Bay County Business Journal

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A DV E RT I S E M E N T

As baby boomers move into the age of retirement, employers find themselves looking for ways to improve their work culture. Attracting and retaining top, millennial talent can be tough, especially if an employer doesn’t understand the kind of environment today’s modern worker thrives in. In this article, Kristine Rushing, the COO and Risk Consultant at Beck Partners, shares lessons learned and provides an insight on the Beck culture.

ATTRACTING + RETAINING

THE MODERN

WORKER

WITH UNBEATABLE WORK CULTURE

PROVIDING WHAT MILLENNIALS WANT “Millennials, or modern workers, simply want an environment where they can learn and grow. However, millennials aren’t the exception. This is a common expectation for everyone looking at employment opportunities,” Kristine explained. Millennials look for environments that are fun but also have a focus on relationships, friendships and being part of something worthwhile. Autonomy and the ability to make their own decisions drive environments millennials can thrive within.

“This is the environment we create for our team members at Beck,” Kristine said. Beck’s culture is “fluid”. It’s fluid because each person that an organization hires impacts their culture. This is one of the many reasons the hiring process is important.

» Providing what millennials want » The importance of continual learning and mentorship » Learn more about the Power of the Plus TO READ THE FULL ARTICLE

The Beck culture thrives off the continual growth and education of its team members. “We provide mentorship at a relational level,” Kristine said. Instead, the company focuses on depth of knowledge at a personal level that can be shared to sustain the big picture. With ties to other businesses and community partners, Beck provides a culture geared toward self-stimulation.

The knowledge an employee learns will lend itself to their individual talents, elevating the company. “We meet with every team member to develop professional and personal goals. Aligning each individual’s goals with their growth path and the company’s goals is beneficial for everyone,” said Kristine. Beck puts a prime focus on learning both soft and hard skills, aiding team members in not only being great at their job but being great at life. Employers should strive to promote this kind of growth within their company to attract and retain today’s modern worker. Taking steps toward that type of influential work culture can start with something as simple as a phone call.

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Beck Partners not only provides you with a full scope of services covering Commercial Real Estate, Insurance and Property Management, but we give you the Power of the Plus: a wealth of business expertise. From the little questions to the most important decisions facing your business, Beck can lend you the advice you need to travel along a path of exponential growth.

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| ECON OM I C D EV ELO P M E N T R O UN D UP

ASSET GROWTH Community partnerships are key to Bay EDA’s success

BY STEVE BORNHOFT

B

ecca Hardin was confident but couldn’t guarantee anything.

She had met officials with GKN Aerospace at the 2017 Paris Air Show and, through subsequent conversations, grew increasingly optimistic about the chance that the Bay County Economic Development Alliance might land the parts maker as a tenant at the St. Joe Company’s VentureCrossings Commerce Park near the Northwest Florida Beaches International Airport in West Bay. GKN, meanwhile, was facing a deadline for plant construction imposed by its customer, the federal government. As talks between the EDA and GKN continued, the construction timeline was becoming more and more compressed, and that concerned St. Joe CEO Jorge Gonzalez.

Gonzalez, then, took an extraordinary step.

With his go-ahead, St. Joe began construction of a factory building at VentureCrossings to GKN’s specifications, even though a deal between the EDA and the contractor had not been reached.

“There were some sleepless nights,” recalled Hardin, the EDA’s president. “If we hadn’t been able to do business with GKN, that would have 30

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been a career ender for me. And it wouldn’t have done Jorge any good either.”

Hardin and Gonzalez asked one another what they would do if negotiations went south.

Well, they agreed, there would be a nice, new, customized spec building to market.

“It’s extremely rare to find a partner who will share in a risk like that,” Hardin said. “But with that risk came great reward.”

Indeed. Already, GKN’s presence in Bay County had led to a decision by one of its suppliers, Advanced Composites and Metalforming Technologies (ACMT), to establish an operation in the one-time Honeywell building in Lynn Haven’s industrial park.

“We don’t get GKN without St. Joe, and we don’t get ACMT without GKN,” said Hardin, describing what she called a domino effect.

GKN, at this writing, has entered into a testing phase at its new plant, on its way to gaining approval for full production. Hardin was among local dignitaries who were afforded an opportunity to tour the 135,000-square-foot plant before any highly proprietary manufacturing operations commenced.

At the tour’s conclusion, said Hardin, the delegation was told, “We hope you enjoyed seeing our facilities, because you will never be allowed inside again.”

GKN had hired 70 employees as of May and has committed to creating 172 jobs. Of those hired, 30 percent are retired military personnel who arrived on Day 1 with top-secret security clearances.

Hardin refers to GKN as a “legacy project that has enhanced all of our recruitment efforts.” And, she added, the contractor “really likes our area and, as a result, they have been our greatest salespeople in the aviation world.

We have several active projects as the result of having GKN in our community. We take prospects through the VentureCrossings commerce park, and they see the GKN building and they see that we are building a spec building out there. Soon, they will see a hotel going up. They see the synergy that the GKN project brought to the properties around the airport.”

Hardin had pleaded for years with Gonzalez to develop a spec building, given the scarcity of available existing space in Bay County. When

PHOTOS BY DESIRÉE GARDNER (HARDIN) AND COURTESY OF THE ST. JOE COMPANY

Jorge Gonzalez and the St. Joe Co. yielded to repeated requests from Bay County Economic Development Alliance president Becca Hardin and agreed to construct a spec building at the Venture Crossings commerce park near the Northwest Florida Beaches International Airport.

finally he said yes to the idea, Hardin “screamed and hugged his neck,” she said.

“At St. Joe, we see land and lots and buildings going up pretty quickly,” Gonzalez said at a wall-raising event for the spec building held in May. A scheduled groundbreaking ceremony became a construction celebration, given the pace at which the project has proceeded. “But not everyone sees things that way. Becca satisfied me that this project will greatly enhance her recruitment efforts.”

Hurricane Michael wiped out what little building inventory Bay County had remaining after ACMT snapped up the Honeywell building and Air Temp, an auto parts manufacturer, acquired the one-time Boyd Brothers Printing property.

Hardin has assured Gonzalez that she will fill the new building quickly.In April,she and Garrett

Wright, the EDA’s vice president, attended MRO Americas Atlanta, an international trade fair, which is focused on maintenance, repair and overhaul in the aerospace industry.

