850 Business Magazine Winter 2021 by Rowland Publishing, Inc.

POWER PLAY

Utility acquires three Calhoun Co. properties as sites for solar farms

OFFICE SPACE

Region’s commercial real estate interests adapt to impacts of COVID pandemic

COMPASSION

Covenant Care expands its list of services while growing its footprint

NURTURING BUSINESS Susan S. Fiorito, once a home-ec teacher, leads and molds the Jim Moran College of Entrepreneurship at Florida State University

SPECIAL REPORT

TALLAHASSEE BUSINESS JOURNAL

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Connect your work to your customers Your business is built on strong connections. That’s why you need Internet with 99.9% network reliability and 24/7 support. Switch to Cox Business today so your business can thrive.

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Paradise has arrived ON THE EMERALD COAST

LIVE THE LIFE YOU’VE DREAMED AT LATITUDE MARGARITAVILLE WATERSOUND! Sunshine and cool breezes. Palm trees and margaritas. Welcome to Latitude Margaritaville, a 55-and-better community inspired by the legendary music and lifestyle of Jimmy Buffett, built on food, fun, music and escapism. Escape to the place where fun and relaxation meet. Escape to island-inspired living as you grow older, but not up. Escape to Latitude Margaritaville Watersound, located on Hwy 79, less than 8 miles from the beach. New Homes from the mid $200s

Sales center and 13 models open Daily Latitude Margaritaville Watersound (866) 223-6780

9201 Highway 79, Panama City Beach, FL 32413 Mon. - Sat. 9:00am - 5:00pm | Sun. 11:00am - 5:00pm

Visit online for more information LatitudeMargaritaville.com

Obtain the Property Report required by Federal law and read it before signing anything. No Federal agency has judged the merits or value, if any, of this property. WARNING: THE CALIFORNIA BUREAU OF REAL ESTATE HAS NOT INSPECTED, EXAMINED, OR QUALIFIED THE OFFERINGS. Latitude Margaritaville Kentucky Registration Number R-201. For NY Residents: THE COMPLETE OFFERING TERMS FOR THE SALE OF LOTS ARE IN THE CPS-12 APPLICATION AVAILABLE FROM SPONSOR, LMWS, LLC. FILE NO. CP20-0062. Pennsylvania Registration Number OL001182. Latitude Margaritaville Watersound is registered with the Massachusetts Board of Registration of Real Estate Brokers and Salesmen, 1000 Washington Street, Suite 710, Boston, MA 02118 and with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, 1700 G Street, NW, Washington, D.C. 20552. This material shall not constitute a valid offer in any state where prior registration is required and has not been completed. The facilities and amenities described are proposed but not yet constructed. Photographs are for illustrative purposes only and are merely representative of current development plans. Development plans, amenities, facilities, dimensions, specifications, prices and features depicted by artists renderings or otherwise described herein are approximate and subject to change without notice. ©Minto Communities, LLC 2021. All rights reserved. Content may not be reproduced, copied, altered, distributed, stored, or transferred in any form or by any means without express written permission. Latitude Margaritaville and the Latitude Margaritaville logo are trademarks of Margaritaville Enterprises, LLC and are used under license. Minto and the Minto logo are trademarks of Minto Communities, LLC and/or its affiliates. St. Joe and the St. Joe logo are trademarks of The St. Joe Company and are used under license. CGC 1519880/CGC 120919. 2021

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IN THIS ISSUE FEATURES

Pinnacle Awards 60 The 2021 class of Pinnacle

Award winners numbers two bankers, a broadcast journalist, a director of student services, a musical ambassador/teacher, the director of a community institute, an attorney, a poet, a college dean, a neonatologist, a 19-year-old entrepreneur and a woman who dedicated her career to serving others through the United Way of the Big Bend. As diverse as they are, these women have important things in common. They work until tired and then work some more as accomplished professionals and as community servants. Their skill and competence are exceeded perhaps only by their compassion for others. They make the world a better place. That is, they all live up to the spirit and the standards of Rowland Publishing’s Pinnacle Awards program, which was established in 2014: They are consequential people who enrich the Northwest Florida landscape. Read our profiles of each of them, and one thing is certain: You’ll be impressed. By Steve Bornhoft and Hannah Burke

Workplaces 80 FInuture the course of the COVID-19

pandemic, countless office workers worldwide have discovered the extent to which it is possible for them to work from home, but they have also become aware of what goes missing when they do so. We have gained a new appreciation for face-to-face meetings and the kind of camaraderie that develops when employees share a workplace. Beck Partners in Pensacola and others in the region report that the demand for office space is strong. By Hannah Burke and Emma Witmer

ON THE COVER: When a major gift made possible the creation of the Jim Moran College of Entrepreneurship at Florida State University, campus leadership went in search of a dean. Susan S. Fiorito was not the first choice; two men who were first offered the job turned it down. But Fiorito, when asked, said yes. She has a long history of saying yes to opportunities. “I told them I might not know how to start a new college, but I’d figure it out.” Photo by The Workmans

Illustration by LINDSEY MASTERSON

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850 Magazine Winter 202ı

IN THIS ISSUE CUSTOM CONTENT TECH SAVVY

16 Utilizing best-in-class cloud and onpremise hardware and software services based on Fortune 2000 company best practices, Bit-Wizards helps all sorts of businesses handle the complex, rapidly evolving technology landscape so they can focus on what they do best: running their enterprises and taking care of their customers. They tailor their services to meet the needs of small, medium and large businesses.

STRONG AND SECURE

In This Issue 12 From the Publisher 96 Sound Bytes 98 The Last Word from the Editor

Special Sections DEAL ESTATE

92 Beck Partners in Pensacola is representing an industrial/ flex space that is well-suited to a range of businesses. Located near Highway 29 in the Marcus Point Commerce Park, the 58,564-square-foot building is climate controlled throughout and adjoins numerous other industrial/flex users in the park. This building has an eave height of 17 feet, 4 inches and has three shared dock doors measuring 14 feet in height. Available units range in size from 8,800 to 9,600 square feet.

Corridors I-10 88 As the state and the world work to decrease reliance on fossil fuels and bend the climate-change curve, Florida Power & Light has gone about looking for affordable land in wide-open spaces as sites for large solar farms. Recently, the utility acquired three parcels in Calhoun County that will soon become home to banks of solar panels. While the power generated by those panels will be consumed by FPL customers outside of Calhoun County, the projects will add millions of dollars in value to local property tax rolls.

EMERALD COAST 90 Covenant Care, headquartered in Pensacola, has grown to become a multistate provider of post-acute health services. Formerly known as Covenant Hospice, the company rebranded itself upon expanding the roster of services it provides. Company leadership recognized that the paths taken by people as they approach the end of life are not often straight lines. Rather, people may be hospitalized and re-hospitalized and require at various times services ranging from home health care to palliative and hospice services. As a provider of all, Covenant makes it possible for people to deal with a single company.

CLASS OF 2021

79 In an awards presentation held at the Downtown Community Church in Tallahassee, Rowland Publishing and 850 Business Magazine celebrated 12 remarkable women who have distinguished themselves professionally and as difference makers in their communities. This year’s 12 Pinnacle Award winners included a poet, a musician, a neonatologist and a 19-yearold entrepreneur.

WINE AND SPIRITS

86 The South Walton Beaches Wine & Food Festival will celebrate its 10th year from April 21–24, 2022, when it hosts an impressive roster of celebrity winemakers, mixologists and chefs at South Walton’s Grand Boulevard Town Center. The event will wine, dine, educate and entertain guests as part of an annual celebration of wine, spirits, food, music, fun and goodwill.

BUILDING BETTER

94 Based in Panama City, ReliantSouth Construction Group is a much soughtafter provider of general contracting and construction management services. The company is led by professional engineer Richard Dodd and has completed outstanding projects throughout Northwest Florida and the Southeast.

Special Reports

TALLAHASSEE BUSINESS JOURNAL Susan S. Fiorito says Tallahassee isn’t the equivalent of California’s Silicon

Valley or North Carolina’s Research Triangle. Not yet. But she sees that the culture of the city is changing and the entrepreneurial spirit of Florida’s capital is intensifying, and she believes that its potential is huge. Indeed, the evolution of the city may come to mirror Fiorito’s own professional path as a former high school home economics teacher who is now the dean of the Jim Moran College of Entrepreneurship at Florida State University. In a special section focused on Tallahassee, we present stories that illustrate what can happen when a city converts possibility to progress. The city landed a whale in Amazon, which is developing a massive fulfillment center that will employ more than 1,000 people. The city’s hospitals and its airport are planning major new projects; Cascades Park, the new heart of the city, is beating strong; and small businesses are proliferating.

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PHOTOS COURTESY OF NEXTERAENERGY.COM

18 Event producer Bill Loiry, well known in Northwest Florida for his Air Force Contracting Summits, has assembled panels of experts who will address two summits focused on security and infrastructure.

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Winter 2021

850 THE BUSINESS MAGAZINE OF NORTHWEST FLORIDA

Vol. 14, No. 2

PRESIDENT/PUBLISHER BRIAN E. ROWLAND ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER MCKENZIE BURLEIGH EDITORIAL EXECUTIVE EDITOR Steve Bornhoft SENIOR STAFF WRITER Emma Witmer STAFF WRITER Hannah Burke CONTRIBUTING WRITERS David Ekrut, Ph.D., Rebecca Padgett Frett, Al Krulick, Audrey Post CREATIVE VICE PRESIDENT / PRODUCTION AND TECHNOLOGY Daniel Vitter CREATIVE DIRECTOR Jennifer Ekrut ASSOCIATE ART DIRECTOR Lindsey Masterson SENIOR PUBLICATION DESIGNERS Sarah Burger, Shruti Shah PUBLICATION DESIGNER Jordan Harrison GRAPHIC DESIGNER Sierra Thomas CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHERS Dave Barfield, Scott Holstein, Mike O'Neill, Saige Roberts, The Workmans

IT’S YOUR

BUSINESS Tell Your Story Your Way

Rowland Publishing specializes in high-quality magazine and book production. We offer full-service turnkey solutions and custom-built programs tailored specifically to your publishing needs. Our services include design, illustration, photography, writing, editing, and print and distribution management. Contact us when you’re ready to discuss your next project. BOOKS • CATALOGS • ANNUAL REPORTS • MAGAZINES

1932 Miccosukee Road | Tallahassee, FL 32308 (850) 878-0554 | RowlandPublishing.com

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SALES, MARKETING & EVENTS SALES MANAGER, WESTERN DIVISION Rhonda Lynn Murray SALES MANAGER, EASTERN DIVISION Lori Magee Yeaton DIRECTOR OF NEW BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT, EASTERN DIVISION Daniel Parisi DIRECTOR OF NEW BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT, WESTERN DIVISION Dan Parker ADVERTISING SERVICES SPECIALIST Tracy Mulligan ACCOUNT EXECUTIVES Julie Dorr, Darla Harrison DIRECTOR OF MARKETING Zandra Wolfgram SALES AND MARKETING WRITER Rebecca Padgett SENIOR INTEGRATED MARKETING SPECIALIST Javis Ogden ADMINISTRATIVE & CUSTOMER SERVICE SPECIALIST Renee Johnson OPERATIONS CUSTOM PUBLISHING MANAGER Sara Goldfarb CUSTOMER SERVICE REPRESENTATIVE/AD SERVICE COORDINATOR Sarah Coven PRODUCTION AND DISTRIBUTION SPECIALIST Melinda Lanigan STAFF BOOKKEEPER Amber Ridgeway

DIGITAL SERVICES DIGITAL EDITOR Janecia Britt 850 BUSINESS MAGAZINE 850businessmagazine.com, facebook.com/850bizmag, twitter.com/850bizmag, linkedin.com/company/850-business-magazine ROWLAND PUBLISHING rowlandpublishing.com SUBSCRIPTIONS A one-year (4 issues) subscription is $20. To purchase, call (850) 878-0554 or go online to 850businessmagazine.com. Single copies are $4.95 and may be purchased at Midtown Reader in Tallahassee and at Barnes & Noble and BooksA-Million in Tallahassee, Fort Walton Beach, Destin, Pensacola, Panama City and at our Tallahassee office. Availability may change subject to COVID-19 restrictions.

850 Magazine is published quarterly by Rowland Publishing, Inc. 1932 Miccosukee Road, Tallahassee, FL 32308. 850/878-0554. 850 Magazine and Rowland Publishing, Inc. are not responsible for unsolicited manuscripts, photography or artwork. Editorial contributions are welcomed and encouraged but will not be returned. 850 Magazine reserves the right to publish any letters to the editor. Copyright December 2021 850 Magazine, Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or part without written permission is prohibited. Member of three Chambers of Commerce throughout the region.

See the difference Gulf Winds makes.

GoGulfWinds.com Federally Insured by NCUA. Equal Housing Opportunity.

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From the Publisher

A Region of Great Potential Northwest Florida is taking its place among technology centers Last year, retired IBM executive Steve Evans, whom I have valued for years as a friend and mentor, suggested that Rowland Publishing produce a publication devoted to stories about the technology sector of Tallahassee’s economy and efforts to position the city as a hub for tech businesses and research.

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In year two, then, we will be preparing stories on the entities, both public and private, that account for Escambia County’s emerging identity as the Cyber Coast; the Hsu Education Foundation, which is working to supply students with the STEM training they need to qualify for jobs with high-tech regional employers; technologies employed by tenants at the rapidly expanding Port Panama City and at the Air Force base of the future under development in Bay County; and many more topics. Innovation & Technology magazine serves to inform our readership about what happens in those nondescript, windowless metal buildings with limited signage out front. Too, economic developers use the publication as they go about attracting high-tech businesses to our area and assembling a community of innovative enterprises that will help propel us into a future as yet undefined. Last year, a number of businesses chose to use the magazine as a forum for telling their stories via advertisements or native content detailing their histories, business models and missions. Please contact us if Innovation & Technology can help you with your marketing or brandbuilding efforts. We all can agree with Susan S. Fiorito, dean of the Jim Moran College of Entrepreneurship at FSU, who says that our region is not yet the equivalent of California’s Silicon Valley or North Carolina’s Research Triangle, but

momentum is building, mindsets are changing and our potential is great! That potential and our region’s attractiveness are manifesting themselves in the technology sector and elsewhere. In recent months, we learned that Amazon is set to become a major employer in Tallahassee and that a new customs facility is planned for Tallahassee’s airport. The first phase of Latitude Margaritaville Watersound at West Bay, an active-adult development projected to number ı70,000 homes when complete, is coming out of the ground north of Panama City Beach, and the St. Joe Company in conjunction with Tallahassee Memorial HealthCare and the FSU School of Medicine is developing a new teaching hospital not far from the future community. We are privileged to live in an area that is ascending to new levels on many fronts. Be well,

BRIAN ROWLAND browland@rowlandpublishing.com

PHOTO BY SCOTT HOLSTEIN

The result was our Tallahassee Innovation & Technology magazine, a 52-page product that served to shine a light on hightech businesses that tend to operate below the radar and meet the needs of highly specialized customers. We wrote, too, about initiatives aimed at raising Tallahassee’s technology profile and uniting private-sector businesses with researchers at Florida State University. We profiled a biotech business that moved to Tallahassee from Indiana; reported plans for a new business incubator at Innovation Park; checked in with businesses operating in the government technology space; explored technological advances made by shops that monitor weather patterns, trends and data for use by business planners; checked in with an entrepreneur who turned to Tallahassee mentors for help in launching his high-temperature sensors business; told the story of an adaptive and enterprising gate-control business that expanded its product line to take advantage of a trend spawned by the pandemic; and picked the brains of venture capitalists. The magazine enjoyed a great reception, so much so that in 2022 we will be expanding its focus to include the full 850 Business Magazine circulation area from Pensacola to the Capital City. This approach is consistent with what we have long been promoting in these pages — a regional identity and cooperation for Northwest Florida.

