 61
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The 18 counties of Northwest Florida are positioned for significant growth over the next few decades, with research that projects a population increase of 21.24% by 2040..
Keep your finger on the pulse of the Northwest Florida region
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LAWRENCE DAVIDSON
REAL ESTATE |
Ox Bottom Crest embodies the needs of Tallahassee residents through desired amenities and an aesthetically pleasing environment.
association) that takes care of your lawn while home owners are out of town or on vacation, helping create a carefree atmosphere.” People are looking for new construction, good locations and good amenities, and certain developments are being sold out rather quickly, Naumann said. “We’ve got a new neighborhood off of Hi Lo Way that we sold out of, lot-wise, immediately, just as soon as we brought it to market. We have a project in SouthWood that we’re selling the heck out of,” he said. “We’ve got the Windsor Trace project we sold, and in the Braemore Park community that we’re doing next to Tallahassee Nurseries, I’ve got 28 single-family homes there. I have 53 people registered to buy them. I’ve not advertised once. I do not have any signs out. Just word of mouth.” The southeast and northeast sections of town remain popular, top-selling regions. “These two specific regions of the city are undergoing new commercial and retail complexes and are a major factor for the continued increase of residential sales,” Asbury said. “What buyers look for when searching for a new home is a lifestyle. They want a place where they can raise families, be active and feel safe.” Overall, Naumann said many new developments are being very successful at meeting consumer demand. “The project that Premier is doing at the corner of Ox Bottom, that’s been wildly successful because it’s really the only singlefamily, new-construction product out there. And Centerville Conservation has been very successful because it’s, you know, probably the only other one,” he said. “Other than that, it is lots here and there that people have been buying and building on. SouthWood continues to be extremely active with new construction because it’s a neighborhood that has the amenities in place. It has the golf course and tennis courts and pools and all that stuff, and people are drawn to that. Welaunee is coming online, but that’s still probably a year away. That will be a big draw for people, but until then, there’s not a whole lot of choices.” So what exactly are the hot new trends in home features? Asbury said it’s all about luminous interiors and energy-efficiency. “White cabinets, white backsplash and white tile,” he said. “The brighter, the better. Accent walls and energy-efficient homes. We build all of our homes to FGBC (Florida Green Building Coalition) and Energy Star standards. Sustainable products such as siding, shingles and low-E windows. Product warranties, which all combine into low-maintenance living.”
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