Hardin talked up the spec building while there and lined up four businesses — all located in the U.S. outside the Southeast — who will be making trips to check out the project.

“I don’t think this space will be on the market very long,” Gonzalez ventured to say.

The “flex” building has been designed to accommodate one or as many as 10 tenants.

Each of the 10 bays making up the structure will feature front entries, rear dock doors and ceiling heights of approximately 28 feet. White Construction of Panama City, the project’s general contractor, anticipates that the building will be complete in September or October.

The spec building is one of three that St. Joe plans to develop.

The others will be located in the Panama City Beach Commerce Park and at the commerce park in Cedar Grove. In addition, St. Joe has announced plans to develop a 142-room hotel at the entrance to VentureCrossings.

Economic development efforts, then, have gained momentum in Bay County.

Seemingly long ago are the days when the EDA was in “dire straits,” Hardin said, its credibility shot and its relationship with local government in shambles after it convinced the County Commission in 2011 to advance an IT company, Redpine Healthcare Technologies, $350,000 in incentives.

Five months later, Redpine, which had pledged to create 410 jobs averaging $49,155 a year, shut its doors. It had hired a mere five people.

“We have several active projects as the result of having GKN in our community. We take prospects through the VentureCrossings commerce park, and they see the GKN building and they see that we are building a spec building out there. Soon, they will see a hotel going up.

They see the synergy that the GKN project brought to the properties around the airport.”

– Becca Hardin, president of the Bay County Economic Development Alliance

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“At St. Joe, we see land and lots and buildings going up pretty quickly. But not everyone sees things that way. Becca satisfied me that this project will greatly enhance her recruitment efforts.”

Neal Wade, who had done economic development work for St. Joe and had served as commerce secretary for the State of Alabama, was brought in to clean up the mess.

“Neal did an excellent job in creating a foundation so that when he hired me (in October 2014), I was able to come in and hit the ground running,” said Hardin, who moved to Bay County from Columbus, Georgia. “I immediately started reaching out to my contacts — site selection consultants, industry leaders — and my goal was to bring people here for visits, because we feel that if you can get people to Bay County, the county pretty well sells itself. We started turbo marketing Bay County and trying to get it on the international map.”

In that, Hardin has succeeded. To distinguish her product from those of competing communities, she talks up two key Bay County assets: the airport and properties around the airport and Panama City’s international deep-water port.

In recent years, the aerospace industry has been a focus for economic developers throughout Northwest Florida.

In Pensacola, ST Engineering Aerospace is new to the airport. Santa Rosa County has secured Triumph Gulf Coast dollars for development of an aircraft repair facility adjoining the Navy’s Whiting Field. Even Marianna is improving its commerce park in hopes of attracting an aerospace business.

“We do have a friendly competition, but I would say that Northwest Florida as a whole

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competes more so with Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia and the Carolinas,” Hardin said. “We don’t really compete with other parts of the state of Florida like Jacksonville, Orlando, Tampa or South Florida because they have their own niche markets and they are going to get their share of business. Our part of Florida is much more like other Southern states and they are extremely competitive.”

It doesn’t help that legislative funding for Enterprise Florida is shaky year after year.

“You deal with site selection consultants and international companies, and they read about Enterprise Florida and they wonder whether leadership at the state level supports economic development,” Hardin said. “That’s a question that we are always having to handle.”

NEEDED: PLACES TO LIVE

Among the problems created by Hurricane Michael was a housing shortage. As Hardin checks in with existing Bay County industries, she finds that employees are commuting to work from as far away as Tallahassee.

For those workers, new housing stock can’t be built fast enough. But, as to incoming businesses, Hardin isn’t as stressed by the immediate housing crisis. With the exception of businesses going into the spec building, newcomers will have no choice but to proceed with “Greenfield projects,” starting with a clean piece of dirt and requiring something like

18 months to complete. By then, Hardin hopes, the housing issue will substantially be resolved.

“You ride around this community and you see the apartments and housing developments already starting to go up, and I’m confident that in a year or so we’ll be in a much different place,” Hardin said.

For the Bay EDA, 2018 headlines included four welcome commitments …

Air Temp de Mexico, a leading supplier of automotive parts, including condensers, radiators and heat exchangers, announced plans to establish their first manufacturing operation in the United States in Panama City. The company is a Tier 1 supplier to Volkswagen, Nissan, Peugeot and Ford. It is occupying the former Boyd Brothers Printing property.

It has committed to creating 50 advanced manufacturing jobs and will be making a capital investment of $6 million.

Advanced Composites and Metalforming Technologies (ACMT), a supplier of components for domestic and international aerospace manufacturers, announced plans to open a new facility in Lynn Haven. ACMT, headquartered in Connecticut, is engaged in Original Equipment Manufacturing (OEM), Maintenance, Repair and Overhaul (MRO) operations, Adhesives and Chemicals lines, and its relatively new Airframe division.

The project represents a $20 million capital investment and will result in 105 advanced manufacturing jobs.

PHOTOS COURTESY OF THE ST. JOE COMPANY

– Jorge Gonzalez, St. Joe CEO

Revint Solutions, a revenue recovery business serving health care providers throughout the nation, is establishing a regional headquarters and employee service center at a facility in Lynn Haven. The company is based in Pennsylvania and has grown through acquisitions and the merger of several health care revenue integrity solution providers in the U.S. Once fully operational, Revint will add approximately $6 million in annual payroll to Bay County.

Butterfly Training, a developer of e-learning solutions related to airport security, airport safety, airlines and aviation manufacturing, announced plans to establish a U.S. headquarters in Panama City. The company, which has seven locations in Europe, is partnering with Gulf Coast State College in providing internships and apprenticeships to students in the college’s digital design program. It will be creating 10 permanent jobs.

Other activities, too, are adding to Hardin’s energy level.

Eastern Shipbuilding, she noted, is in the process of hiring 1,000 welders to help fulfill new contracts. Port Panama City has developed its east terminal on property purchased from WestRock, operators of the paper mill in Panama City. The EDA will be marketing additional nearby property to industrial operations requiring port access.

A “very, very active prospect,” said by Hardin to be an international company, is looking at the Intermodal Distribution Center north of

Panama City on U.S. 231. Progress toward a deal was delayed by the hurricane, but the prospect has now made several trips to Bay County.