All billfishing in Guatemala is catch and release

April 19–23, 2022 Total Cost: $5,300 ■

Lodging per double occupancy 5 days/4 nights

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Greeting at airport and all transfers; return to airport

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3 full days of fishing with captain and mate

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4 anglers per boat with all equipment

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A Guy Harvey gift package to include shirt and other items from their store

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A Pacific Fins gift package upon arrival to room

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Subscription to Guy Harvey Magazine

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Open bar private dinners (full a-la-carte menu) each night by Pacific Fins chef with Dr. Guy Harvey

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Breakfast, hot lunch and snacks prepared fresh on board by Pacific Fins crew with soft drink/water beverages

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During stay, Dr. Guy Harvey will paint an original piece of art to be auctioned off on the last night

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Personalized signed print of Guy Harvey art

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Sightseeing afternoon upon arrival and lunch at La Casa Del Ron (Service tips not included)

For available expedition dates, contact browland@GuyHarvey.com

850 Business Magazine

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P RO M OT I O N

850businessmagazine.com MARJORIE TURNBULL, KEYNOTE SPEAKER

GULF POWER SYMPOSIUM The future of Northwest Florida and its growth and development are the topics of discussion at the Gulf Power Symposium, hosted at the Sandestin Beach Resort from March 8–9, 2022. The annual event brings together local, regional and state business and community leaders for networking and discussion on Northwest Florida.

“This is a time to share pride in being a woman. Can’t you feel the energy when we come together?” Marjorie Turnbull shared this and more in her keynote address at the 2021 Pinnacle Awards. Watch a video of the annual event, presented by 850 Business Magazine, and “meet” the 12 outstanding honorees in our recap found here 850BusinessMagazine.com/pinnacle-awards.

GET THE SCOOP — For all the latest 850 Business Magazine news, updates and special offers, sign up for our free e-newsletter today at 850BusinessMagazine.com/ contact-us.

LET’S NETWORK! Find 850 Business Magazine on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. You’ll also find Rowland Publishing on LinkedIn, where you can join the 850 Business Group for conversations with fellow readers. LinkedIn: Rowland Publishing and 850 Business Magazine pages, and the 850 Business Magazine Group

BE THE MAGIC Bit-Wizards is making even more magic happen with the launch of its Be the Magic Foundation. Named for one of Bit-Wizards’ core values, its mandate is to give back to the Northwest Florida nonprofit community through time, talent and monetary donations. Learn more here: 850businessmagazine.com/be-the-magic. 14

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Twitter: @850BizMag Facebook: 850 - The Business Magazine of Northwest Florida Instagram: 850bizmag

PHOTOS BY THE WORKMANS AND COURTESY OF GULF POWER SYMPOSIUM AND BIT-WIZARDS

VIEW THE 2021 PINNACLE AWARDS

For more information, visit 850BusinessMagazine.com/ calendar/gulf-power-symposium.

WE SERVE EVERY VETER N

With over 2 million veterans living in Florida and thousands more returning f rom Afghanistan, they need your assistance now more than ever. Become an Ambassador and help make a difference in the lives of our veterans.

PLEASE, DONATE TODAY.

HelpFLVets.org The Florida Veterans Foundation serves as the statewide lead organization for Florida veterans and their families by providing emergency and direct support and services to improve vets’ physical, f inancial, mental, emotional, and social well-being. 850 Business Magazine

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CUSTOM CONTENT

Managed IT I n today’s competitive business market, every company is a technology company. Bit-Wizards doesn’t want to be a mere vendor. This Fort Walton Beach technology company wants to be in the trenches handling the complex and continuously changing technology landscape so you can focus on what you do best: run your business and service your customers. “We’re looking to get into the details with our clients to figure out what makes their business tick,” says Jason

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Bit-Wizards brings the tech magic to keep you competitive and streamlined

Monroe, Associate Director of Solutions Delivery for Bit-Wizards. “We are an extension of their company operating as their IT department, but we’re also their technology partners.” A traditional “break/fix” information technology (IT) approach is no longer competitive. Today’s constantly changing business needs to dictate a proactive and continuous approach to IT called Managed IT. Like keeping your house well maintained, managed IT operates on a principle of iterative monitoring

and inspection, preventive maintenance, proactive security, and defensive backup and recovery strategies, combined with a well-oiled IT Help Desk. Bit-Wizards utilizes best-in-class cloud and on-premises hardware and software services based on Fortune 2000 company best practices. Their offering is priced and tailored to meet the needs of small, medium and large businesses, all receiving the same high-level service and commercial, enterprise-grade equipment installed by a team of technology experts.

CUSTOM CONTENT

Sam Blowes, examines an assembly line control panel to understand and integrate it securely into critical IT Systems. With manufacturing plants in Michigan, Ohio and California, Heartland Steel Corporation on-boarded with Bit-Wizards managed IT services to gain efficiencies and streamline business between multiple locations. Utilizing the Bit-Wizards approach, Heartland Steel thrived in the challenging environment across multiple states during the pandemic.

What can you expect when you retain Bit-Wizards for Managed IT services? After Monroe and his team of technical Wizards do a deep dive into your business to understand your needs and form a plan to address them, they set up a structure to monitor your systems in real-time. The overarching goal is to ensure you have seamless and secure business operations — every day. Part of their protocol is to ensure that you back up your computers regularly; you have an enterprise-grade firewall and servers secured with proper antivirus protection. They provide your employees with the latest commercialgrade email and productivity suites. On top of that, they will connect you to their 24-7 Bit-Wizards Help Desk. Think of it as a speed dial for when Outlook is offline, PowerPoint is not producing and the printer is kaput. “We are very intentional about our services,” says Samuel Blowes, Director of

IT for Bit-Wizards. “Once we understand how a client’s business runs and what it is they’re trying to accomplish, then we tailor our solution within a core framework to meet their needs.” Meeting and exceeding business needs is precisely what Bit-Wizards did locally for Kitchen & Bath Center. Kitchen & Bath Center has several locations across Northwest Florida, and the owner initially engaged Bit-Wizards to get its network running smoothly. Unfortunately, their network was slow and intermittent, causing problems sharing files and servicing customers. Over time, their network evolved and was not built to service multiple locations with limited bandwidth. Partnering with Bit-Wizards resulted in immediate and dramatic improvements to their sales, customer service and delivery. Now Kitchen & Bath Center has a proactive approach to its IT, keeping the entire company connected, allowing them to do what they do best — deliver

spectacular kitchen and bathroom solutions to their customers. “Kitchen & Bath’s success demonstrates the value of IT operating from a business point of view,” says CEO Vincent Mayfield. “The goal of our Managed IT service is to offer IT management from a holistic and proactive view. Most importantly, they are happy customers, utilizing our services for nearly a decade.” Today, IT is essential to every business. That said, Bit-Wizards clearly understands that few of us went into business to deal with the pains of technology — technology is an enabler. Bit-Wizards wants more for you and your business. “We want to be our clients’ Chief Technology Officer,” Blowes explains. “So, when it comes time to make decisions to grow the business, they have someone available to guide them and help plan out these changes within their day-to-day operations so that they can focus on their business, not IT headaches.”

An operations manager for Heartland Steel explains the operation to Patrick Gingras, a Bit-Wizards infrastructure engineer. The discovery phase of Bit-Wizards’ onboarding allows the team to formulate the best approach to implementing managed IT services and integrating with systems and control mechanisms while improving the process and causing the least amount of disruption to operations.

Bit-Wizards | 13 Memorial Parkway SW, Fort Walton Beach | BitWizards.com | (850) 226-4200

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CUSTOM CONTENT

More than 700 military and business leaders attend the annual Air Force Contracting Summit in Sandestin.

Six National Defense Summits Make Impact on Northwest Florida and Beyond Military, contractors and business leaders merge at nationwide meeting opportunities revolving around defense 18

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t is known that when a group with similar interests and intents gathers with purpose, great ideas and meaningful connections are often the result. Beginning in 1996, William Loiry recognized this need for a communal gathering of defense sectors, and that resulted in a series of homeland and global security and defense summits. What began as a summit in Washington, D.C., expanded to six yearly summits throughout the United States. Loiry, a defense and security facilitator and business leader, started the summit series catering to Air Force Contracting, and it quickly included summits for each branch of service. The summits decentralized from Washington D.C., so that small- and mid-sized companies could participate without bearing the burden of travel. As of 2022, the annual events include the Air Force Contracting Summit, Southwest Defense Contracting Summit, Navy Contracting Summit, MILCON Contracting Summit, Pacific Defense Contracting Summit and Northwest Florida Economic Summit. “These summits are a matter of ensuring that thousands of U.S. companies interested in federal contracts can actually identify contracting opportunities and upcoming contracts,” said Loiry. “We are active nationwide with those who are engaged with federal defense contracting or want to be.”

CUSTOM CONTENT

Key Members of Congress regularly speak at the annual Navy Contracting Summit in Norfolk.

The original summit, nearing its 10th year, is the Air Force Contracting Summit taking place at the Hilton Sandestin Beach Golf Resort & Spa Feb. 8–9, 2022. This comprehensive summit details the major areas of Air Force procurement bringing together contractors, subcontractors, military officials, defense agencies and business leaders. The Southwest Defense Contracting Summit takes place yearly in San Antonio, Texas, because it is home to Joint Base San Antonio, the largest U.S. military base worldwide. Commanders from JBSA speak alongside Army and Air Force officials from the Pentagon and other nationwide commands. Each June, the Navy Contracting Summit is held in Norfolk, Virginia. This summit focuses on the latest news about Navy contracts, from major weapons platforms to IT/ communications to shipyard modernization, and allows access to meet key Navy and Marine Corps decision-makers. The MILCON Contracting Summit in Washington, D.C. in December hones in on military construction and energy contracts for all of the services — U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Naval Facility Engineering Systems Command, Army Installations, and the Air Force Civil Engineer Center.

Two new summits will be introduced in 2022, the Pacific Defense Contracting Summit in Hawaii and the Northwest Florida Economic Summit in Panama City Beach. A major emphasis of the Pacific Defense Contracting Summit will be procuring and delivering a wide range of assets and resources to military bases across the Pacific region, as a result of the expanding threat of China. In late October 2022, the Northwest Florida Economic Summit will discuss ways to broaden Northwest Florida’s economic base by diversifying the region to include defense and infrastructure alongside the continued emphasis on tourism. Following the theme of the other summits, this will address how small- and mid-sized companies can be awarded contracts in Northwest Florida. Defense Leadership Forum national moderators are based in Washington, including Howard Snow, the former Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Navy, and Charles Sills, who has served in national security positions in the Pentagon, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the U.S. Middle East Force Command, and the Supreme Allied Command NATO/Atlantic. The conferences will have the options of both inperson and virtual attendance. Each option allows attendees to meet with contractors, speakers and others in attendance. Each summit provides an overview of the defense budget, an overview of commands’ mission and operational priorities, speakers from the relevant service branches, and detailed briefings on defense contracting opportunities. The matchmaking sessions — or as Loiry refers to them, defense speed dating — allows those who sign up 7 minutes to pitch their expertise. At the end, the pair can decide if they will further collaborate on contracting. Loiry is certainly making an impactful mark in defense leadership by providing opportunities for military and business leaders to join forces and merge ideas that will result in promising regional and national decisions empowering the increased defense of the United States.

» WANT TO GO?

For more information on the 2022 Air Force Contracting Summit and the 2022 Northwest Florida Economic Summit, visit usdlf.org and northwestfloridaleadershipforum.org, respectively.

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CUSTOM CONTENT

Northwest Florida Military Report BY WILLIAM LOIRY Tyndall Air Force Base: To build Tyndall Air Force Base’s new 325th Fighter Wing Headquarters Facility, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has awarded the fourth rebuild military construction project contract. The $24.5 million contract was awarded to B.L. Harbert International for a two-story, 27,265-square-foot facility, which will house front office staff and a variety of support operations. “Like all of our planned MILCON projects, this new facility will ensure Tyndall Airmen have the environment and the tools needed to continue executing the mission for our Air Force and our nation,” said Col. Greg Moseley, 325th Fighter Wing Commander. The $5 billion Tyndall AFB reconstruction program is a five-to-seven-year process, which includes more than 40 new military construction projects and 260 facility sustainment restoration and modernization projects.

Eglin Air Force Base: The Agile Weapons Division of the Air Force Armament Directorate, based at Eglin Air Force Base, has announced a new innovative contracting method known as the Eglin Wide Agile Acquisition Contract. “Eglin’s Armament Enterprise took a monumental step forward toward advancing agile force-multiplier weapon capabilities,” said Brig. Gen. Heath Collins, AF Program Executive Officer for the Weapons and Armament Directorate. “In today’s environment, we can’t bring new capabilities to bear fast enough.” The program awarded the first contracts in less than two months. NAS Whiting Field: Vice Admiral Kenneth Whitesell, Chief of Naval Air Forces, has accepted the first TH-73A training helicopter from William Hunt, CEO of Leonardo’s U.S. helicopter division. “This aircraft is going to be the centerpiece for our advanced helicopter training system,” Whitesell

WILLIAM LOIRY

William Loiry is an American business leader, defense and security facilitator, and philanthropist. More than 100,000 government, military and business leaders have attended his conferences on defense, homeland and global security, and disaster reconstruction. For more information, visit WilliamLoiry.com.

noted. The TH-73As will operate with Training Air Wing Five (TAW-5) from NAS Whiting Field. “This delivery signifies a new era for naval aviation training,” said Rear Admiral Robert Westendorff, Chief of Naval Aviation Training.

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SPECIAL REPORT

2021 Tallahassee Business Journal AN 850 BUSINESS MAGAZINE SPECIAL REPORT

850 Business Magazine

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Contents PRINCELL HAIR

26 As the CEO and president of the Tallahasseeheadquartered Black News Channel, Princell Hair draws on his past at networks including CBS in documenting the present and working to groom the news generation of journalists. BNC maintains close relationships with Historically Black Colleges & Universities (HBCUs), including Florida A&M University. Hair and his team are without a political agenda, he says, and are aware of the diversity within the black community.

CRISTINA PAREDES

32 The director of the Leon County/Tallahassee Office of Economic Development is capable of playing small ball and going for the fences. Cristina Paredes says that many times it’s the bunt that scores a run in the economic development game. Or it may be that she is called upon to help create an incentives package sufficient to lure Amazon to town. Always, she is community minded and doing what she can to urge community support of locally owned businesses. 24

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AMAZON

38 A daily newspaper called the economic development play that was styled Project Mango a “worst kept secret.” Indeed, prior to the deal closing, few people with a finger anywhere near the pulse of Tallahassee’s progress did not know that the land-rich DeVoe Moore intended to sell land adjoining his Tallahassee Auto Museum to the retail giant Amazon. The project is to yield thousands of construction and permanent jobs. Moore sees it as a development that will decrease the city’s reliance on public payrolls.

ONLINE ENTREPRENEURS

40 Even as the pandemic brought many small businesses to their knees, it resulted in a spike in new business creation, many of them operating from online platforms. The availability of cash and time and even the boredom that results from inactivity were factors leading to startups. In Tallahassee, a new online business, Dunsel’s Boat Sails, exemplifies the trend. The business

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manufactures heavy-duty tote bags from used and discarded boat sails.

AIRPORT

44 The Tallahassee International Airport intends to live up to its name more fully in years to come. Development of a new international passenger facility is scheduled for completion in 2024. Meanwhile the airport is working to freshen its terminal and to rehabilitate runways and taxiways while keeping an eye out for businesses, like Amazon, with an interest in occupying nearby land available for development.

TALLAHASSEE MEMORIAL EXTENDS ITS REACH

48 Tallahassee Memorial HealthCare has established a new facility in Southwood, expanding the availability of convenient urgent care to southeast Tallahassee. The hospital has also added an Abbot’s NeuroSphere Virtual Clinic for patients receiving Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS) therapy for movement disorders related to neurological conditions including Parkinson’s disease, dystonia and essential tremor.

CAPITAL REGIONAL SPECIALIZES CARE

52 Capital Regional Medical Center has more than $42 million in capital projects in the works, and several of them will be completed in 2022. They include a 20-bed inpatient rehabilitation facility, which will provide extended care for patients as they recover after their hospital stay. Three new procedural operating rooms will provide advanced stroke care, heart care and other services, adding to the hospital’s capacity to deliver tertiarylevel services.