Another international company, of Japanese ownership and with its U.S. headquarters in California, has made seven trips to Bay County as part of a site search.

“Every time they come, they comment on how much things have improved and they want to be part of the recovery,” Hardin said. “They see how resilient the community is and how committed it is to rebuilding. Those are the kind of companies you want in your community — people who are committed to the same things that you are committed to.”

ACMT sent a team of seven people to Panama City from its home office in Connecticut shortly after the storm.

“They stayed in Destin,” Hardin said. “They rode around for a few days and helped people cut trees down and clean up debris, and they handed out food and candy at a Halloween festival in Lynn Haven.”

LEAN, MEAN PROMOTING MACHINE

The Bay EDA team comprises just three people: Hardin, vice president Garrett Wright and Polly Jackson, the director of finance and administration.

“But we’re just the paid staff,” Hardin was quick to point out. “We have so many people in the community who help us with prospect

visits and dinners and hosting people. We have a fantastic group of allies. In Georgia, we had a good partnership with the community but nothing like here.

“People always answer my phone call, and they will drop everything to meet with a prospect.”

In particular, Hardin mentioned the relationship that the EDA has with Gulf Coast State College and Florida State University Panama City.

“We wouldn’t be in business if we didn’t have our educational partners,” Hardin said.

“I say all the time that I can’t get a prospect to the table to work on an incentives deal if I can’t convince them that we have a workforce available to meet their needs.

“Every single prospect we bring to town meets with president John Holdnak at Gulf Coast and dean Randy Hanna at FSU.” Holdnak was instrumental in finding the EDA office space on the GCSC campus.

When Wade was hired to rescue the EDA, he operated from a renovated house on Jenks Avenue.

“No way was I gonna stay there,” Hardin said. “I never would have brought a prospect there. Moving to the Gulf Coast campus is the greatest move we ever could have made.

“This is where we need to be. With the college, the university and the port right here and the workforce office just down the hall, this really is the economic center of town.”

The decision by GKN Aerospace to establish a manufacturing plant in Bay County has been seen as an important “first domino” by Bay County economic development officials. Businesses with a connection to GKN are coming to town.

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| HO U S I N G CRI S I S

PINCH POINT

Affordable housing is at a premium in the hurricane zone

BY STEVE BORNHOFT

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“Everyone will be entitled to due process,” Majka said. “That’s important for tenants and property owners — and their neighbors. We expect that when some property owners make an appearance before a magistrate, they will be assigned a firm deadline for getting their situations resolved. The assignment of that date lets neighbors know what to expect. They may wish that things could move along more quickly, but at least they know that the county is monitoring things.”

Majka said that in cases involving properties where no progress toward restoration is being made, the county will take steps to make sure that problems with rodents or squatters are not allowed to fester and that unsafe conditions are eliminated.

“We don’t want properties that have been abandoned or neglected to become a burden on neighborhoods,” Majka said.

The scope of the county’s housing crisis is considerable.

Of 8,400 apartments in the county, some 4,600 were damaged, Majka said. Of those, approximately 1,200 were rendered unlivable. In addition, two public housing developments, Massalina Commons and Fletcher Black, both located in Panama City, were destroyed.

“We don’t want properties that have been abandoned or neglected to become a burden on neighborhoods.”

– Bob Majka, Bay County Manager

Majka explained that 70 percent of Bay County residences are rentals, but FEMA’s individual housing assistance programs are geared primarily to homeowners.

“FEMA might provide temporary housing in the form of an RV placed in the driveway or yard of a home,” Majka explained. “The hurricane survivor then lives in that vehicle while his house is being repaired or rebuilt.

“But if you have a heavily damaged apartment complex, you can’t go in there and park 150 RVs on the property.”

As a consequence, displaced people have had to compete for available rental units, move in with friends or family, or get out of Dodge.

“We had an affordable housing problem before the storm,” said Michael Johnson,

PHOTOS BY MICHAEL BOOINI

I

n the months since Hurricane Michael reconfigured a wide swath of Northwest Florida, Bay County Manager Bob Majka has asked staff to exercise “compassion, flexibility and common sense” in dealing with residents.

In October, when traditional code enforcement activity resumed in the county, doing so became more subjective and complicated.

Of late, code enforcement personnel have coordinated with the Property Appraiser’s Office to understand where residents are in their recovery efforts.

“We understand that a lot of residents are struggling to come up with permanent replacement housing, dealing with insurance companies and struggling to find contractors,” Majka said.

“We want to make sure we have our fingers on the pulse of that activity. The property appraiser informed us where damaged properties are located, and code enforcement officers have worked their respective zones and interacted with tenants and property owners and documented their circumstances.”

As of October, Majka anticipates, code enforcement officers will approach magistrates recommending leniency in some cases and a “clean-and-lien” approach in others.

Work on the Arbor Trace (facing page) and Enclave apartments, when complete, was expected to contribute to relieving the housing shortage created by Hurricane Michael in Bay County west of the Hathaway Bridge.

the City of Panama City’s community development director. “And the storm made it that much worse.”

Rents in some locations have quadrupled since the storm and house prices have jumped in response to what Johnson called an “artificial seller’s market.” He placed the average price of a new, medium-size home at $334,000.

Remedies to the affordable housing shortage, Johnson said, may include:

» 3D PRINTED HOMES. The printer

churns out layers of cement, which, as they build up, form the walls of the home. Nonprinted fixtures like doors and windows are installed later. Houses can be erected in a matter of days.

» TINY HOUSES. Johnson said a tiny

sionals who are finding it difficult to locate affordable housing.”

“We need to get our workers back,” Johnson said. He anticipates that housing inventory will be restored in waves occurring one, three and five years after the storm.

Majka wants the housing marketplace to know that he is willing to consider all possibilities.

“Now that the president has signed the supplemental disaster aid bill, we are waiting for eligibility criteria to be written in Washington so we can get a rough idea as to how much federal money will be coming our way,” Majka said. “In the interim, we are making sure that our housing plan in updated, and that we are in position to use those dollars across as many options as possible, when they arrive. We want to have our toe on the starting line.”

Majka anticipates that Bay County will be better able to withstand a future hurricane, should one occur.