CASCADES

56 Completion of the first phase in a $158 million downtown redevelopment project has further cemented the Cascade Park area’s status as the new center of town in Tallahassee. Developer Shawn McIntyre considers himself fortunate to have been able to navigate challenges presented by the COVID-19 pandemic without experiencing any significant project delays. A new 164-room hotel is topped by Charlie’s Park, a fine drinking venue. Photography by SAIGE ROBERTS

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A MARKETING IMPERATIVE

Businesses line up for spots on the Black News Channel

or too long, Princell Hair would argue, news media in the United States have viewed diversity as a charity initiative rather than a business imperative. Meanwhile, however, Hair has been pleased to discover that a growing number of businesses other than the media have learned that engagement with diverse communities is essential. Hair joined the Black News Channel, headquartered in Tallahassee, as its president and CEO in July 2020, five months after it was launched and made available to 33 million households via cable providers Spectrum and Xfinity and the Dish network. For starters, it offered six hours of live programming daily. Much has changed with Hair at the helm of the nation’s only 24-hour news channel dedicated to

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informing, entertaining and educating a primarily black audience. “We have had some incredible growth over the course of the last ı4 months or so,” Hair said. “We have increased our staff from 55 employees to 350.” About ı75 of those employees are located in Tallahassee; Hair has a home at SouthWood. Others work remotely or at BNC’s Washington, D.C., bureau. About 80 percent of the staff is African American. The production load has grown dramatically. “We have gone to ı7 hours of live programming a day on our channel and ı8 hours a day on a separate and distinct OTT channel,” Hair said. Over-the-top (OTT) channels or media services are offered directly to viewers via the internet.

Photography by DAVE BARFIELD

PHOTO COURTESY OF BLACK NEWS CHANNEL

BY STEVE BORNHOFT

As president and CEO of the Black News Channel, Princell Hair is committed to delivering multiple points of view on the issues of the day, particularly as they apply to Black and brown audiences. A native of South Florida, Hair started his career in local news, rising through a series of markets and positions with increasing responsibility and eventually becoming the vice president for news for the CBS Television Stations Group. He joined the Black News Channel in July 2020.

“The job has been a wonderful experience and a labor of love,” Hair summed up his experience to date. “The city has really embraced what we are doing here. They have been very accommodating.” Former Tallahassee Mayor John Marks III is BNC’s vice president for government and community affairs. “He has been helpful with some of the young folks who have moved into Tallahassee,” Hair said. “They are discovering a new part of the country, and John is our own built-in tour guide for Tallahassee. At the same time, he keeps us updated and in tune with what is happening in Washington.” Via its linear platform, BNC today reaches approximately 50 million homes. That number was due to grow in November when BNC planned to launch on Cox Media, a big player in BNC target markets including Atlanta, New Orleans and Virginia. “On the OTT platform side, we are available on about 250 million internet-connected devices,” Hair said. The work of expanding BNC’s reach and appeal continues. In September, it launched an evening political program, Amplified with Aisha Mills. At this writing, it is planning to introduce in the fall a robust, videocentric website with its own content and voice. “Next year, we’re looking at launching an app that is going to contain not just the news feeds that we currently do,” Hair said. “It will address other topics and content areas of interest to Black audiences — travel, family, community, restaurants, various areas that we would like to get into that we may not have time to approach on our linear network.”

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Hair is mindful that he is playing to a Black, but diverse, audience. “The Black community is not a monolithic community,” he said. “There are varying interests inside the Black community. There are African Americans, there are Caribbean Black folks who are here; it runs the gamut. There are Black conservatives, there are Black liberals, there are Black progressives. Our position is that we try to provide all viewpoints on a particular topic. Then, the audience can make their minds up as to where their position is. “We don’t have a political agenda. Our agenda is to serve the Black community.” On the advertising side of the house, BNC has moved from pursuing clients to entertaining potential customers, lots of them. The channel’s pull strategy is working.

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“The Black and brown market is too large for businesses to ignore — $300 billion in buying power a year, according to a McKinsey study,” Hair noted. “Companies looking for new streams of revenue are seeing that the Black community can provide them. If businesses overlook minorities — Hispanics, African Americans, members of the LGBTQ community, sometimes even women — they are overlooking major opportunities. “I can tell you that there is no shortage of suitors looking to be a part of BNC. It’s a wonderful problem to have, and we hope to continue having it.” Hair said that BNC, during its “upfront” season from April to September, exceeded its own expectations by securing commitments from advertisers in “all the major categories: pharmaceutical, financial, food

A newly introduced program, Amplified with Aisha Mills, focuses on politics. Mills is a veteran commentator and political strategist dedicated to making sure that our democracy serves all corners in America’s cultural fabric.

PHOTOS BY DAVE BARFIELD AND COURTESY OF BLACK NEWS CHANNEL (MILLS)

The Black News Channel, via its linear platform, was reaching approximately 50 million homes in October, a number that was due to jump in November when the BNC planned to launch on Cox Media. Of the BNC’s 350 employees nationwide, about 175 are located in Tallahassee.

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service, retail, consumer goods, you name it.” BNC’s ratings have been inconsistent, but the overall trend line is good. “We are still finding the audience, and the audience is still finding us,” Hair said. “But we are seeing really strong performance, especially on days when you have stories that either disproportionately affect or interest the Black community.” As of late summer, BNC had just started its first paid multimedia

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campaign, having previously relied on earned media generated by an agency, Rogers & Cowan, and the work of Tim Buckman, its vice president for integrated communications. BNC maintains close relationships with historically Black colleges and universities around the country and especially with Florida A&M in Tallahassee. “I very much view BNC as a teaching hospital,” Hair said. “We bring in interns every semester, and the majority come from HBCUs. They recognize that this is a wonderful opportunity for their students to get into a national news network and actually perform the jobs.” Hair sings the praises of the journalism school at FAMU. “They really prepare their students for the practical world,” he said. “When kids from FAMU come into BNC, the learning curve is not as steep as it is for kids from other colleges.”

Its strengthening Tallahassee ties notwithstanding, is it possible that BNC’s explosive success will lead the channel to establish a new headquarters in a bigger population center? Hair has identified Atlanta as a city that might become home to a larger BNC presence in the future. Already, BNC personalities accounting for five hours of broadcast time per day operate from studios in their Atlanta homes, Buckman said. Buckman added that BNC has experienced some difficulty in finding the production personnel it needs in Tallahassee. “But no decision to leave has been made, and if it were to come, it would be two to three years down the line,” he said. “Even then, the change would be gradual, one show or one studio at a time. In any event, we will have a continuing presence in Tallahassee. It’s Florida’s capital, and a lot of news comes out of the state.”

Photography by DAVE BARFIELD

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MAXIMIZING SYNERGIES Research and technology are economic drivers in Tallahassee BY DAVID EKRUT, PH.D.

ristina Paredes is the director of the Leon County/ Tallahassee Office of Economic Vitality, established in 20ı6 to be a catalyst to entrepreneurship. It has programs to welcome new businesses of any size, recognizing that getting operations established in a new location can be a challenge. “You want someone to open the front door and introduce you to people that you know,” Paredes said, “and we help make those introductions.” Whether it’s breaking ground on new construction or providing space for small innovative companies, the OEV has resources available for entrepreneurs interested in moving to the region. They provide information on how to obtain local, state and federal incentives that minimize the costs of doing business in Tallahassee and can provide technical assistance in procuring the capital necessary to launch new businesses and grow existing companies. Their team is equipped with state-of-theart technologies to aid clients in selecting the optimal location for their business, based on real estate trends and consumer spending patterns. “Research is the bunt that hopefully gets you that run,” Paredes, a baseball fan, said about innovation and business development. She has worked with startups, including Sensatek and QuarryBio, to help facilitate a smooth transition out of research and development and into successful product development. The OEV helped procure funds for North Florida Innovation Labs for expansion of their business incubator. Her offices also work with larger corporations looking to expand here. “We have put a lot of momentum behind our ‘Magnetic Capital of the World’ campaign,” Paredes said, noting six projects in the pipeline in applied sciences and technology. Under the leadership of Ricardo Schneider, Danfoss Turbocor has broken

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Photography by SAIGE ROBERTS

Cristina Paredes, the director of the Leon County/Tallahassee Office of Economic Development, is spearheading a “Magnetic Capital of the World” campaign in an effort to further position Tallahassee as a hub for high-tech businesses and innovation. FSU’s National High Magnetic Field Laboratory is central to that initiative. It is home to a cyclotron resonance facility capable of performing chemical analyses of highly complex mixtures.

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Scientists working in the millikelvin facility at FSU’s National High Magnetic Field Laboratory analyze materials by subjecting them to high magnetic fields and extremely cold temperatures.

ground on their third expansion in Tallahassee. The latest addition to the international energy-technology giant’s local operations will create 230 new jobs in the area of manufacturing, as well as engineering and research. But it’s the synergy between companies and research facilities that will push Tallahassee to the next level as a center for technological advancements and business development. Paredes said that Schneider and Prof. Gregory Boebinger, the director of the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory, “… have been huge advocates on how industry and research can work together to anchor here in Tallahassee.” Technology is not the only area of interest for Paredes. Recently, OEV picked up a few distribution and logistics-based projects. With I-ı0 cutting through the capital city, Paredes considers Tallahassee a “logistical wheel” with quick access into South Georgia and to ports in Jacksonville and 34

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Pensacola. Being centrally located in Northern Florida has made Tallahassee an ideal hub for many distribution companies, most notably the Amazon Fulfillment Center, which is slated to finish development in 2022. Amazon will be adding close to ı,000 jobs to the region. While many businesses are struggling to fill jobs in the service industry, Paredes remains optimistic about the opportunities Amazon will bring to the region. “People and capital move, but place doesn’t. So making Tallahassee a great place that keeps human resources here will help attract and grow your workforce,” Paredes said, adding that over the last ı8 months, Tallahassee has seen wages grow, making jobs more attractive and driving people into vacancies. The Amazon Fulfillment Center will offer a starting wage of at least $ı5 an hour and employee benefits, including educational and advancement

opportunities after one year of employment. Currently, the OEV is discussing potential partnerships with Lively and TCC to “upskill” these jobs. “Amazon shouldn’t be your main highway, it should just be your ramp to your main highway,” Paredes said. In the Tallahassee area, 56 percent of people have a liberal arts degree or higher, so low-skilled labor positions are seen as a stepping stones. The recruitment campaign will focus on attracting young, eager workers, looking to use the entry-level jobs at the fulfillment center as a lowest rung on their climb to the top of their ideal career ladder. Of all the exciting new projects on her desk, Cristina is most excited about the “Love Your Local” campaign, which encourages community support of local businesses. During the holiday season, the OEV works to promote locally owned retailers as a first option for shoppers. The campaign has attracted widespread attention, winning the OEV an award from the International Economic Development Conference. The campaign highlights local establishments with signage in their windows and is a favorite initiative for Paredes. It encourages everyone to “step out and experience a locally owned company,” she said.

The Office of Economic Development’s “Love Your Locals” campaign encourages community support of locally owned businesses. The initiative has attracted widespread attention and won an award from the International Economic Development Conference.

Photography by SAIGE ROBERTS

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ECONOMIC INDICATORS DASHBOARD Statistics compiled by the Leon County/Tallahassee Office of Economic Vitality

EMPLOYMENT

UNEMPLOYMENT RATE

LABOR FORCE

2ND QUARTER 2021

187,802

4.9%

197,395

á UP 22,094

â DOWN FROM 8.8%

á UP 15,783

FROM Q2 2020

IN Q2 2020

FROM Q2 2020

+ 13.3%

- 3.9 pts.

+ 8.7%

2ND QUARTER 2021

UNEMPLOYMENT COMPENSATION CLAIMS

AVERAGE WEEKLY WAGE

OFFICE VACANCY RATE

á 51 MORE THAN

2ND QUARTER 2021

4TH QUARTER 2020

2ND QUARTER 2021

Q2 2020

2,263

$1,024

6.4%

+ 29.7%

â 18,107 FEWER THAN

á $122 MORE THAN

á UP FROM 5.9%

IN Q2 2020

IN Q4 2019

IN Q2 2020

MEDIAN SINGLE-FAMILY HOME SALES PRICE

- 88.9%

+ 13.0%

+ 0.5 pts.

NEW SINGLE-FAMILY CONSTRUCTION PERMITS

223

1ST QUARTER 2021

$256,500 á UP $24,950 FROM Q4 2019

+ 7.5% TOURIST TAX RECEIPTS 1ST QUARTER 2021

$1.06 M

â DOWN $558K FROM Q1 2020

- 34.4%

Leon County Population Growth by Age Group, 2010-2020 Source: University of Florida, Bureau of Economic and Business Research

Ages 0-4 – 633 // Ages 5-17 – 2,476 // Ages 18-24 – 789 // Ages 25-54 – 2,391 Ages 55-64 – 1,839 // Ages 65-79 – 3,955 // Ages 80+ – 1,914

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TAXABLE SALES 1ST QUARTER 2021

$1.39 B

á UP $179.5 M FROM Q1 2020

+ 14.8%

The Office of Economic Vitality works to ensure accountability, transparency, professional management and citizen engagement in economic development projects. It develops programs and initiatives while also leveraging ideas, innovations and intellectual capital through coordination with community economic development partners.

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AMAZONIAN PROJECT Officials say massive fulfillment center will be transformative BY AUDREY POST

The fine print Local businessman DeVoe Moore had long planned to develop his property on the north side of Mahan Drive, between Interstate ı0 and Thornton Road. 38

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Toward that end, he had the area approved for development in 20ı2. That way, once a development plan was in place, all that would be needed was approval of a sign variance. He sold ıı8 acres near his Antique Car Museum to two entities representing Amazon for an estimated $22.7 million. The Tallahassee-Leon County Office of Economic Vitality handled the economic incentives package, acknowledging in September that the company was indeed Amazon, and the deal had been struck after the promise of $2.56 million in local incentives. “We are proud to officially announce Amazon is coming to Tallahassee,” Christina Paredes, who heads OEV, said. “They’ll be using advanced robotic technology within the fulfillment center.

It’s a really neat process where the robots are helping with the sorting and picking of your items that you order.” Residents in the Mahan Road and Buck Lake Road areas expressed concern about traffic impacts, but it was Thornton Road residents who were closest to the site and would feel the most impact. When the Blueprint Intergovernmental Agency board, made up of city and county commissioners, met in July to vote on whether to approve the incentive package for Project Mango, only City Commissioner Jacqueline “Jack” Porter voted against it, saying she thought the process had been rushed and area residents had not been given time to weigh in. According to the development plans, all truck traffic will be

RENDERING COURTESY OF OFFICE OF ECONOMIC VITALITY

t was presented as Project Mango. A Fortune 500 company was seeking an incentive package to locate a $200 million, 650,000-square-foot logistics and fulfillment center in Tallahassee/Leon County, one of several locations the company was considering. The company’s request for anonymity — a typical aspect of negotiations between businesses and economic development agencies — prompted the “Project Mango” moniker, but speculation pointed to online retailer Amazon early on. In an archetypical government town like Tallahassee — state capital, two major universities and a community college larger than many universities — there is limited corporate sponsorship for cultural events and nonprofit fundraisers, things that contribute to a higher quality of life. The potential arrival of the biggest commercial venture in Tallahassee history was viewed as a sign of hope that the county’s financial base might diversify and expand. “Amazon’s project is a once-in-a-generation economic development opportunity for our entire community,” Leon County Commission Chairman Rick Minor said once the deal was sealed. “Amazon’s investment in Florida’s capital county will be transformative, generating more than ı,000 full-time jobs and a total economic impact of $45ı million. We are living in extraordinary times, and our ability to create more employment opportunities for local families could not have come at a better time.” Tallahassee’s economic tide could be turning, but some wondered at what cost.

Rendering depicts fulfillment center slated for a location on the north side of Mahan Drive in Tallahassee, between I-10 and Thornton Road. The project is expected to generate 1,000 fulfillment and management jobs paying upward of $15 per hour.