“Damaged properties, when they come back online, will have been made consistent with today’s building codes,” he said. “And, there have been changes in standards for public housing. Those developments won’t come back the same way. More attention will be paid to quality-of-life issues and recreational components.”

Plus, Majka noted, the county is home today to far fewer trees posing a threat to structures than it was prior to the storm.

“It is a shame that we lost so much of our tree canopy,” he said. “But that may be a silver lining. Those trees won’t be around to cause damage again.”

house development in Callaway will feature three floor plans.

» CONTAINER HOUSES. While

historically “not very aesthetic,” Johnson said, they are getting better. Today, some units feature vinyl siding or brick fascia.

» RENTAL HOUSING. In sight, Johnson

said, is a 2.5-acre development that will be home to 900-square-foot apartments.

Needed, too, Johnson said, will be senior housing and permanent support housing for people living with disabilities.

Despite rising houses prices, transactions are occurring as a function of demand.

“One developer closed on 100 units in January and again in February,” Majka said.

“But the pinch point is workforce housing for firefighters, public safety employees and teachers. We’re seeing people who are entrylevel engineers and other beginning profes-

The need for apartments is especially acute in Panama City, where the majority of people rent their residences. Above: Eagle’s Landing apartments.

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A DV E RT I S E M E N T

America is made up of many communities.

Together we are a Community of One

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| BAY ME DI CAL CE N T E R

HEALTH CARE Bay Medical Sacred Heart’s leader brings hometown perspective to his job

A

scension’s Sacred Heart Health System, part of Ascension Florida, announced in March that Heath Evans had been named president of Bay Medical Sacred Heart in Panama City. His administrative experience in health care began in 2006 with a physical therapy practice in Lynn Haven. Prior to arriving at Bay Medical Sacred Heart, Evans served most recently as chief operating officer of South Georgia Medical Center in Valdosta, Georgia. His promotion to president came shortly after Ascension reached a final agreement to fully acquire Bay Medical. In June, Evans engaged in a Q & A session with 850 Magazine editor Steve Bornhoft.

850: NOW EIGHT MONTHS AFTER HURRICANE MICHAEL, WHAT IS THE CONDITION OF THE PHYSICAL PLANT? Evans: We’re doing good. Construction is underway. We are in recovery mode like most folks in Panama City are, but core services are open at the hospital. Our trauma center is, unfortunately, very active.

Our cardiac cath labs are hitting numbers very much like they did prior to the storm.

Our cardiac surgery program is actually busier than before the storm arrived.

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850: HAVE ANY SERVICES BEEN DISCONTINUED? Evans: The only service at the hospital that was discontinued due to the storm was our labor and delivery OB program. As to ancillary services, the Baldwin Plaza location was heavily damaged. Our services are available; it’s just that locations are more limited.

850: HOW WERE EMPLOYMENT LEVELS AFFECTED? Evans: Currently, we employ about 900 fulltime employees. Prior to the storm, we were around 1,200. We have been successful in reemploying about 70 employees who have come back to us, and we are looking for more every day. We are in a hiring mode and, eventually, we hope to add about another 300 positions.

850: WHAT WAS YOUR EXPERIENCE AT THE HOSPITAL DURING THE STORM? Evans: We took patients into the interior part of our building away from windows, mainly around our operating room and postanesthesia care unit areas, and it was just amazing how calm our staff stayed as they cared for the patients, and it was amazing how calm our patients were as they were moved out of their rooms. We didn’t experience a single injury or a single bad outcome at the hospital from the storm. The evacuation of patients to our partner hospitals

in Destin, Pensacola and Jacksonville went very smoothly; we are very proud of how everything went.

850: IT SOUNDS LIKE YOU WERE AS PREPARED AS YOU COULD HAVE BEEN FOR WHAT HAPPENED. Evans: We had our disaster plan in place long before the storm arrived. About 48 hours before it hit, our incident command center was set up and we started calling in our teams in “A” and “B” shifts. We made sure we had water and backup systems. Fuel tanks for generators were topped off and everything went as planned — except that we had a Category 5 hurricane. Looking around the community, while we had damage, I think we did relatively well. We responded to the storm well. We actually fed not only our patients, but our employees, first responders and contractors three hot meals a day.

850: HOW HAS YOU PARENT COMPANY, ASCENSION, RESPONDED TO THE STORM? Evans: Ascension has pledged $47 million to rebuild the hospital and clean up the campus, and that money includes $11 million to purchase new equipment. We’re going to have a lot of nice, new, cutting-edge equipment with which to carry our mission forward. Already, as the storm was approaching, we were installing

PHOTO COURTESY OF BAY MEDICAL SACRED HEART

850: HOW ABOUT A LITTLE PERSONAL HISTORY FOR STARTERS? Evans: My parents moved to Bay County in 1985 and started Color Press Printing across from the Sheriff ’s Office in Lynn Haven. I graduated from Mosley High School and went to Gulf Coast State College for firefighter/paramedic training.

I worked as a first responder in Orlando for six years and then returned to Bay County and worked for a year and a half for Chief Mark Bowen. My family and I traveled around some as I built my career in hospital administration. On Jan. 2 of last year, I became chief operating officer at Bay Medical/Sacred Heart. I worked in that role for about four months and then was given the wonderful opportunity to become president of the hospital.

a state-of-the-art da Vinci robot for robotic surgery and a new 64-slice CT scanner. We plan to add 144 beds as part of the rebuild, and all of our beds will be private. That’s part of the modern way of delivering health care. We have a 12-month timeline for accomplishing all that we plan to accomplish with the $47 million.

PHOTO: DAVID MCCLISTER

850: AS PRESIDENT, WHAT ARE YOUR GOALS? Evans: One is to get the hospital back to the capacity that is needed for this community.

Two is to look at how we deliver health care across the region wherever the care is needed, and not necessarily at the hospital. We want to be convenient and for people to get quality, affordable, personalized care close to home.

We want to bring Bay County forward to where health care is going, and that’s away from hospitals and toward high-quality, accessible community centers. At the same time, we are working closely with hospital staff to provide them with what they need for cases requiring hospitalization. Generally, we want to provide to Bay County the kind of quality that Sacred Heart is known for.

been absolutely amazing stories about lives 850: THE BMC/SACRED HEART SERVICE 6–9BEYOND Friday, Oct 11saved. being FOOTPRINT EXTENDS WELL BAY COUNTY, Court OF COURSE. of De Luna Event Space 850: HOW WOULD YOU RATE Evans: Yes. We are the cardiac, neuro and Downtown Pensacola EMPLOYEE MORALE? trauma center for the region. People travel Evans: Morale is very good. We are doing a a good distance to get to us.

Our service Meet celebrity chef Kevin Belton! lot of special things to make sure that we are footprint extends to Alabama with our Enjoy live food from local topcare chefs, taking of the mental health of our employtrauma system andmusic, some of our higher-level ees.

We have care in cardiology.

We’ve had patients come and an impressive sampling of wine, resources available for them as the recovers from Hurricane Michael. to us from as far away as Montgomery for the community bourbon and beer under string lights!

The integration of our staff with other hospiorthopedic care and ortho trauma care. $50Gulf tals really boosts morale and makes people feel We reach over toTickets: Calhoun County, like they are part of something bigger. Housing County wsre.org/Wine&Food and Franklin County. We are now has been an issue. Traveling nurses are having a a full partner with Ascension hospitals in hard time finding places to live. But, one of the Gulf County and the Emerald Coast, and benefits of being part of a large corporation is provide care for patients from those hosthat we can work on our own temporary houspitals when what is required exceeds what ing for the employees and travelers that we they can do. need to staff the hospital. Ascension provided thousands of days of housing for employees 850: WHAT ACCOUNTS FOR THE HEAVY who were displaced. It feels great to be part of TRAFFIC TO THE TRAUMA CENTERS? an organization that does so much.

Evans: Things that you hear about in the news. Crimes of violence, the Thunder 850: FINAL THOUGHT? Beach motorcycle rallies are always a busy Evans: The patient census is up, and we are time for us, auto accidents. You name it, we’re here answering the call and there have excited about the future.

#CountryMusicPBS pbs.org/countrymusic 52324-0619 850 Fall fp ad-W&F_Country Music.indd 1

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| HI G H E R ED U CATI ON Randy Hanna, dean, Florida State University in Panama City

GROWING BY DEGREES New programs net FSU-PC students from across country

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ifty freshmen started classes at Florida State University in Panama City as the 2018-19 school year got underway.

They came, said Dean Randy Hanna, from around the state and around the country.

A year later, FSU-PC was looking at the prospect of a smaller freshman class. While the quality of applications has been trending in a good way, the number of applications was diminished. For that, Hanna assigned blame to Hurricane Michael.

“One of the consequences of the storm,” Hanna said, “is that there are few places for students coming to town to live. The housing stock east of the Hathaway Bridge was battered by the storm and everything to the west is full.”

Gone are the days when FSU-PC thought about struggling condominium projects on the beach as a possible avenue for student housing. Rather, FSU-PC is taking steps to

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arrive at on-campus dormitories. The school issued an “Intent to Negotiate” notice that attracted responses from five developers.

At this writing, school officials were discussing terms in pursuit of a deal with the Zimmer Development Co. of Wilmington, North Carolina. Zimmer, a national commercial and multi-family developer, lists projects on its resumé, including the Stadium Enclave student community near Doak Campbell Stadium in Tallahassee and graduate and undergraduate student housing at Arkansas State University in Jonesboro.

Student Housing Business magazine identified Zimmer as one of the 25 most active developers of student housing in the industry.

Hanna anticipates that the campus housing project will accommodate 300-400 students upon completion. It is his hope that the development will be ready for occupancy in August 2021.

The number of student activities has grown steadily at FSU-PC through recent years, and Hanna said the arrival of campus housing will further enhance that trend.

“When you have students on campus all

The number of student activities has grown steadily at FSU-PC through recent years, and Hanna said the arrival of campus housing will further enhance that trend.

PHOTOS BY BRUCE PALMER (CISCOR) AND COURTESY OF FSU-PC

BY STEVE BORNHOFT

Florida State University Panama City has tapped into resources at the FAMU-FSU College of Engineering in Tallahassee by adding a mechanical engineering program to the campus’s offerings.

the time, that will make a huge difference,” Hanna said. “We are very excited about this.”

Already, Hanna pointed out, the SeminoleCommodore Alliance (SCA), a collaboration between FSU Panama City and Gulf Coast State College, has established a Student Activities Board Alliance (SABA) that provides activities for FSU-PC students and students at Gulf Coast State College, located across Collegiate Drive from the university campus.

Hanna said that via the SABA framework, GCSC College students are free to join clubs located at FSU-PC and vice versa.

BOUNCING BACK

As of June 1, FSU-PC’s physical plant had substantially been returned to pre-Michael condition.

Repairs to the Holley Academic Center, the most prominent building on campus and one that has come to function as a community center, were nearing completion. The first floor of the Barron Building was occupied, but its second and third floors were not. Work was set to commence on the Bland Conference Center and to the Bayside Building, which had been home to elementary education classrooms and nurse anesthesia classrooms and faculty offices.

Hanna, upon arriving on campus a day after the storm, said it initially appeared “eerily as if everything was OK.” But closer inspection revealed otherwise.

“Once you got inside the buildings, you saw water damage and broken windows, and you could look up and see where the roofs had been compromised,” Hanna said.

Storm-related damage totaled $10 million,

Hanna said, “which is a lot, but still it is a lot less than it could have been. Fortunately, we were able to move people around and not miss a beat as far as being able to hold classes.”

The campus lost 18 students in the immediate wake of the storm, and spring 2019 enrollment was down just a little over 1 percent from the previous spring.

“We were very pleased that the decline was so slight,” Hanna said.

The bachelor’s program in mechanical engineering that was introduced to the campus in the fall of 2018 is off to a “wildly successful start,” Hanna said. It is managed by the FAMUFSU College of Engineering in Tallahassee.

The mechanical engineering program’s arrival closely coincided with the arrival of GKN Aerospace at the VentureCrossings Enterprise Center adjoining the Northwest Florida Beaches International Airport in West Bay. GKN produces airplane components for the federal government.

Both GKN and Naval Support Activity Panama City employ numbers of mechanical engineers.

“FSU has an important role to play in the development of our economy, and that’s one of the reasons that we started mechanical engineering here,” Hanna said. “I am very confident that the aerospace sector will continue to grow. Given our relationship with the FSU/FAMU College of Engineering and the engineering programs we have here, I believe we will be well-positioned to help that industry thrive here.”