AMAZON COMES TO TOWN Incentives and Projected Benefits

INCENTIVE PACKAGE THROUGH BLUEPRINT INTERGOVERNMENTAL AGENCY’S TARGETED BUSINESS PROGRAM:

»A d valorem tax

reimbursement estimate: $159,900 per year for six years

»T angible personal

property tax reimbursement estimate: $245,939 in the first year, decreasing in subsequent five years

»D evelopment fees: $499,268, first year only

»T otal of $2,565,299 over six years

required to use Vineland Drive, which has a traffic light at its intersection with Mahan Drive. Employees will use the Thornton Road exit from the property. But some employees will turn right onto Thornton and head toward Miccosukee Road, one of Tallahassee/ Leon County’s cherished canopy roads. The impact on Miccosukee Road is not yet known, but options to widen the protected two-lane road to accommodate the increased traffic do not exist.

Growing pains Many people likely don’t realize it, County Commissioner Kristin Dozier said, but the final vote to approve or disapprove the project fell within very narrow parameters. “Once the staff determined the project fell within the ‘Active Center’ designation, the issue was whether it met all the requirements of the designation, and it did,” she said. “This is the highest

use designation we have, and it usually covers mixed retail projects. “But there is no designation for a fulfillment center operating three shifts, with people coming and going around the clock,” Dozier said. After the vote to approve the project, Dozier made a motion, passed unanimously, to have staff conduct a review in six months of the environmental and traffic impacts of the project. Dozier believes the Amazon fulfillment center will be a good thing for Tallahassee and Leon County’s economy, but she also wants to protect the people and natural resources that are already here. It’s growing pains; the system was not set up to handle a project of the magnitude of the Amazon fulfillment center. “The question is, do we need to include these issues in the review process?” she said. “The six-month review should help us answer it.”

PROJECTED ECONOMIC BENEFIT FOR TALLAHASSEE/ LEON COUNTY AND SURROUNDING AREAS:

»$ 200 million in capital investment in a new 650,000-square-foot fulfillment center

» 1 ,000 new jobs

in fulfillment and management paying a minimum of $15/hour

»2 ,256 construction jobs and 1,346 permanent jobs

»O verall economic

impact of $451.1 million

Source: Blueprint Intergovernmental Agency 850 Business Magazine

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Pandemic-induced shutdowns and slowdowns provided William McCarthy and Jonathan Virga with the time and the incentive they needed to found Dunsel’s Sail Bags.

SOCIAL ACCEPTANCE Online businesses have flourished during pandemic

“I

t’s impossible to say now, but you know, there’s a chance that this business wouldn’t have started if there was no pandemic,” began William McCarthy. “Oh, I’d put money on it,” Jonathan Virga cut in. “A hundred percent. I think that’s entirely true. That boredom fueled this.” McCarthy and Virga are co-founders of Dunsel’s Sail Bags, an eco-friendly Tallahassee startup that produces a line of high-quality, durable bags constructed entirely from used and discarded boat sails. As entrepreneurs who have launched a business via social media, they are part of a trend that has gathered steam since the pandemic began. Recent months have seen a dramatic rise in people venturing into the entrepreneurial space to supplement income, fulfill dreams or gain freedom from an increasingly unpredictable corporate work environment.

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Between 20ı2 and 20ı9, LLC filings in Florida grew by an average of ı0 percent per year, according to records from the Department of State’s Division of Corporations. In 2020, that number jumped to 28 percent, even as many traditional businesses suffered declines. “I think you really need to look back at the last recession to have a good idea of what’s going on,” said Robert Blacklidge, executive director of the Tallahassee business incubator Domi Station. “Back in 2008, there weren’t a lot of resources readily available for entrepreneurs,” he added. “During this economic downturn, the government stepped in and replaced that revenue. Wealth has, for a lot of people, increased. Real estate has gone up, stocks have gone up and that has created an opportunity for people to seek out resources for their own ideas, their growth, their business.” In just a few months, Domi’s

enrollment jumped from eight to 44. Among those enrolled in the program are Virga and McCarthy. While recessions historically have discouraged new business formation, the downturn resulting from COVID-ı9 has proved to be an exception to that rule. “While many small businesses were unable to survive pandemic lockdowns, new business startups nearly doubled in the United States during the pandemic,” reports the McKinsey Global Institute (MGI). “During COVID-ı9, many workers in the United States who were furloughed, laid off or dropped out of the labor market for reasons such as child care, took the opportunity to create the startup of their dreams.” Government policies and stimuli affected that growth. “Added unemployment benefits and stimulus checks that were part of massive government stimulus packages may have enabled these new ventures,” MGI

PHOTO COURTESY DUNSEL’S SAIL BAGS

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reports. “Governments can support continued growth by expanding digital architecture to give everyone access to affordable broadband connections and by making permanent some temporary changes in regulation that have allowed new businesses to flourish during the pandemic.” Virga and McCarthy got their start on social media. The FSU entrepreneurship majors were approaching graduation when they launched Dunsel’s on Facebook in the fall of 2020. The two men were overjoyed when orders started to trickle in and then picked up as the holidays approached. With a few dozen sales under their belts, the two gained confidence and spread their message of transparency and sustainability through livestreams, blogs, workshop videos When and Instagram. somebody “I don’t like getting emails that are buys one of our bags, just like, ‘50% off buy now,’ ” Virga they’re not buying something else that’s said. “I like more of a storytelling been made from raw aspect and really having a personal- materials. We’re ity. I think that’s really what we’ve lessening demand on tried to do across the board, whether the raw materials that are being used to with the blogs or Instagram posts make new or Facebook. We’ve even posted backpacks, new on Reddit a few times in different totes, new toiletry bags, new things.” communities with just an intro and blip about who we are, what we do. — Jonathan Virga We’ve been well-received in that, but I think it’s because of that transparency and that storytelling — it’s more real than a big company with no face.” Today, the two still handle the bulk of the business on their own. McCarthy sews bags, Virga handles most of the marketing, and both spend hours on end cold calling sail lofts or anyone they think may have a sail in the garage. It’s a lot of work, but it’s a labor of love. “We want to feel good about what we do every single day,” McCarthy said. “Sure, we could probably build really awesome products out of brand new sails. We could just get the material, and we can buy it probably cheaper than we can literally source it. But that’s not our mission.” “This idea of consumerism, we’re beating it twice,” Virga added. “The first time, we’re taking from trash. We’re taking from the end of a life cycle, but then we turn that into a product. When somebody buys one of our bags, they’re not buying something else that’s been made from raw materials. We’re lessening demand on the raw materials that are being used to make new backpacks, new totes, new toiletry bags, new things.”

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Tallahassee Business Journal SPEC I A L R EPORT

ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT GENERATOR Tallahassee’s airport focuses on more than the passenger experience BY AL KRULICK

y all accounts, 2020 was the worst year in the history of commercial air travel. Airplane passenger numbers dropped by 60 percent because of restrictions resulting from COVID-ı9. Tallahassee International Airport (TLH) could not escape the debacle, hitting rock bottom in April. But, according to airport director David Pollard, the numbers have steadily bounced back. “We’ve surpassed 20ı7 numbers; now we’re closing in on ’ı8 and ’ı9 numbers,” he said in late August. “So we’re climbing out of the big drop.” Located five miles southwest of downtown Tallahassee, TLH opened for business in ı96ı as the Tallahassee Municipal Airport, although the capital city’s first airport was initially developed in ı928 next to where the James Messer Sports complex is located today. Named Dale Mabry Field after a famous World War I aviator, the original airport had a single turf runway until ı938 when the U.S. Army established a fighter training school on the site, constructing three runways and significantly expanding the facility. The field was eventually abandoned in favor of the new location.

Efforts are underway to ensure that greater numbers of international passengers claim bags at Tallahassee’s airport. A new international passenger facility is scheduled for completion in 2024.

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Photography by THE WORKMANS

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Today, TLH, which became Tallahassee Regional Airport, and then, in 20ı5, Tallahassee International Airport, covers 2,485 acres and has two runways: 9/27 is 8,000 by ı50 feet and ı8/36 is 7,000 by ı50 feet. Passenger service is provided by American, Delta, United and Silver Airways with flights to and from Tampa; Fort Lauderdale; Miami; Charlotte, North Carolina; Dallas-Fort Worth; Washington, D.C.; and Atlanta. FedEx and Quest Diagnostics Aviation handle freight. The airport is city-owned with a staff of 54 and an annual budget exceeding $ı3 million. “The airport is a priority for the City of Tallahassee and the surrounding region,” said Tallahassee’s mayor, John Dailey. “It’s an award-winning airport with an awardwinning staff. We are primed to move forward, and we’ve got a lot of exciting things going on at the airport.” Perhaps the biggest priority for TLH is to become a truly international hub. Dailey reports that the city hopes to finish building its new international passenger facility by 2024, which, when complete, will be capable of processing 200 international passengers an hour. It will also get the city one step closer to establishing a foreign trade zone, which Pollard says could potentially extend to Port St. Joe to the west, and east to the I-75 corridor. “But that’s all subject to final approval by U.S. Customs,” he said. “First we build 46

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the facility that will house Customs, and once we get Customs in, we make a formal application for the Foreign Trade Zone.” Other projects at TLH include: ongoing rehabilitation to the terminal; improvements to the air traffic control tower and AARF Fire Station; flight information display system upgrades; and runway and taxiway reconstruction and rehabilitation. Then there’s the Airport Gateway Project, a proposed ı2-mile multimodal roadway — pedestrian, vehicle and bicycle — to be constructed between the airport and Downtown Tallahassee. Pollard and Daily agree that developing ı00 acres of airport land to attract new businesses seeking runway access is also a high priority. “Our airport is an incredible economic development opportunity, not only for Tallahassee, but for the region,” Daily said. “And we look forward to capitalizing on all aspects of the airport to move our community forward.” “We’re working hard not just to improve the airport and the passenger travel experience, but we’re also working in partnership with several other planning organizations and local groups to enhance the economic development potential and ultimate creation of jobs within the community,” Pollard added. As the overall economy continues to improve, the city administration is bullish on TLH.

“We continue to do everything we can to partner with our airlines, our tenants and our stakeholders, and do everything we can to ensure a good, strong recovery, while also keeping our travelers safe as we conduct our daily operations,” Pollard said. “We’re very excited about the future of this airport and where we’re going. There are going to be some challenges ahead, but we’re going to remain focused on the positive. And that’s the bigger picture.”

Projects in sight for Tallahassee International Airport include rehabilitation work on the terminal, runways and taxiways. A proposed multimodal gateway would link the airport with downtown Tallahassee.

Photography by THE WORKMANS

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With its Southwood facility, Tallahassee Memorial HealthCare has expanded the availability of urgent care services to include the southeastern quadrant of the city. Historically, TMH provided Tallahassee with its first blood bank and ambulance service.

EXPANDING TREATMENT OPTIONS TMH adds clinics, expands presence in SE Tallahassee BY AL KRULICK

allahassee Memorial HealthCare (TMH) is a private, not-forprofit community health care system that serves a ı7-county area in North Florida and South Georgia. Originally founded in ı948 as Tallahassee Memorial Hospital, TMH has grown in size, scope, offerings and services over the years. Today, TMH comprises a 772-bed acute care hospital, a psychiatric hospital, multiple specialty care centers, three residency programs, 32 affiliated

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physician practices and partnerships with other medical institutions. There are more than 650 physicians on staff at TMH, representing more than 50 specialties. Its workforce exceeds 5,000, making it the largest employer in Leon County. TMH has a long and distinguished record of medical “firsts” created for the benefit of its patients in the greater Tallahassee region. It had the area’s first blood bank, its first ambulance service, home health care program, cardiac catheterization lab, freestanding

emergency center, neonatal intensive care unit, and Level II trauma and emergency center, among others. It also has the first and only neuro-intensive care unit, comprehensive stroke center and animal therapy program. TMH has the longest continuously accredited cancer program in Florida, is home to the Panhandle’s most advanced neurosurgery team, and its specialties of gynecological oncology and surgical oncology are exclusively available in the region only at TMH.

Photography by DAVE BARFIELD

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This past July, TMH was once again recognized by U.S. News and World Report as a Best Hospital for 202ı–2022. It earned six “High Performing” ratings: in COPD (Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease), Diabetes, Heart Attack, Heart Failure, Kidney Failure and Stroke Care. Other recent news at TMH includes the introduction of Abbot’s NeuroSphere Virtual Clinic into the treatment paradigm for patients receiving Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS) therapy for movement disorders related to a variety of neurological conditions such as Parkinson’s disease, dystonia (a disorder characterized by involuntary muscle contractions) and essential tremor. DBS patients are outfitted with implanted electrodes and a pacemaker-type device that helps control these movements while reducing symptoms and the need for prescription medications. The new virtual technology allows physicians to both communicate with patients as well as provide new device treatment settings as necessary, in real time, regardless of location. Any changes are relayed directly to a patient’s compatible Smartphone or Apple iPod touch mobile devices.

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Urgent care like that offered at its Southwood urgent care facility, can be the best after-hours treatment option for patients experiencing sprains, skin rashes, infections, flu or fever, minor wounds or other aches and pains.

PHOTOS BY DAVE BARFIELD

Most recently, TMH opened its second Urgent Care Center to provide increased access to residents in Southeast Tallahassee. Urgent care remains the best treatment option for individuals who need medical attention after normal business hours, cannot wait for a doctor’s appointment or don’t have a primary care physician. Both Urgent Care Centers are equipped to serve patients experiencing sprains or strains, skin rashes or infection, fever or flu, muscle or stomachaches, earaches, as well as those who need minor stitches. The new center is located in the SouthWood neighborhood at 3900 Esplanade Way. According to Dr. John Streacker, medical director of both Urgent Care Centers, the new facility was created out of a former TMH primary care office and a rheumatology office. “We retrofitted it to become urgent care, and it’s a beautiful space,” he said. “It’s a wonderful option to be able to offer health care services to those further out from Tallahassee proper.” Streacker adds that another goal of the center is to help lighten the load at the hospital’s emergency department while offering patients the care that they need in an acute setting. And while not offering primary care, per se, the Center “does a great job of filling that role,” Streacker notes. “And we do our best to help the patient at discharge by offering resources for them to establish a relationship with primary care. That’s one of our main focuses.” Although the new Urgent Care Center officially opened on Aug. 25, 202ı, there was no ribbon-cutting ceremony at that time due to the entire TMH community’s focus on the ongoing COVID-ı9 pandemic. Nonetheless, Streacker said, “We’re open for business. We’re here and available to take care of anyone’s needs. We’re open Monday through Thursday 9 a.m. to 8 p.m.; Friday and Saturday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.; and, hopefully, in the future, we’re going to expand those hours.” 850 Business Magazine

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Tallahassee Business Journal

ANTICIPATING A MILESTONE YEAR CRMC boosts its specialized care capabilities BY AL KRULICK

n the early ı970s, because there was only one hospital in Tallahassee, physicians sometimes had to wait weeks to schedule their surgeries. Patients traveled to other Florida cities for care. Seeing the need for another hospital, Tallahassee native Jim Tully, a prominent real estate developer, company president and community leader, formed the Capital Medical Center Group in ı974 along with several local doctors and businessmen. The group sought approval from the state to break ground on a new facility to be

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located on Capital Circle, which was largely undeveloped at the time. In ı977, the same year that the state board granted the necessary Certificate of Need, Tully was diagnosed with throat cancer. He died a year later — one year before the new Capital Medical Center (CMC) opened its doors and began serving patients. In ı980, the Hospital Corporation of America (HCA) purchased the center, and it became HCA Tallahassee Community Hospital (TCH). Throughout the ’80s, TCH introduced new technologies and services, including a CT scan, hyperbaric

oxygen therapy, cardiac catheterization and an open-heart surgery program. In the ’90s, the TCH Family Center began offering labor and delivery services, a new cardiac surgery ICU was opened and access to primary care was instituted via several community-based offices. A $ı.ı million expansion of the Emergency Department occurred in ı998, and by the year 2000, the hospital had opened a new Progressive Care Unit and an ı8-bed orthopedic/neurology unit. A new $ı00 million replacement hospital was completed in 2003, and it opened as the Capital Regional Medical Center (CRMC). Over the last two decades, CRMC’s physical structures were expanded, more in-house medical offerings and programs were instituted, and more outpatient services were added. Today, Capital Regional Medical Center has more than ı,ı00 employees, approximately 500 physicians and 266 beds. It includes a bariatric center,

PHOTO COURTESY OF CAPITAL REGIONAL MEDICAL CENTER

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Renderings depict an anticipated expansion at Capital Regional Medical Center and the planned look of a new patient room. Steadily over the past two decades, CRMC has grown its physical plants, added in-house medical offerings and programs and expanded outpatient services.

general care for overall patient education and wellness, secondary care and tertiary care treat more severe conditions that require specialized knowledge and more intensive health monitoring.) “These projects will be positive for the hospital and for the community,” Keesee said. “They will yield over ı25 new jobs for our community as Tallahassee continues to grow. We’re excited to be advancing the tertiary care capability here at Capital Regional, further defining Tallahassee as the health care hub for the region. So, we’re very, very optimistic for our future. And 2022 is going to be a milestone year.”