Hanna regularly participates in site visits made by prospects pursued by the Bay County Economic Development Alliance.

“I am amazed at the number of new

companies that have an interest in Bay County and have come and visited since the hurricane,” Hanna said. “I have met with more prospects since the storm than I did in the year before the storm.”

In addition to the mechanical engineering program, FSU PC offers a master’s degree in systems engineering.

Hanna said two additional master’s level programs, one in nurse anesthesia and the other in applied behavioral analysis, are drawing students from far beyond Northwest Florida.

The behavioral analysis program, Hanna said, is intended for psychology students working with children with autism. It culminates in an exam leading to national board certification.

“Our program has the No. 1 pass rate for board certification in the world,” Hanna said.

“The nurse anesthesia program is newer, but it is quickly growing its reputation.”

Hanna looks toward the future with optimism.

“This is a great time to be at FSU in Panama City,” he said. “It’s at times like this that you realize you do more than just provide classes and help students earn degrees. I am so proud of our colleagues all across FSU. Folks from our campus and the Tallahassee campus have worked throughout our community to address the storm.

“The Social Work department has provided counseling services, our College of Social Sciences has helped with visioning and long-range planning for the community, our engineering department has helped with resiliency issues. Student-athletes came from Tallahassee for a day of clean up, and I could go on and on. We need to play a role in the recovery, and we are.”

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| AER OS PACE

PUTTING DOWN SOUTHERN ROOTS Aerospace manufacturer lands in Lynn Haven

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anny Polo nodded toward a table on wheels in the middle of a vast empty space inside the former Honeywell plant in Lynn Haven. Atop the table were a few modest chairs.

“I’m going to make that my mobile war room,” Polo said, one that can be moved among centers of activity as the Connecticut-based Advanced Composites & Metalforming Technologies (ACMT) creates its second home.

Redevelopment of the building comprising 150,000 square feet in total will occur in phases with the first phase encompassing 43,000 square feet. At this writing, garage doors and “man doors” were being replaced as part of securing the building, a measure that must be accomplished before equipment is installed.

ACMT, Polo said, is owned by his brother, Michael, and his father, Paul. Danny is its general manager. The 33-year-old company specialized in its early days as a maker of adhesives and chemicals for aerospace applications such as bonding rubber to sheet metal parts.

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As of 2004, ACMT moved into areas including fabrication work and, said Polo, “We just kept going from there.”

Today, the company relies heavily on emerging technologies.

“We are always looking for new, automated equipment,” Polo said, “and faster, better ways of doing things. Customers are always wanting to reduce costs.”

ACMT employs robotics, lasers, waterjet cutters and computer numerical control (CNC) machining equipment, the latter involving computer software that dictates the movements of tools.

“We produce items that may be an inch in size or 20 feet long,” Polo said. “Most of it is sheet metal fabrication, but we are getting further into composites and machining. We do a lot of repair work for the government, and we are going to start overhauling commercial engines also. Customers send us engine components, we assess what’s wrong with them and then make repairs.”

Immediately, “ACMT South” will have a close working relationship with GKN Aerospace in Tallassee, Alabama.

“And, once we get more established, we’ll start working with GKN at VentureCrossings; we’ve already started conversations with them.

We’re also interested in doing work for Tyndall Air Force Base. There are a lot of good aerospace companies within a few hours of here, so it’s a good place for us to be.”

ACMT does both military and commercial jobs for Pratt & Whitney, a key customer; does some work for Rolls Royce; and anticipates doing an increasing amount of work for GE. For starters, the 43,000-square-foot, phaseone space will be devoted mainly to two large projects that came to ACMT via GKN. They involve developing and producing 20-foot-long protectors for Sikorsky helicopter blades.

“Those projects are in development right now,” Polo said. “We will be manufacturing the parts sometime next year.”

Before that manufacturing can begin, ACMT will need to achieve AS9100 industry certification. Auditors will assess the building and ACMT equipment and operations, issue a report and specify needed corrective actions before certification will be granted. Then,

PHOTOS BY MICHAEL BOOINI

BY STEVE BORNHOFT

“We will have jobs for engineers, quality control and production personnel, welders, machinists and fabricators. Most employees will come from the local area.”

– Danny Polo, general manager, Advanced Composites & Metalforming Technologies

ACMT general manager Danny Polo has been pleased by the reception the aerospace manufacturer has received in Lynn Haven and Bay County. ACMT chose Bay County over other sites in Texas, Georgia, North Carolina and Florida.

original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) will do their own audits before authorizing ACMT to make their parts.

“It’s a process,” Polo said.

He said ACMT will hire 35 employees in conjunction with phase one.

“We will have jobs for engineers, quality control and production personnel, welders, machinists and fabricators,” Polo said. “Most employees will come from the local area. Only five are moving down from Connecticut.”

The lead time on some of the specialized equipment that will be used for phase one projects is 26 weeks.

Already, ACMT is working with Gulf Coast State College on an apprenticeship program, an initiative that has proved successful in Connecticut. The company has found that growing its own employees has advantages.

“When you begin working with people as students, they don’t have bad habits,” Polo said. “’We can teach them our habits.”

ACMT also figures to snap up students emerging from the welding program at Tom P. Haney Technical Center and the mechanical

engineering program at Florida State University Panama City. Too, it will tap into the large pool of retired military personnel in the area. Polo has been impressed by the database of 8,500 such individuals that has been compiled by CareerSource Gulf Coast.

GKN is not the only reason ACMT is in Bay County. In fact, the company had been shopping for a site for a couple of years and had considered options in Texas, Georgia, North Carolina and Florida.

“We got to the point where we didn’t want a single point of failure for any of our processes,” Polo said. “We wanted to be somewhere in the country that would not be affected by a largescale event in New England. Economic development officials from a number of locations furnished us with proposals. But right from the start, Becca Hardin and her team at the Bay County Economic Development Alliance were fantastic. They were very responsive, they understood what we wanted, and they did a really good job in getting us some incentives to get us down here.”

For its part, ACMT pledged to create

105 jobs within five years. Its Bay County capital investment will be about $22 million, according to Polo.

ACMT acquired the Honeywell building on Sept. 26 of last year, just two weeks before Hurricane Michael ravaged communities including Lynn Haven.

“Timing is everything,” Polo said with a resigned look on his face.