We have over $42 million in major capital projects underway, and a lot of them will be coming to life next year. We’ll be building a 20-bed inpatient rehabilitation facility, which will provide extended care for patients as they recover after their hospital stay so that they can get home healthy.” — Alan B. Keesee, CEO of Capital Regional Medical Center

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comprehensive women’s health center, cancer center, family center, accredited chest pain center, 24/7 emergency services in Leon and Gadsden counties, certified primary stroke center, a Surgical Services, Heart & Vascular Center, wound care center and affiliated physician practices. It also serves military personnel from Moody Air Force Base in Valdosta, Georgia; the Mayport Naval Station east of Jacksonville; and the U.S. Coastguard Sector – Jacksonville. Alan B. Keesee, Capital Regional’s CEO, said there is more change coming soon. “We have over $42 million in major capital projects underway, and a lot of them will be coming to life next year,” he said. “We’ll be building a 20-bed inpatient rehabilitation facility, which will provide extended care for patients as they recover after their hospital stay so that they can get home healthy. And then, we have three new procedural operating rooms where we’ll have advanced stroke care, heart care and other services.” Keesee explains that these improvements will serve to update and improve the center’s tertiary care services. (Medical services are divided into primary, secondary and tertiary care. While primary care focuses on

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Tallahassee Business Journal SPEC I A L R EPORT

CASCADING BENEFITS Downtown redevelopment project repositions city’s ‘center of gravity’ BY HANNAH BURKE

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PHOTO BY MIKE O'NEILL

arly in 2020, the first phase in the construction of Shawn McIntyre’s $ı58 million downtown redevelopment project, Cascades, was just reaching completion. The pandemic, of course, threw a wrench into the works. While construction was deemed an essential activity, materials and appliance shortages and the availability of healthy, skilled workers slowed the pace of business. But for McIntyre, a partner and senior vice president of North American Properties, these were “minor setbacks.” In May 202ı, just a few months behind schedule, the mixed-use development debuted a brand-new hotel and welcomed the first residents to its upscale apartment complex. “I feel very fortunate that we weathered — and are still weathering — the pandemic well,” McIntyre said. “I have peers in the industry from other states where developments have stopped and not restarted, so we’ve been very blessed and fortunate to be able to continue. And, the reward is that people have accepted Cascades into the community and are really happy to be here.” According to McIntyre, Tallahassee’s center of gravity seems to have already shifted to the two city blocks adjoining Cascades Park. Marriott International’s ı64-room AC Hotel Tallahassee has already attracted “a high guest occupancy,” said McIntyre, and its 5,000-square-foot ballroom and business meeting space is being used frequently. The rooftop bar, Charlie Park, is now open, treating visitors to craft cocktails, epicurean small plates and a bird’s-eye view of Cascades Park’s 24-acre green space. The Parkview at Cascades, a new amphitheater support space, is now complete with a green room, boardroom, dressing rooms and a 3,533-square-foot event ballroom. McIntyre said the development has been turned over to the Leon County Tourist Development Council and the City of Tallahassee Parks and Recreation Department, and leasing for events should commence soon.

Completion of the first phase in a $158 million downtown redevelopment project has further cemented the Cascades Park area as the new center of town in Tallahassee. Developer Shawn McIntyre has navigated challenges created by the COVID-19 pandemic to keep his project on schedule.

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Marriott International’s 164-room AC Hotel Tallahassee features a 5,000-square-foot ballroom and business meeting space. Charlie Park, the rooftop bar at the hotel, offers crafts cocktails, epicurean small plates and spectacular views.

Park don’t have to get in their car and drive elsewhere to eat.” There are also letters of intent signed for a coffee shop and an ice cream/smoothie parlor. Cascades recently received the go-ahead to begin Phase II construction, which will add two more residential buildings and another ı50 living units available for rent. Buildout will take about two years. “Phase II will help create the downtown neighborhood people have been asking for and plays to the ‘live, work, stay, play’ cliché from the planner’s handbook,” McIntyre said. “Looking back at the city’s original request for proposal, I think we’ve

fulfilled the promises we made and the desire for an ı8-hour downtown with multiple uses.” McIntyre said that early on, a city planner did a study projecting the amount of urban density generated by a hotel, retail center, public parking lot, office building and McIntyre’s goal of over 300 apartment units. If built to suburban code, Cascades would have consumed ıı2 acres of land. “We did it in five,” McIntyre said. “That just shows what urban density can do. We could have created a sprawling community, which is typical suburbia, but we instead created the urban environment and definition of a city.”

PHOTOS COURTESY OF WWW.MARRIOTT.COM

“And, the city has closed on the 252 public parking spaces in the garage beneath our multifamily,” said McIntyre. “Public parking is open, and the city even has a manned parking office in there.” McIntyre is referring to the partially underground garage beneath Millstream, the new multifamily community at Cascades. The ı6ı-unit, nine-story luxury apartment complex currently has a 50% occupancy rate, he said in September. Recreational managers planned to open its clubhouse and pool courtyard, complete with chaise lounges, fire pits and cooking stations, after Labor Day. Too, a multitude of tenants will be occupying Merestone. Neighboring the AC Hotel, the Class A office complex has already attracted Artia Solutions, a pharmaceutical consulting firm who committed last year to a 7,500-squarefoot space. Due to confidentiality constraints, McIntyre didn’t name other prospects, but said that “letters of intent are signed, and at this point, we are negotiating with enough tenants to finish the office building.” McIntyre spoke last year to the difficulty in attracting restaurants to its retail space, as many prospective suitors were uncertain about what shape their post-pandemic business models might take. Today, he said, those concerns have been resolved. “I wanted to have restaurants in place by the time we opened this year, but because of COVID, that wasn’t in the cards,” said McIntyre. “People wanted to be able to see and touch the spaces before committing. Restaurants, especially franchised ones that have been in the industry for a while, realize they have to either change their business model or adapt. And, people are starting to understand the asset we’ve built.” McIntyre said lease negotiations were underway with a regional eatery that’s a “higher-end sports bar and family restaurant with a great children’s menu, so families visiting Cascades

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THE CLASS of 2021 Pinnacle Awards program honors a dozen august women of distinction PHOTOGRAPHY BY THE WORKMANS

Rowland Publishing’s Pinnacle Awards program has celebrated scores of women of influence and distinction in the years since it was established in 2014. Honorees unfailingly have excelled both professionally and as women unselfishly committed to community betterment. They are givers, not takers; optimists, not defeatists; visionary, not complacent. The Pinnacle Awards Class of 2021 comprises 12 highly consequential women from Northwest Florida, the value of whose contributions is incalculable. They are profiled here.

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PINNACLE AWARDS

BETH CORUM

Tallahassee

Beth Corum, Tallahassee A groomer of talent, she’s a steward of her company’s culture

BANKING, AMONG ALL of the career options that

may have been available to Beth Corum upon her graduation from Florida State with a master’s degree in communication, may have been the last one she would have chosen. “It wasn’t on my radar,” she said. But Corum was hungry for work. “I needed to gain my footing and get in somewhere,” she said. She became aware of an opportunity at the Florida Bankers Association, applied and got the job. She would work for the association for ı4 years and then move to Capital City Bank where today she is the chief operating officer. At FBA, Corum visited with banks around the state, became familiar with issues affecting the banking industry and gained an appreciation for the role of community banks. “The core mission of the banking industry is to help build communities and to help people, and I kinda fell in love with it,” Corum said. She likes Capital City Bank, she said, because it is not so large that she doesn’t get to know its clients. She interacts closely with both external and internal customers. “A lot of what I do is work with our associates,” Corum said. “While I may not know all 800 or so by name, I know many of them. I really enjoy working with our folks who are working with our clients on a daily basis.” Florida Trend and the ABA have recognized Capital City as a “best place to work.” Corum has helped bring about those designations. “I may lead those efforts, but it’s a team effort,” Corum said. “I like to believe we always put the associate first no matter the circumstances. Hurricanes, the pandemic, individual life crises

— we have been right there to help our associates with whatever is put in front of them. I also like to think that we are providing associates with opportunities to develop professionally with our tuition assistance program, conferences and seminars and mentor/mentee programs managed within the company. We look for ways to help people to move up in the organization.” Corum has extended her passion for people and talent for leadership to community organizations including the Greater Tallahassee Chamber of Commerce, where she is the immediate past chair, and the United Way of the Big Bend, where she chaired its community fundraising campaign in 20ı5. Recently, she joined the Tallahassee Memorial HealthCare board of directors. Too, she has a personal board of directors, people she turns to for advice or as sounding boards: her father, Bill Harding, a retired engineer; Capital City CEO Bill Smith; Tallahassee Community College president Jim Murdaugh; Tallahassee Chamber president/CEO Sue Dick; TMH president/CEO Mark O’Bryant; and Sachs Media founder and CEO Ron Sachs. About Smith, Corum said, “He is laid-back, but he is goal-oriented, both financial goals and in terms of maintaining our company culture. He approaches things differently, but we get along very well.” Corum maintains lifelong learning as a value. “I still have a lot to learn and a lot to do,” said Corum, a survivor of colon and kidney cancer. “The workforce keeps changing, and we need to attract and retain our next generation of leaders at the bank and for the community.” The work/life/community balance is something that Corum works continuously to manage. Her daughter, Stella, like all children, is growing up fast. “I blinked once, and she was in the 5th grade,” she said. “If I blink again, I’ll be having people over to celebrate her high school graduation.” — Steve Bornhoft

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PINNACLE AWARDS

Susan S. Fiorito, Tallahassee

Given a chance to start a college, she figured it out FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY was in the process of trying to find a dean for the Jim Moran College of Entrepreneurship that it would soon be launching. “They offered it to two men, and they both turned it down,” Susan S. Fiorito said. “They said it was too big of a job for them, that they didn’t know how to start a college from scratch. When the job was offered to me, I told the provost I didn’t know either, but I would figure it out.” Dean Fiorito, once a high school home economics teacher, has a history of saying “yes” to opportunities. She was the first woman in the country to become a president of a retail association. She said “yes” to becoming FSU Faculty Senate president. “When my daughter was born in ı992, I only had ı0 days of sick leave,” Fiorito recalled. “People said she was going to know her caregiver as her mother, not me. I said, ‘No, she is going to have an additional person to love.’ My children respect women who work. I advise young women to follow their passion. Don’t let anyone limit you.” Under Fiorito’s direction, the Jim Moran School has grown rapidly. It was begun in the fall of 20ı7 with seven faculty members, 70 students and two tracks of study: merchandising and product development. It now boasts 30 faculty members, 700 undergraduate students and 65 graduate students. It offers four master’s degree programs and is working to add a fifth in creative arts and entrepreneurship. Fiorito graduated from FSU with a bachelor’s degree in ı973 and then taught home economics at Hialeah-Miami Lakes High School for three years before marrying and moving to Atlanta. The football team at the school once presented her with a trophy in appreciation for the time she spent mending practice uniforms.

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Her husband owned clothing stores and a wholesale leather company that made tooled belts and visors. Fiorito gained experience in retailing and small business. She taught high school by day and worked in the stores at night, performing tasks that included sewing wallets and designing vests. If that weren’t enough, she also compiled credits toward a master’s degree. One late afternoon, Fiorito delivered jeans she had altered to a woman at one of the stores. The store employee announced that she was about to go to dinner with the owner. “They had been dating,” Fiorito said. “That ended my experience in retail.” Divorced, she returned to Miami and taught at Florida International University for two years before departing for Oklahoma State where she earned a doctorate; her dissertation was on the financial performance of small businesses. At OSU, she met a man she has now been married to for 39 years. He had accepted a job at the University of Iowa and she joined him there, teaching in Iowa City for eight years. When Fiorito lost her job in Iowa due to the closure of her department, she moved to Tallahassee and FSU, her professional home for the past 30 years. For 23 years, she taught classes in the retail program. In Tallahassee, Fiorito is excited to be part of a growing entrepreneurial ecosystem. “We are not Austin, Texas, yet, or the Silicon Valley or North Carolina’s Research Triangle,” Fiorito said. “But we have a fine business incubator in Domi Station, and there is movement toward developing other business accelerators at Innovation Park. The innovation hub at FSU is equipped with 3-D printers and laser cutters. The Jim Moran Institute has great programming for small businesses around the state. We have the Mag Lab.” Fiorito is committed to growing her community’s entrepreneurial mindset and the entrepreneurial community. “We’re getting some traction,” she said. “And the potential is huge.” — Steve Bornhoft

SUSAN S. FIORITO Tallahassee

Patrice Floyd, Tallahassee

A minister of music, she brings joy to the world MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. once characterized

ıı a.m. on Sundays as “the most segregated hour in Christian America.” But, said Patrice Floyd, Friday nights at 6:30, when the Javacya Elite Chamber Orchestra performs at St. Peter’s Anglican Cathedral in Tallahassee, may be among the most integrated and diverse. Church members are joined on those occasions by people from around the state with connections to the Javacya Arts Conservatory, founded by Floyd 4ı years ago. The Javacya Elite Chamber Orchestra, based at the church, comprises both professional players and Floyd’s most advanced students and plays music by black composers. As a musical evangelist, Floyd travels the world. In Tallahassee, she trains students who will occupy chairs in the finest orchestras in the land. Floyd began playing the violin at age 8 as a participant in the strings program offered by the Palm Beach County public school system. An early mentor and teacher was Leander Kirksey, who was the band director at FAMU from ı930-ı945 before becoming a high school band director in West Palm Beach. As a girl, Floyd attended music camps at the University of Kansas. As a collegian, she studied music and psychology at FSU. “Only 3.5% of players in symphonies in the United States are black,” Floyd said. “Only three blacks have faculty positions at conservatories nationwide.” Floyd is doing her best to change those numbers. Her students are predominantly black. At Javacya, she works with children beginning at age 3. At ıı, they begin traveling to summer music camps at the Interlochen Center for the Arts in Michigan, in London and elsewhere.

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PINNACLE AWARDS

“We are an independent institute of advanced learning that teaches students all that they need to know to go to a conservatory,” Floyd said. She employs curriculum supplied by the Royal Conservatory of Music in Canada, where she is recognized as a founding member. She has established satellite schools in Orlando; Fitzgerald and Thomasville, Georgia; and North Augusta, South Carolina. Floyd became interested in St. Peter’s Anglican Cathedral when her physician, Dr. Stephen Haley, told her about plans for its construction. The church, she said, gives her students a chance to “experience what it’s like to play in a great hall.” Floyd was instrumental in bringing Rachel Barton Pine, one of the world’s top violinists, to Tallahassee. Pine performed at St. Peter’s and led a master’s class for Javacya students. Pine, Floyd said, has assembled a collection of 900 works by 350 black composers. “She was asked during an interview on NPR one time how many black composers she could name,” Floyd said, chuckling. “She told them 350.” Javacya students’ talents are not confined to music. “Most of our students who do not go into music become doctors or engineers,” said Floyd, noting that medical schools have begun to make music part of their curricula. “Einstein said he got the most joy in life out of music.” Floyd has established the Robotics Youth Orchestra at FAMU, so called because it is part of the robotics program in the developmental research school. But the music, she made clear, is played by humans, not robots. “Even the king’s heart is like water,” said Floyd, an ordained minister. “The Lord turns it where he wants it to go. We are an example of what the world could be.” — Steve Bornhoft

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PATRICE FLOYD

Tallahassee

RACHAEL GILLETTE Pensacola

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Rachael Gillette, Pensacola

Once a British barrister, she helps businesses raise the bar RACHAEL GILLETTE, in her role as the president of the Studer Community Institute, gets to do what she loves to do every day. “I am on a mission to improve the quality of life for people,” she said. “I love to help others be the best they can be, and I have the honor of working alongside Quint Studer and have him as my leader, mentor, role model and coach.” The nonprofit SCI offers programs, events and trainings designed to improve school readiness; increase what Studer likes to call the civic IQ; and furnish people with skills training to enable them to launch and grow businesses. It is the latter lane where Gillette spends her time. More particularly, she is focused on leadership. Leadership is a big umbrella, she concedes, one that includes communication, time management, teamwork and more. And leadership must be exercised to navigate a wide range of issues, some resulting from external factors and others that develop internally. Businesses do well, Gillette said, by being proactive and agile. “Suddenly last year, businesses had to adapt to operating remotely and had to figure out how to keep a company culture strong when people are not in the same building,” she said. “Now, we are struggling to reopen our businesses and hire people and rebuild.” For Gillette and for many, the pandemic has been a teacher. “We learned that we have to be resilient to survive,” Gillette said, noting efforts by SCI to provide businesses with coaching and resources they needed to carry on. “We were reminded about the importance of investing in relationships. We have to have resources, we have to have money, but at the end of the day, it’s all about people. Authenticity in relationships is a huge key to both personal growth and the growth of businesses.” Today, many businesses are populated by employees from multiple generations, a circumstance that presents its own set of communication challenges. “We all thought the boomers were going to retire and leave the workforce, but no, 60 is the new 30 and people are staying in their jobs longer,” Gillette

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said. “We may have five different generations in a workplace. I love helping people communicate more effectively because poor communication can be a huge source of stress. Misunderstandings occur especially in intergenerational communication.” Gillette grew up in Liverpool, England, and for nine years worked as a barrister — black robe, white wig. She studied law and American studies at Keele University and completed bar vocational studies at the Inns of Court School of Law in London. But a passion for competitive sailing led her to cross the pond. She met her future husband at a regatta in the British Virgin Islands and moved to Pensacola in 2002. In years since, she has continued to sail, earning honors as the Pensacola Yacht Club’s “Offshore Sailor of the Year” and “Sportswoman of the Year.” “Pensacola has become home to me,” Gillette said. “I love the sense of community here and the slower pace of life. Things are very different than they were in Manchester where I had been living.” Gillette quickly started volunteering as a way to get to know Pensacola — at the Ronald McDonald House and then as a member of Pensacola Young Professionals. It was while working to establish a leadership institute at Pensacola Young Professionals that Gillette met Studer, whose help the group had enlisted. “I got to know the way in which Quint was running his organization,” she said. “I began to understand his ethos and vision. I loved the emphasis at the Studer Group on culture and values and mission and valuing people.” She counts businessman, entrepreneur, consultant, author, speaker and baseball team owner Studer as a chief influence in her life and said she has been inspired, too, by Carol Carlan, the president of the Ascension Sacred Heart Foundation; consultant and business strategist Debbie Ritchie; and Bert Thornton, the retired longtime president of Waffle House and a past keynote speaker at EntreCon, an SCI business, leadership and entrepreneurship conference. She is grateful for the steady encouragement that she received from her father — “He always told me you can do this.” — and for the example provided by her mother, who founded a preschool in England. “We should always be mindful of what can we learn from each other,” she said. “The older generation has a lot of intellectual capital to share and younger generations have their own valuable insights and perspectives. It can be like a cultural exchange.” —Steve Bornhoft

KATHLEEN HUDON Pensacola

PINNACLE AWARDS

Kathleen Hudon, Pensacola

Cheerfully, she helps college students reach the next rung TO UNDERSTAND Dr. Kathleen Hudon, it may be helpful to think about Tigger, the beloved character from Winnie the Pooh. Tigger, breezy and outgoing, is always on the go, ricocheting from one place to the next to lend a helping hand, boost morale or provide a much-needed laugh when a forlorn Eeyore misplaces his tail or Pooh is honeyless. Equipped with eight degrees and experience in fields including journalism, banking, law and higher education, Hudon has done her fair share of bouncing around. And, in a literal sense, too, she always has. “I loved gymnastics when I was a kid,” Hudon said. “I would physically cartwheel and twirl into whatever seemed exciting or interesting. So, I suppose my approach to life has always been to just … start tumbling.” Of course, that is easier said than done. Hudon recalls a time when she took on a mountainous hill at a relative’s home in North Carolina. It wasn’t until she reached the bottom that she realized she’d somersaulted through some freshly “baked” cow pies on the way down. “I’ve found that not every pursuit is going to be positive,” Hudon said. “We might come out a little more begrimed than we started, but whatever the wear and tear, it helps us learn. It helps us teach others so that we can elevate them to places we’ll never reach ourselves.” As an attorney, Hudon found that most of her dealings with clients were not happy. Adoptions could be, but divorces, lawsuits, bankruptcies and probating wills, not so much. “I wanted to be able to help people, but help them to a cheerier place,” said Hudon. Her current role as director of student affairs at Pensacola State College (PSC) allows her to do just that. Hudon assists students with financial needs and oversees admissions, advising and student engagement and activities. In the past year, Hudon helped coordinate two community COVID-ı9 vaccination clinics

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at PSC. She worked with CARES grant administrators to distribute funding to students in need; created virtual activities for children of busy student-parents; and advocated for greater attention to the mental health needs of students and staff. When the pandemic released its grip on everything, she oversaw the creation of a PSC pantry to combat food insecurity. Recently, she joined the Pensacola Women’s Alliance, which helps distribute scholarships to local women who may not otherwise be able to attend school. Hudon is also involved in the Lion’s Club, a humanitarian organization which, among other things, aids the visually impaired. It’s a cause near and dear to Hudon’s heart. Macular degeneration runs in her family and affects one of her biggest inspirations, her maternal grandmother “MawMaw.” “Three women have molded me: my mom, my dad’s mom (Grandma) and MawMaw,” she said. “All three have inspired me to be fearless, adventuresome, creative and a lifelong learner.” While attending school in Michigan, Hudon remembers a visit from MawMaw. The pair went sledding, and MawMaw gladly sat in the front. In that position, she ate some snow, but “MawMaw charged down the slopes like any excited ı2-yearold would do,” Hudon laughed. Thrill-seeking runs in the family. Though Hudon has a serious fear of heights, she’s summoned the courage to rappel down a waterfall, bungee jump off a cliff and conquer some of the highest zip lines and rollercoasters in the world. She refuses to miss out on all that life has to offer. “I just want to raise others up to that next plane,” Hudon said. “While he was in hospice, one of my high school English teachers told me I was in a place in my career that he had aspired to but was never able to achieve. I feel like it’s my duty to be that next rung on the ladder for people, or at least be a part of making others’ lives more satisfying and meaningful.” — Hannah Burke

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JULIE MONTANARO Tallahassee

PINNACLE AWARDS

Julie Montanaro, Tallahassee Her approach to news is anchored by a big heart WHEN JULIE MONTANARO graduated from Syracuse University’s highly regarded broadcast journalism program, she resolved to start her career in a place less arctic. With no destination known, she pointed her Honda south intent upon exploring the Southeast. A native of the Washington, D.C., area, she would find work in what was, for her, a strange land as the Thomasville, Georgia, bureau reporter for WCTV in Tallahassee. Soon, she would require a car equipped with air conditioning. When she first arrived in Thomasville in ı989, she was dragging a U-Haul behind her Honda and stopped for gas. Across the street, a farmer’s market was underway. She had never seen anything like it. “I watched it for a very long time,” Montanaro recalls. “It was like, ‘Where am I?’ Thomasville taught me to slow down a little bit and visit a little bit and build relationships instead of just getting the job done. As much as a culture shock as it was for me, it was also a very valuable experience.” Thomasville was a teacher, and back at the station, Carmen Cummings, a 6 o’clock anchor, and Anna Johnson, then the community service coordinator for WCTV, were mentors and inspirations. “They were gritty, but they were graceful,” Montanaro said. “I saw them treat people with dignity and compassion, but I also saw them ask really tough questions and do really tough stories. They made it clear that community service was a part of what we do, and I was expected to continue in that way. We were there to tell the stories, but we were also there to serve the community.” Over time, Montanaro would become a daily reporter, weekend anchor, evening anchor and a main anchor, “so it’s been an ever-changing landscape and job description,” she said. “I never, ever thought I would stay in Tallahassee. That was never the plan. But the longer I stayed, the more I liked it. I feel so lucky to have landed here.” If there was a moment when Montanaro first relayed stories about people to audiences, it may have been in 8th grade when she completed an oral history project. “I interviewed a lady in my neighborhood about her time in the USO during World War II, and after that, she wasn’t just another grandmother. I never looked at her the same way.”

Montanaro had learned that everyone has a backstory, and to discover it, sometimes all you need to do is ask. “When you are reporting daily on all kinds of subjects, you meet a million people; some you have an instant connection with them, you’re inspired by them, you’re moved by them,” Montanaro said. “Some of them have been mentors in life for me. You can find people treasures everywhere.” Montanaro never has stopped feeling rewarded by the experience of “using the incredible power of television to share information, raise awareness of issues and make the community a better place.” Further, she said, “reporting opens your eyes, your mind and your heart to what’s really out there. A lot of us live in a very comfortable circle — our job, our friends, our church and our school. But when you report, you can go anywhere and interview anyone, the richest of the rich and the poorest of the poor, people whose experiences are completely different from yours. You become aware of the humanity of every issue.” Montanaro is herself a humanitarian. She has been a United Way of the Big Bend board member for several years and chaired its community campaign in 20ı6. Five years ago, she launched an initiative, PBJ PLZ, in concert with the Second Harvest food bank and Leon County Schools. “I was reporting a story at a school and a girl ran down the hall, very upset,” Montanaro said “She was late that day, and had missed breakfast and hadn’t eaten since leaving school the day before. I asked the principal how unusual that situation was, and he told me it happens every day.” PBJ PLZ collects peanut butter and jelly during the spring for consumption by students in the summer when they don’t have access to school meals. In 20ı9, the program collected ı0 tons of the stuff. In the last two years, the program has gone to virtual fundraising. This spring, it collected more than $ı30,000. “The thought of a kid not having enough to eat, I’m just not OK with that,” Montanaro said. “I had to do something about that.” In Tallahassee, Montanaro has grown deep roots. “One of the reasons I stayed here is because I felt like one person or a couple of people with a good idea could really make a difference. When you bring a problem to this community’s attention, they do something about it. This is a very generous community and a very genuine community.” — Steve Bornhoft

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PINNACLE AWARDS

Dr. Lisa R. Williamson Plano, Fort Walton Beach Her cribside manner is making a big difference in infant health

FOR MANY YEARS, Dr. Lisa R. Williamson Plano had been

engaged in academic medicine doing funded research at the University of Miami. But the funding hustle had become difficult and her work less satisfying. Plano confided in her daughter’s stepfather, an attorney who represents a hospital in Birmingham, Alabama, telling him that she would like to manage a small in-hospital unit where she could implement new standards of care and employ evidence-based medicine as an attending physician and coach. With that conversation in mind, the attorney forwarded to Plano a job posting he had come across. Needed was a director for a neonatal intensive care unit at the Fort Walton Beach Medical Center. Plano discussed the possibility with her husband Greg who, like her, is a University of Miami faculty member. Plano grew up in Gadsden, Alabama, and vacationed as a child in Destin. She and Greg had talked about one day making the Emerald Coast their retirement destination. “You should apply for it,” Greg said. Plano, who holds a doctorate in microbiology in addition to her medical degree, was the top candidate for the job, but interviewers wanted to be sure that she was prepared to trade Miami for the Panhandle. She assured them that she knew what she would be getting into. On this day, Plano is off from work, sort of. That is, she is at home but is awaiting a call from an infectious disease specialist in connection with a case involving a child born to a woman with a drug problem. “I really don’t have days off,” Plano said. “There are some days where things maybe pause for a little bit.” Plano, in any event, doesn’t report to a job. She answers a calling. “I tell the parents of the children I care for that they don’t have to thank me,” said Plano, who is employed by Envision Healthcare, which is under contract to cover the neonatal ICU that she directs. “I love what I do. I have a unit where I can feel that I am really making an impact.” Plano’s work is not confined to the ICU. She and a partner see more than 95 percent of the roughly 900 children born in a year at the Fort Walton Beach Medical Center. “You won’t hear a neonatologist refer to a ‘typical’ birth,” she said. “Every newborn has a little something going on, and if you can reassure the parents and educate the parents so that they know what to look for, that makes a big difference. The things that can go wrong are often very subtle.”

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Plano was attracted to the job in Fort Walton in part because the need for her services there was so great. “We have so many babies who are born with a special need,” Plano said. “They may be preterm but not so extremely preterm that they cannot be cared for locally. The value of our hospital and our little intensive care unit is that it serves this community and has the capability of keeping these kids close to their home when they otherwise would have to go to Pensacola or Panama City.” Plano grew up with a desire to become a marine biologist. She was on that track as a graduate student at the University of South Alabama when a hurricane prevented her from completing her planned field study at Dauphin Island. Plano drifted into microbiology. She and her husband met in grad school and both have doctorates in that field. In Fort Walton Beach, Plano has been taking actions to dramatically reduce the number of newborns with neonatal abstinence syndrome who require admission to the ICU. The condition occurs when a baby withdraws from certain drugs (most often opioids) that he is exposed to in the womb. NAS kids can be especially hard to soothe, and the withdrawal process is a taxing one. Plano has instituted a cuddler program at FWBMC that recruits volunteers to hold babies. She has established protocols whereby babies may remain with their mothers or primary caregiver for as long as they are eating and sleeping sufficiently and are consolable. The benefits have been dramatic. In the two years since Plano’s initiatives were put in place, the hospital has seen a 63 percent decrease in the number of NAS babies requiring admission to the NICU. The average length of hospital stays among those infants has declined by 65 percent. The percentage of NAS cases requiring pharmaceutical treatment has dropped by 63 percent. And, NAS kids now account for just 6 percent of NICU admissions versus a high a few years ago of 22 percent. Cuddling matters. “Our area has been hard hit by the opioid crisis,” Plano said. “It’s not just in Appalachia. It’s in our backyard. I didn’t have a lot of experience with it before coming to Fort Walton Beach, but I am making myself an expert.” Plano recalls very well the case of an especially tiny premie. For years after he left the hospital, his parents would bring him by to see Plano and drop off donations of baby clothes. He has reached the age now where Plano and the boy carry on conversations during his visits. When she gets the chance, Plano loves to cook. “And I like what I cook,” she said. “I have a recipe in a Junior League cookbook for a mango daiquiri.” In Miami, she said, mangos grow on trees. — Steve Bornhoft

Pamela Dru Sutton, Panama City DR. LISA R. WILLIAMSON PLANO

Fort Walton Beach

She fights for fairness from within the court system PAMELA DRU SUTTON, working for the

Public Defender’s Office in Florida’s ı4th Judicial Circuit, was scheduled to represent three defendants in a week. She had a cold and laryngitis, and because she was sick, she requested continuances. She was also 7 ı/2 months pregnant. The judge in the cases chose to believe that her pregnancy and not her illness accounted for the requests, which he denied. “OK,” Sutton said, her voice soft and raspy. “But I have to go to the bathroom every hour. The judge was “totally freaked out. He told me to raise my hand.” In the first case, the defendant was acquitted of some of the charges he faced, a result that Sutton counted as a victory. The second defendant was found not guilty. “The third guy was an aggravated assault and battery case,” Sutton said. “I worked very hard on that case because I was convinced that he was innocent. While the jury was out deliberating, the judge looked at the prosecutor and said, ‘She’s beaten us both down.’ I was motivated by women I had seen in the Northeast who were treated like crap because they were pregnant.” Sutton was born in New York City and grew up on Long Island. Her mother was an educator who graduated college a few months shy of her ı5th birthday. Sutton attended Harvard University, where she would meet the man who would become her husband and law partner, Michel Stone. Sutton wanted to become a film director and filled out applications to film schools. She never mailed them. She took the LSAT instead. She would earn her law degree at Brooklyn Law School, and Stone at New York University Law School. Stone was working for a firm in New York City that dissolved and had an offer to go to work for a firm in Panama City,

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Florida. He had grown up in Panama City, graduating from Bay High School. His parents were still there. “I kinda agreed to come down — for six months,” Sutton said. “I took the New York bar exam before I passed the Florida bar because I was sure I wasn’t going to stay.” Sutton went to work for Legal Services of Northwest Florida when its Panama City office was opened. Her first case involved restoring parental rights to a cognitively challenged mother whose baby had been taken from her by the state and given to someone who was not even licensed as a foster parent. “I had a lot of help,” Sutton said. “You don’t do this alone.” Louise Gruner Gans, then the managing attorney for legal services programs in New York City, was a powerful force in her life. A Holocaust survivor who later became a judge, Gans presided when Sutton and Stone were married. “She inspired me to fight for people who couldn’t afford a lawyer and were basically defenseless against a system that is often arbitrary and would rather interfere than help out,” Sutton said. Sutton was among the first women ever to practice law in Bay County. She didn’t have a career path, she said. “It was more like making my way through the undergrowth.” For a time, she made court appearances in woolen suits that she had worn in New York. “Suits and stockings, I was dying in the heat,” Sutton said. “So I bought a bunch of linen skirts and tops. It was the ’80s, and melon colors were in. I looked like a fruit salad.” Opposing counsel found the contrast between her “girlie” dress and her strong voice to be unsettling. About her colorful couture, a bailiff once told her, “People just assume that’s what lawyers wear in New York.” Pam joined with Michel in founding their law firm, Stone & Sutton, P.A., after leaving Legal Services. They continued to work part time for the Public Defender’s Office and for years handled all of the capital murder cases locally.