Some 130 downed trees littered the property. The storm necessitated a $2 million roof replacement job. Much of that cost was covered by insurance, but the need for extensive repairs — 75 feet of block wall was lost — dramatically altered ACMT’s building redevelopment timeline. It had hoped to move in by the first quarter of this year.

Nonetheless, Polo is enthusiastic.

“We’ve been very happy with everything we have encountered in the Bay County area,” said Polo, who purchased a home in Bayou George in March. “The people are great, everyone has been very accommodating and we’re excited. We are looking forward to becoming a part of the community.”

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“When I saw the facilities, it looked like they had gone into my head and designed exactly what I would have built if I had unlimited money.”

– J.D. Wood, general manager, Panama City Beach Sports Complex

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| S P O RTS C O M P L EX

The development of a new multi-field sports complex off Back Beach Road will enable Panama City Beach to host largefield tournaments that few communities can accommodate.

READY FOR PLAY

Complex adds to Panama City Beach’s capacity as tournament host

BY STEVE BORNHOFT

PHOTOS BY MICHAEL BOOINI

J

.D. Wood, married with two small daughters and living in the city of his cherished alma mater, was well rooted.

“The way I love College Station and being close to family, it was going to take a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to move me,” Wood said.

But last August, Wood left Texas behind.

He had been offered a job as the general manager of the Panama City Beach Sports Complex, a 157-acre, $37 million collection of 13 athletic fields that resulted from a partnership between the St. Joe Company and the Panama City Beach Convention & Visitors Bureau.

Wood is an employee of Clearwater-based Sports Facilities Management, which is under contract to the CVB to maintain and operate the complex, located north of Back Beach Road on Chip Seal Parkway and a couple miles west of the Hathaway Bridge.

The complex’s first event, a United States

Fastpitch Association softball tournament, was held in early July.

For five years prior to leaving home, Wood, who holds a master’s degree in sports management from Texas A&M University, worked for the City of College Station in its tourism department, managing a soccer facility said to be one of the 10 best in the country, and working closely with the university regarding access to its athletic facilities.

In that role, he was accustomed to seeing members of the sports team from Visit Panama City Beach, the promotional arm of the CVB, at conventions of sporting event rights holders.

In June 2018, two members of the team, Richard Sanders and Chris O’Brien, had been talking to organizations including USA Football about scheduling events at the PCB complex then under construction.

Rights holders were curious to know who would be managing the facility, but at

the time, that hire had not been made. USA Football, headquartered in Indianapolis, recommended Wood, who then heard from Sports Facilities Management vice president John McDonald.

“He gave me two days to apply for the job,” recalled Wood, who consulted a friend who suggested that he at least check out the opportunity. And, with his wife’s blessings, he flew to Panama City Beach for an interview.

“I’m from East Texas where it’s all trees, and I had never been anywhere in the Florida Panhandle,” Wood said, “but when I flew into Panama City Beach (Northwest Florida Beaches International Airport) and saw the beach and the water, I told myself, ‘This could be perfect.’ ” That suspicion on Wood’s part was confirmed when he got a look at the complex and gained an appreciation for what it would look like upon completion.

“When I saw the facilities, it looked like 850 Business Magazine

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they had gone into my head and designed exactly what I would have built if I had unlimited money,” Wood said.

He would learn that Sanders, Visit Panama City Beach’s vice president of sports marketing and special events, was the sport complex’s chief visionary.

“He was the godfather,” Woods said. “It’s Richard who showed people how great the impact could be if Panama City Beach were made a sports destination.”

Sanders knew that 12 is something of a magic number as it relates to any sports complex’s capacity to host large tournaments on its fields.

The PCB Sports Complex boasts 13 rectangular fields — nine with a synthetic turf surface and four natural grass fields. Those same fields can be configured as 10 softball fields with 220-foot fences and five collegiate size baseball fields (387 feet to dead center).

The result is that big tournaments that used to schedule play on fields on both sides of the Hathaway Bridge may now be confined to Panama City Beach.

Panama City Beach’s capacity for events gets even larger when one considers the fields available at the established Frank Brown Park (located off Back Beach Road just east

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The PCB Sports Complex boasts 13 rectangular fields — nine with a synthetic turf surface and four natural grass fields. of its intersection with State 79), a facility managed by the City of Panama City’s Parks and Recreation Department.

“I’m working in close coordination with Jim Ponek at the city,” Wood said. He noted that play in the USFA tournament was scheduled for both Frank Brown and the PCB Sports Complex.

The new complex includes LED lighting, two operations buildings, three concession stands, an umpire’s lounge and a championship field with seating for 1,500.

“The goal was to make this the top facility not only in the Southeast, but also in the United States,” said Wood of the complex paid for with bed tax proceeds and developed on land donated by St. Joe. “The property for starters was 4 to 5 feet above sea level,” Wood said. “Now, it’s 15 feet.

We used the best fill dirt for the grass fields to make them drain properly. We’ll confine practice activity to synthetic fields to limit the wear on the grass.”

Wood said some scholastic activity will be accommodated by the complex and noted that he had been speaking, in particular, with Arnold High School athletic director Ricci Green.

“But we understand that the main objective is to bring teams to town and put heads in beds,” Wood said. “Teams may play one game a day and spend the rest of the day in our community with their families, dining in restaurants, shopping and contributing to our local economy.”

Wood, in June, was glad that his family came back to town after seven months spent in Texas. The home Wood was renting in Lynn Haven was hard hit by Hurricane Michael. He evacuated to College Station well before the storm made landfall and returned not long after it passed, living in two rooms.

But his wife and daughters remained in Texas while repairs to the residence were made.

“We were fortunate,” Wood said. “We didn’t lose any personal possessions. I’ve still got my diplomas from A&M and my football helmet signed by Kevin Sumlin.”

PHOTO BY MICHAEL BOOINI

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| CASA LAX M I I N TE R N AT I O N A L B OA R D I N G S C H O O L

EQ, NOT IQ Planned school will focus on emotional intelligence

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n pre-application documents filed as a first step in pursuit of $20 million in Triumph Gulf Coast (BP reparations) funds, the Casa Laxmi Foundation described plans to bring about a “unique educational institution that embodies a concept unparalleled by any other in the world.”

That approach, at a planned pre-K through grade 12 institute, will emphasize EQ, that is, a student’s emotional quotient, versus IQ. “If you intend for your child to go to one of the finest universities in the United States, we’re not the school for you,” said Sonal Thomas, a Canadian-born attorney whose grandparents founded the Casa Laxmi Foundation. “We don’t want to develop academic scholars. We want to develop great human beings.”

Thomas, a member of the foundation’s governing council, finds that there has been a marked shift in focus among educators in the last few years, away from IQ as a marker of future success and toward the concept of EQ. “Emotional intelligence is really your ability to understand, regulate and express your own emotions and to understand others’ emotions so that you can react appropriately in any given situation,” Thomas said. “Once you have a high enough EQ, you are able to empathize and that’s really the end goal for us — we want to create these children that have very, very high empathy.”

In February, the Bay Economic Development Alliance and the Bay County Commission jointly announced plans by Casa Laxmi, headquartered in Toronto, to develop at a total cost of $117 million a boarding school with a

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capacity of 300 students. The school will be sited on 260 acres on Fanning Bayou and North Bay in northern Bay County.

The Bay EDA was instrumental in identifying the acreage. The seller, D.R. Horton, had planned to develop homes on the property.

“We started our search for land in the Bahamas, but after a couple of years, we were just spinning our wheels,” Thomas said. “A member of our advisory board suggested that we look for a site in the United States because parents throughout the world want to send their children to school in America.”

The foundation was set on finding a waterfront location and looked at possibilities in South Carolina and throughout much of Florida.

“Finally, it was (Bay EDA vice president) Garrett Wright and (president) Becca Hardin who made the difference,” Thomas said. “We felt welcomed.”

While, at this writing, the application for Triumph funding remains pending, Casa Laxmi has speedily moved forward.

Working with Florida Architects of Panama City, it had as of mid-June, completed a project master plan that includes athletic fields, residences, education spaces and accommodations for visiting parents and families. It had established collaborative relationships with more than 30 universities.

And, it had narrowed to two the candidates to become the planned school’s educational partner. Both candidates are mightily experienced boarding schools in the United Kingdom.

“One has been around for 500 years and the

other has been around for 600 years,” Thomas said. “They are obviously doing something right. The educational partner will come in and help us set up the school. It will be in charge of school operations and will be responsible for hiring and training staff, designing curriculum and equipping the school.”

The new school will operate with the mother school’s name.

Thomas is in hopes that Casa Laxmi will obtain a development order by year’s end and break ground on its project early in 2020. According to its timetable, the school will open with students in grades 6-8 in September 2021.

“That’s ambitious,” Thomas conceded, “but this entire project is ambitious, so we’re used to it.”

A little over half of the enrollment in every grade will comprise students paying full tuition up to $150,000 per year, Thomas said, while the balance will be made up of vulnerable orphaned or abandoned children from throughout the world.

Non-paying students, whose expenses will be covered by the foundation, will be enrolled between ages 2 and 6. Casa Laxmi, for starters, wasn’t sure how to determine whether a given 4-year-old might succeed at the school.

“You can give an IQ test to a 4-year-old, but you are not going to get any meaningful results,” Thomas said. “So, we teamed up with a couple of universities and children’s hospitals. What we’ve learned is that if you observe a child, even between the ages of 2 and 3, there is a whole host of information that you can get.

“By also examining sleep patterns and diet

RENDERINGS COURTESY OF FLORIDA ARCHITECTS, INC.

BY STEVE BORNHOFT

and interacting with the child, you can tell what kind of behavioral issues the child will have, assess his impulse control, and determine how he will retain and process information.”

Casa Laxmi, in conjunction with experts, will put together tests for screening prospective students.

“We will disseminate them to psychologists around the world in places where we want to find students. They will run the test, gather the data and the data will come back to our experts. They can then determine whether enrollment in our school would be in the best interests of a child.”

Casa Laxmi is collaborating with schools including Yale University, which is home to a center for emotional intelligence. There, children, including even 2-year-olds, are helped to improve their EQ. “Emotional intelligence can rise exponentially given a person’s willingness to learn and grow, so children really become the perfect candidates,” Thomas said.

At the new school, EQ training will involve not just students and teachers.

“We are going to train every single person with whom a student might have contact, including cafeteria workers and groundskeepers, and work all the way up so that we have consistency across the board,” Thomas

said. “As a residential school, we can control that. We know every person that a child may come into contact with, and we can get the desired outcome.”

The foundation is committed to ensuring that its school is integrated into the community.

Casa Laxmi projects that its school will result in 300 high-paying, sustainable long-term jobs.

Most of the total $117 million project cost will remain in Bay County. And, the nature of the school ensures that wealthy families from around the globe will be spending time in Bay County.

Plans also call for:

» A 600-seat, on-campus auditorium whose capacity will allow the school to invite students from the larger community to join boarding school students when dignitaries, guest lecturers and visiting professors make presentations.

» Summer camps, which will include

students from outside the school. “Summer learning loss is such a real thing,” Thomas said. “Parents are working and children are not getting the stimulation they need.

Quite frankly, a lot of parents simply don’t have the resources to send their kids to summer camp and that’s where we want

to come in so that kids can attend our camps and continue their learning without interruption.”

» A Community Alliance Advisory Board

will be made up of well-connected people who are tapped into issues and challenges facing the Bay County community. The advisory panel will serve as a sounding board for ideas generated by the school and make suggestions of its own. Bay County Superintendent of Schools Bill Husfelt, Gulf Coast State College President John Holdnak and April Wilkes, the executive director of the St. Joe Community Foundation, already have agreed to serve as board members.

Thomas said that one or two student slots per grade level will be reserved for Bay County children.

“Our philosophy is that once you are a great human being, the academics will work themselves out,” Thomas said. “We are trying to cultivate the next generation of world leaders — not just any world leaders, but leaders who have qualities such as empathy and compassion and humility … many qualities that leaders today are missing.”

The Casa Laxmi Foundation described plans to bring about a “unique educational institution that embodies a concept unparalleled by any other in the world.” That approach, at a planned pre-K through grade 12 institute, will emphasize EQ, that is, a student’s emotional quotient, versus IQ.

Rendering depicts a common area planned for a waterfront boarding school envisioned by the Casa Laxmi Foundation. The school is scheduled to open with students in grades 6-8 in September 2021.

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