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PAMELA DRU SUTTON Panama City

PINNACLE AWARDS Together, they represented a teenager charged with murdering his father. “We took the case pro bono after leaving the public defender’s office,” Sutton explained. “We put on a self-defense case that relied on explaining child abuse and what it does to your mindset.” The defendant was found not guilty. The case was later featured on CBS-TV’s 48 Hours program and prompted a community conversation about child abuse. Indeed, it is fair to say that Sutton has been an agent of cultural change in Bay County. She was president of the local chapter of the National Organization for Women when it dissuaded Gov. Lawton Chiles from attending a meeting of the exclusively male Econfina Men’s Club in Bay County. She joined forces opposed to a school superintendent’s book ban. She has taught enrichment classes at Bay High School and has long been associated with Panama City’s Martin Theatre, which she has served as a Shakespeare expert. She would like to resume her theater involvement, which was disrupted by Hurricane Michael, but the Martin was heavily damaged by the storm and efforts to bring it back have proceeded in fits and starts. Her daughter Elizabeth, who lives in New York where she works in theater and as a tutor, had helped her out at the Martin during visits home. Sutton is Jewish and was privileged she said, “to have been brought up in the Jewish ethical tradition that informed my parents’ lives and work; it was a great gift from them to me, and I have tried to live up to their example.” In that tradition, doing good and giving back aren’t optional. “You have a duty to help out, to try to make the world a better place and to insist on fairness. My parents taught me that, and I’ve tried to do that in my legal work and in my community work. “If an organization needed help, I have helped them,” said Sutton, who has no plans to stop helping any time soon. “I read a murder mystery once, and it was said about one of the characters that she forgot to get old. I have made that my motto.” — Steve Bornhoft

Susan Payne Turner, Crawfordville

She climbed ladders and now she leads others SUSAN PAYNE TURNER has consulted a book, Half Time: Moving from

Success to Significance, now and again. The book, written by Bob Buford and first published in ı995, identifies halftime as a pivotal point in life when people transition from “getting and gaining, earning and learning” to assuming control of their lives, calling their own shots and using their Godgiven gifts in service to others. For Turner, the executive vice president, chief risk officer and HR director at Prime Meridian Bank, that has meant discovering the joys and satisfactions of mentorship. Turner favors a hands-on leadership style, she said, while encouraging colleagues in the first halves of their lives to grow professionally and personally. “I am flexible and supportive, and I am going to help you be the best that you can be,” she said. “There is a real sense of success and accomplishment that comes from mentoring others.” An accomplished team builder, Turner helps champion Prime Meridian’s MEET (Motivate, Educate, Empower, Train) program that provides for the mentorship and development of new employees. An established bank “team member” is assigned as a mentor to each newcomer. The program appeals to Turner and also would have appealed to the late Buford because it ensures that her experience and wisdom live on in others. In conversation, Turner uses the word “legacy” a lot. As a teen, Turner worked at Wakulla Bank. Her mother, Irene C. Payne, had worked at Lewis State Bank in Tallahassee and wanted her daughter to have the experience of working in a bank. At Lewis State Bank, Irene Payne completed tasks in a pre-digital era. No one left at day’s end until all the physical checks were filed. Turner started at Wakulla Bank in Crawfordville as a loan operations assistant and eventually became chief financial officer. When Centennial Bank acquired Wakulla Bank, Turner managed its retail operations in a four-county area. She joined Prime Meridian Bank in 20ı3 as a senior vice president and chief risk officer. Turner said Prime Meridian Bank’s company values — passion, grace, integrity, tenacity and accountability — resonate with her. “If you truly apply those things, it’s impactful,” she said. “At Prime Meridian, I’ve gained an appreciation for the importance of maintaining the culture and the brand. I tell people that we are the Chick-fil-A and Publix of banking. It’s all about relationships. I love people, listening to them and being helpful. Every day we build our legacies. On some days, you maybe don’t do as well as you could, but that’s where grace comes in.” People who know her well, including members of the bank board at Prime Meridian, call Turner a true servant leader. She was instrumental in bringing about Prime Meridian’s Crawfordville office.

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As someone who beat breast cancer, Turner is “thankful every day that God blessed me to be a survivor,” she said. She has served a long list of community organizations and nonprofits, always with an eye toward having an impact and putting in motion activities and initiatives that will endure over time. At present, she is a director and the treasurer at the Community Foundation of North Florida and a director and current chair with the Florida Bankers Association Education Foundation. She has served on boards at the United Way, the Red Cross and the Wakulla County Chamber of Commerce and the county’s Economic Development Council. She is a past chair and director emeritus of the foundation at Tallahassee Community College, where she got to know Marjorie Turnbull, a woman whom she counts as a role model and inspiration along with her parents and grandmothers. Turner’s mother taught school at Shadeville Elementary in Wakulla County. Her father, Bill Payne, was once the county’s superintendent of schools. “My parents had and still have a very strong work ethic,” Turner said. “They raised me to work half a day — ı2 hours.” Turner grew up and still resides in Crawfordville. Her husband, Chuck Turner, is the deputy property appraiser at the Wakulla County Property Appraiser’s Office. As infants, Turner and Chuck were in the nursery at Tallahassee Memorial HealthCare at the same time. She kids that there was a baby next to her who wouldn’t stop crying. Her son, Landon, is a junior at Troy University and an entrepreneur who has launched an outdoor apparel company. Turner coaches bank employees to “fail fast and move on.” And she keeps near the top of her mind a truth that her father impressed upon her: Things just don’t happen; they are made to happen. Let it be said about Susan Payne Turner that she makes things happen. — Steve Bornhoft

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SUSAN PAYNE TURNER Crawfordville

PINNACLE AWARDS

The Cyborg Jillian Weise, Tallahassee Disabled poet defines herself and challenges power hierarchy

THE CYBORG JILLIAN WEISE, a disabled poet and

professor of English at Florida State University, believes that she should be able to choose her identity. Weise is fortunate to have two legs. One of them cy (Weise’s preferred pronoun) was born with. The other was manufactured. “I am computer; I have a computerized leg,” said Weise, who taught a senior seminar on cyborg theory and practice at FSU this fall in addition to a graduate poetry workshop. “It is part of my body. I vacuum seal into my leg so the distinction between where Jillian ends and the leg begins is a false distinction. I can’t tell.” Operating with a basic, hinge-style prosthesis, Weise fell about four times a year. Cy falls no longer. “I think about the ground and gravity ı,000 times a second,” Weise said in detailing the capacities of her manmade leg. “I now make allowances for all kinds of gradient surfaces. If I am walking on ice, I make adjustments that are imperceptible to me. If I am going from concrete to loose gravel, I am not consciously thinking, ‘OK, be careful.’ Part of my body is making those adjustments.” Still, people scoff at or dismiss as a phase her decision to identify as a cyborg. In an interview, cy recalled speaking to a gathering of disabled scholars at the University of California, Berkeley. “People there said it was a stage, that I’d grow out of it,” Weise said. “Instead, I grew right into it.” Weise finds that people tend to view “cyborg” as a futuristic concept, the stuff of science fiction. Weise is made to feel like cy is forcing her cyborg identity. “A disabled person is named; he never gets to be the namer,” Weise said. “That’s left to doctors and diagnosticians. For a disabled person to say that he is going to name himself is quite radical. It is about flipping an entire power hierarchy. But I am a poet; I am a namer.” There are people, too, who are prepared to argue that all of us are cyborgs to the extent that we are dependent upon smartphones, laptops, computers and other devices. We are separated from our natural condition by inventions of our own making, as the communication scholar Kenneth Burke noted in his definition of human.

“Sure, perhaps,” Weise says in response. “But you can turn your iPhone off, and it is not aware of what you are doing. You can turn your laptop off.” In a column written by Weise and published by The New York Times, cy describes the process of getting used to her computerized leg and “going cyborg.” That column concludes … “A few weeks ago, someone said, ‘I don’t think that (having a computerized leg) makes you a cyborg since it’s the leg that plugs into the wall.’ “It’s not the leg,” I said. “It’s my leg.” And that, if I might behave as a namer for a moment, may be the essence of cyborgness. Weise graduated from Rutherford High School in Springfield, Florida, in Bay County. Her first experience as a writer was gained as a newsroom intern at the Panama City News Herald. Cy completed undergraduate studies at FSU before earning an MFA at the University of North Carolina-Greensboro and a doctorate at the University of Cincinnati. Cy taught at Clemson University before joining the FSU English faculty for the 202ı-22 school year. Now, Barbara Hamby and David Kirby, once Weise’s poetry professors, are colleagues. Weise is an ambassador for disabled people, someone who articulates and champions accessibility causes. Cy has written four books and is at work on a fifth. Cy credits her FSU professors with liberating her as a writer by encouraging her to feel free to write about herself. In conversation, Weise raises issues that an ablebodied person would never land on. “I don’t own the rights to my own body‘s software,” cy said. “I don’t have the right to the actual program that my leg runs on. The leg surveils me and how many steps I am taking. Who owns the data? Where does it go? For what purposes is it used? This is another form of alienation. I have a third party involved at all times with my body.” For Weise, efforts to soften “disabled” undermine efforts to destigmatize the term. “I go by disabled person, disabled poet, disabled professor, disabled scholar,” Weise said. “Some people are in favor of ‘persons with’ language, but for me that’s like person with womanhood, person with an umbrella, person with a hat. I love identity-based language. In the same way that a person says I’m queer versus a person with queerness, I say I am disabled versus I am a person with a disability.” — Steve Bornhoft

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THE CYBORG JILLIAN WEISE Tallahassee

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PINNACLE AWARDS

Madison Zabala, Tallahassee As an achiever, she is way ahead of schedule

MADISON ZABALA Tallahassee

GIVEN ALL THAT she accomplished in her first ı9 years, it seems a certainty that Madison Zabala’s achievements to come will be big, bold and beneficent. Accordingly, Rowland Publishing and 850 Business Magazine chose Zabala to receive the Marjorie Turnbull Award, which is part of RPI’s Pinnacle Awards and is reserved for a young woman of extraordinary promise. At the behest of her mother Cheryl Geiger, Zabala completed leadership training as a middle-schooler in mentor Samantha Vance’s Ladies Learning to Lead program. It took. Zabala is a homeowner and the co-owner of a business, Tallahassee Picnic, that she operates with her sister, Makenzie Geiger. She graduated Leon High School with 30 college credits earned via dual enrollment at Tallahassee Community College and is now a junior majoring in communication science and disorders at Florida State. She plans to earn a master’s degree in speech/language pathology at FSU and to work as a speech pathologist for a public school system. As to that pursuit, she has two roles models, both aunts. One works for the Liberty County School District, and the other is a contractor who supplies services to schools around the country. Zabala was further motivated by the experience of a cousin who was ostracized as a school child due to his speech difficulties. Of late, Zabala has worked as a customer service representative at TC Federal Bank in Tallahassee. She and her sister purchased Tallahassee Picnic from the former events coordinator at The Edison restaurant. The business has performed well, exceeding Zabala’s expectations. “We provide an elevated picnic experience,” Zabala said, one in which a rug replaces the traditional blanket and a low-rise table, shaded by a large umbrella, is set with fine china. The business supplies charcuterie and dessert boards for clients, including couples and small groups. “My mom is my hero,” Zabala said. “She worked as a nanny, and I helped her with that and came by desire to work with children. She taught me to serve others.” Zabala and her husband Isham love to hike, as time permits. And Zabala is a voracious reader of fiction when her nose is not buried in a textbook. — Steve Bornhoft

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PINNACLE AWARDS

Susan Dunlap, Tallahassee, 1961–2021 Her heart united her with people struggling to get by

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SUSAN DUNLAP

Tallahassee 1961–2021

As the vice president of community impact, Dunlap oversaw the funding allocation process at UWBB, a key responsibility. “Susan’s years of institutional knowledge have been hard to try to replace,” Cox said. “I loved her as a person and depended upon her input and advice. I was on the board for six years before I was made CEO, and she shaped how I became involved. The members of her staff, they all loved her.” Cox and Dunlap were last together in the office on the Friday before Dunlap died. On that day, they shared a hearty laugh when Cox spectacularly tripped. “As soon as I did that, I said, ‘I think that is deserving of an 8 out of ı0,’ and she thought that was hilarious,” Cox said. Dunlap came in on Saturday to help out with the income tax program and was expected to attend a staff meeting on Monday at ı0. “Whenever Susan was going to be even five minutes late, she would text me or call me or email me to let me know what was going on,” Cox said. When she didn’t hear from her that Monday morning, Cox sent her a text message: Are you OK, just a reminder, we have a staff meeting at ı0. “She loved the United Way so much,” Cox said. “She gave so much of her life to it. She didn’t ever say a negative word about anyone. The most upset I ever saw her was when someone might say something negative about the United Way or our work. She took it to heart.” — Steve Bornhoft

PHOTO COURTESY OF UNITED WAY OF THE BIG BEND (DUNLAP)

SUSAN DUNLAP DEDICATED her career to the United Way, for ı0 years in her birthplace of Tifton, Georgia, and for 26 at the United Way of the Big Bend in Tallahassee. In Tallahassee, she started at the United Way in an entry-level position and earned promotions on her way to becoming vice president of community impact. In that role, she worked with UW-funded agencies and with initiatives including Reading Pals, Math Pals and a Volunteer Income Tax Assistance Program. She worked, too, with Women United, an affinity group within the United Way of the Big Bend that is made up of prominent women in leadership roles who are passionate and committed to the work of the organization. The group has grown to become an influential team of philanthropists who give, advocate and volunteer to improve the lives of women and children throughout the Big Bend. Dunlap, a servant leader given to great humility, deserved a place among their number. For a time, Dunlap worked as the interim CEO of the United Way of the Big Bend, but was not interested in taking on that job permanently, said Berneice Cox, the agency’s CEO currently. “She loved what she was doing,” Cox said. “She had the job she wanted. She wanted to be close to the people we worked with and served.” Dunlap died unexpectedly at her home on March ı, 202ı, at age 59. She likely would have been content to work at the United Way for another ı0 years. Dunlap was no stranger to struggle, and she related closely to people living in poverty or just a paycheck away from landing there. She was a single parent who raised two sons. “In our eight-county footprint (Franklin, Gadsden, Jefferson, Liberty, Leon, Madison, Taylor and Wakulla), between 49 and 54 percent of people are living in poverty or are near poverty,” Cox said. “Many are homeless or living in substandard housing. Susan was very concerned about anyone who was financially challenged, anyone who needed food or access to health care.” In the year before she died, Dunlap saw needs grow greater and the cost of living spike due to the COVID pandemic. “The people and agencies who connected with Susan always found her to be open, caring, patient, honest and transparent,” Cox said. “People see our helping-hands logo and stop by our office looking for assistance. Invariably, regardless of what their need was, Susan would connect them with one of our funding program partners so they could pay for utilities or food. And she never failed to follow up with them by phone.”

PROMOTION P RO M OT I O N

2021 Pinnacle Awards Recap

McKenzie Burleigh

Marjorie Turnbull

Rowland Publishing and 850 Business Magazine celebrated the contributions of 12 leading Northwest Florida women at the eighth annual Pinnacle Awards presentation. Award recipients, their guests and sponsor representatives gathered at the Downtown Community Church in Tallahassee for the event, which was streamed live to a virtual audience. Rowland Publishing established the Pinnacle Awards program as a way to honor women who have excelled professionally and as community stewards. RPI management selects honorees on the basis on nominations received from readers of 850 Business Magazine. This year, nominators introduced honorees via pre-recorded videos. Public servant, philanthropist and former Tallahassee Community College executive director Marjorie Turnbull, serving as keynote speaker, encouraged women to dream big and embrace possibilities. She presented a Pinnacle Award named in her honor to Madison Zabala, a business owner and student who is working toward a career in speech pathology. The Marjorie Turnbull Award is reserved for young women of promise who have demonstrated the capacity to be important difference makers. For the third consecutive year, Bank of America was the event’s presenting sponsor. Additional sponsors included Ascension Sacred Heart, Gulf Power/Florida Power & Light, and Project Style Salon. Rowland Publishing extended thanks to We Are the Workmans for their photography, videography and event production services; media sponsor LIVE! in Tallahassee; and the host Downtown Community Church.

To watch the Virtual Program and for a full event recap, visit: 850businessmagazine.com/pinnacle-awards-2021.

Thank you to our generous sponsors PRESENTED BY 850 BUSINESS MAGAZINE

SPONSORED BY PRESENTING SPONSOR

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FEW VACANCIES D E M A N D F O R O F F I C E S PAC E R E M A I N S ST R O N G S T O RY B Y B Y H A N N A H B U R K E A N D E M M A W I T M E R I L L U S T R AT I O N S B Y L I N D S E Y M A S T E R S O N

ven as a growing number of people adapted to working from home, Stacy Taylor never once entertained thoughts about a possible demise of the physical workplace. At least not in his market. Taylor, who is the president of commercial real estate at Beck Partners, a real estate, property management and insurance firm headquartered in Pensacola, said in September that demand for office space has been so strong that the vacancy rates had reached an all-time low. Pensacola is sitting at 3.3%, and neighboring markets are trending similarly. “Part of that is attributed to the economy continuing to gain momentum and adding employees, but it’s also because there’s been very little new construction to offset that number,” Taylor said. “That’s something you’ll find in tertiary markets such as Pensacola or Tallahassee. Less competition and construction means our market grows and expands as the economy does.” According to Beck Partners’ third-quarter analytics report, ı30,65ı square feet of office space had been leased in Pensacola since January. Taylor said concerns spawned by the pandemic have waned, and “everybody seems to be back at work and moving in the right direction.” Beck Partners shares One Pensacola Plaza, a multi-story, Class “A” office

on dealing with traffic, cluttered cubicles building, with several other businesses and the workplace of yesteryear. Those in downtown Pensacola including New people, Taylor said, won’t be without opYork Life Insurance, which went remote tions in the future. at the height of the pandemic. Taylor “One trend I’ve been watching and paysaid New York Life recently returned to ing attention to, especially in larger marits space on the seventh floor and addkets, is that of the satellite office,” Taylor ed that Beck Partners just leased 3,000 said. “I worked for a number of years in square feet at One Pensacola Plaza to Atlanta and have talked to some people Aerotek, a staffing and recruiting agency. up there who have said many compa“Everyone I spoke to throughout the nies are opening satellite offices because pandemic was tired of working at home they’ve seen that, while their companies and looking forward to a return to the were able to function remotely, people office,” Taylor said. “We had (Microsoft) missed the human interaction. Versus Teams and Zoom to help ease the transihaving 30,000 square feet in midtown, tion, but inevitably, you’d have technithey’ll maybe open cal issues, and it just a couple of ı0,000wasn’t the same as One trend square-foot spaces to sitting in a room with eliminate that long others. I think that I’ve been holds true even in watching and commute and give people options.” larger markets where paying attention to, Satellite offices offer people may hate especially in larger other conveniences, their long commute markets, is that of the such as minimizing but still want to be satellite office.” workplace distractions around others to col— STACY TAYLOR, PRESIDENT with a lower volume laborate, communiOF COMMERCIAL REAL ESTATE of employees and procate and live.” AT BECK PARTNERS viding more space for Though Taylor and projects. And, these other commercial cost-effective, smaller leases often lend leasing agents throughout Northwest themselves to the sharing of workspaces Florida may not be feeling the pandemamong businesses. ic’s impact, metropolitan markets surely Shared office spaces, sometimes called are. Long-distance commuters and those executive suite leases or co-working who have grown accustomed to solitary spaces, aren’t going away any time soon working environments may not be keen 850 Business Magazine

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and will likely become more prevalent, Taylor said. “When you’re boxed in at home, it’s difficult to connect with the outside world, while shared spaces invite collaboration and opportunities,” Taylor said. “It’s always good to poke your head out to see what others are working on and listen to their ideas.” Beck Partners’ sister entity, Bayfront Capital Partners, specializes in entrepreneurial private real estate and oversees a 60,000-square-foot office park in Pensacola. Two buildings are in place for “executive suite leasing” and, as of early September, Bayfront Capital Partners signed two leases that brought them to ı00% occupancy. Of course, even with increased vaccination rates and the prospective decline of COVID cases, there are those who have swapped stilettos and slacks for fuzzy slippers and PJs and won’t ever 82

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look back. Luckily for them, many offices are adopting the hybrid work model. The option affords people and businesses flexibility; some staff may work remotely, while others operate on-site. All staff may report to the office for one portion of the week and stay at home for the other. And, sometimes, it’s a combination of the two. “I think one of the biggest things to come out of all this is we’ve seen people have the ability to work from home without bending companies out of shape,” Taylor said. “Last week, when we received warnings about Hurricane Ida, we told people to just stay at home because the pandemic taught us to use our technology remotely. We knew we could just hop on Teams if anyone needed to communicate. “But while we don’t have to be in an office to do our work, I do think, generally, people want to be here.”

As vice president and CFO of OliverSperry Renovation, Todd Sperry’s livelihood depends on demand for highquality office space. He’s in the business of optimizing and beautifying workplaces in a market that stretches from Thomasville, Georgia, to Tallahassee to Mexico Beach. Like Taylor of Beck Partners, Sperry believes that the office has plenty of life left to live. “There is a lot of work that can be done well from home,” he said. “Filling out contracts, responding to email, preparing presentations — all of that can be done in your pajamas.” A healthy work environment, however, is not just about task completion. “The office is the emotional center of the workforce,” Sperry said. “People value connection with their co-workers and with leadership. This emotional side is where you care for the mental health and well-being of your people.” Riley Palmer Construction of Tallahassee attributes roughly 50 percent of its revenue to commercial office space, and like businesses around the world, it sent its staff home in March of last year. President and project manager Sutton Webb said his employees felt the drag of remote work taking its toll. “We followed protocols and worked from home,” said Riley Palmer president and project manager Sutton Webb. “But once things relaxed, everyone

Seventy percent of communication isn’t about information, it’s about how you receive that information. Tone of voice, gestures, body language or simply making eye contact are all important to accurately portraying ideas, whereas the written word is much more easily misinterpreted.” — TODD SPERRY, VICE PRESIDENT AND CFO OF OLIVERSPERRY RENOVATION

came back in. Everyone perked up a little bit more. They wanted to get back to work and see people. I felt like from our perspective, our office staff really longed to be here. Working from home, you lose that personal touch.” Sperry said that following a slowdown in 2020, his pipeline of projects is overflowing today. OliverSperry is turning business away,

unable to commit to additional projects until well into 2022. Riley Palmer Construction is experiencing record profits. No Riley Palmer staff member lost his job due to the pandemic, and the company is looking to grow. Sperry said that future workplaces will include more sectioned off work areas, advanced ventilation systems and spacious welcome areas.

Sperry agrees with Taylor that co-working spaces will be prevalent. “Seventy percent of communication isn’t about information, it’s about how you receive that information,” Sperry said. “Tone of voice, gestures, body language or simply making eye contact are all important to accurately portraying ideas, whereas the written word is much more easily misinterpreted.” 850 Business Magazine

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THE NEW LANDSCAPE PA N D E M I C H A S P E R M A N E N T LY A LT E R E D B U S I N E S S M O D E L S Actions taken today — from investing in human capital to enabling a surge of entrepreneurship to diffusing technology to companies of all sizes — could create a virtuous cycle of job growth, rising consumption and productivity growth. Lessons from past recessions reveal that this is not only possible but routinely occurred in many post-war recessions. Failure to act is likely to deliver a tepid, two-speed recovery that we saw after the 2008 financial crisis. F R O M T H E M C K I N S E Y G L O B A L I N S T I T U T E // I L L U S T R AT I O N B Y L I N D S E Y M A S T E R S O N

THE COVID-19 VIRUS INTERRUPTED, accelerated or reversed longstanding consumer and business habits. Every activity and function that could move online did, fueling a mass digital migration. Companies sent their employees home and eliminated business travel, and many now plan to continue with some hybrid form of remote work and virtual meetings. Consumers went online to fulfill needs ranging from buying groceries and taking school classes to exercise and doctor appointments. Businesses also turned to digital tools in new ways. Auto dealerships used email, text messaging, Zoom and Facetime to see cars without any contact with customers. Companies turned to automation and AI to cope with surges in demand and the need to reduce workplace density. Retailers like Amazon, Walmart and Target enlisted industrial robots to pick, sort and track merchandise in warehouses to manage surging e-commerce demand. AI-powered chatbots were used to reduce customer contact. Robotic process automation helped financial service firms cope with a surge in small business loan applications and assisted airlines in issuing travel refunds. Businesses engaged in a burst of innovation and speedy decision-making in response to the deepest economic shock since World War II. Companies digitized many activities at rates 20 to 25 times faster than they had previously thought possible, according to a McKinsey survey. One large retailer developed a curbside delivery business in two days; its prepandemic plan called for an 18-month rollout. Some of these changes delivered more convenience and greater efficiency and so are likely to endure well after the pandemic has receded.

Retail got a jolt E-commerce surged during the pandemic, increasing its share of total retail sales by two to five times its pre-pandemic rate across eight countries representing 45 percent of the world’s population and more than 60 percent of global GDP — China, France, Germany, India, Japan, Spain, the United Kingdom and the United States. Many of the consumers driving that growth were new to online transactions. For instance, first-time online grocery shoppers accounted for 30 to 50 percent of total U.S. consumers shopping online in July 2020, driven largely by baby boomers nudged by the pandemic to make a digital transaction they otherwise might not have needed to make. Many “home-nesting” consumers invested to enhance their new homebound lifestyle. Other virtual transactions took off. Telemedicine had languished until COVID-19 came along and then boomed.

The preceding was excerpted from a report written by McKinsey Global Institute partners Susan Lund, Anu Madgavkar, Jan Mischke and Jeana Remes. MGI’s mission is to help leaders in the commercial, public and social sectors develop a deeper understanding of the evolution of the global economy and to provide a fact base that contributes to decision-making on critical management and policy issues. 84

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Recovery potential Bold actions including investment in automation, if taken by companies, could produce a 1 percentage point increase in annual productivity growth to 2024 — if these innovations spread widely among companies of all sizes and demand recovers and stays strong. This would more than double the rate of productivity growth experienced after the 2008 global financial crisis in the United States and six other Western countries. If realized, this would add an estimated $3,500 per capita in the United States to GDP in 2024. The largest potential incremental rise in productivity growth between 2019 and 2024 could occur in the health care, construction, information and communications technology, retail and pharmaceutical sectors. However, accelerated automation risks speeding up necessary reskilling and worker transitions and could undermine employment, median incomes and therefore demand. Of the productivity potential cited here, 60 percent comes from firms seeking to reduce costs — including jobs — rather than creating more top-line value.

Winners and losers Shifts in business operations caused by the pandemic could spur faster growth — but also raise challenges for the most vulnerable workers. COVID-19 put a deep dent in consumption in 2020, as spending declined between 11 and 26 percent in the initial months of the pandemic in the United States, Western Europe and China. Consumers sharply cut back on travel, entertainment, restaurant dining and other in-person services. Many low-income service workers were furloughed or lost their jobs and were supported by unprecedented government stimulus packages that more than covered their lost incomes and helped mitigate the fallout. Indeed, the big stimulus amounted to a reversal of two decades of institutional pullback, reviving the social contract. Meanwhile, highincome households with members who could work remotely saw their savings rise as opportunities to spend on travel, entertainment, dining and other forms of leisure dried up. Savings rates spiked 10 to 20 percent in the United States and Western Europe, leaving many households in a strong position to spend once the pandemic is brought to heel. While consumer spending as a whole is set to rebound, the recovery is likely to be uneven, especially in the United States, as higher-income households emerge largely unscathed financially while lower-income households have lost jobs or face income insecurity.

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Cheers to 10 Years South Walton Beaches Wine & Food Festival Serves Up Great Wine, Fine Food and Good Will

dazzling roster of celebrity winemakers, mixologists and chefs will converge April 21-24, 2022 in idyllic South Walton’s Grand Boulevard Town Center to wine, dine, educate and entertain guests as part of the fourday celebration of wine, spirits, food, music, fun and goodwill. Celebrating 10 years in 2022, the South Walton Beaches Wine & Food Festival — an award-winning, nationally ranked event — draws wine and food industry icons such as Peter Mondavi, Jr., Marc Perrin, Don Hartford, Cristina Mariani-May, Jean-

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Charles Boissett, Norman Van Aken and South Walton’s own Chef Emeril Lagasse and many more. Given the caliber of A-list participants, it’s no wonder USA Today touted it as “one of the South’s standout food and beverage festivals.” Here, we provide a personal “tour” of the highly anticipated highlights planned for the ninth year of this popular charity event. The Festival kicks off in fine wine fashion in the Culinary Village with a VIP Wine Tasting on Friday from 4 to 6 p.m. Delivering the ultimate wine experience, limited tickets are sold to this exclusive event which gathers you with fellow wine lovers and top wine celebrities. Whether an aficionado or novice, you will sip rare and collectible wines from your commemorative XL Riedel glass and savor high-end food tastings created by the chefs of Grand Boulevard and South Walton’s rave restaurants. Relax; your VIP status gives you express entry into Friday’s Craft Beer & Spirits Jam as well as Saturday’s and Sunday’s Grand Tastings. Keep the party going at the best block party of the year in the Town Center and Grand Park with Friday night’s Craft Beer & Spirits Jam from 6 to 9 p.m. Taste and enjoy specialty craft beers and spirits from the hottest breweries and distilleries in the country. Meet the makers of these lively libations, and chat up master mixologists as they craft creative cocktails. Nosh on

CUSTOM CONTENT

fantastic food all along EATS Street, and jam to live music. Before, you swirl a single wine at the Grand Tastings (Saturday and Sunday from 1 to 4 p.m.), take a moment to download the Festival wine list from the newly refreshed Sowalwine.com website. Create your own custom wine tour by mapping out the tent locations of favorite “friends” and a few you’d like to “meet.” Having a plan is wise when there are more than 600 domestic and imported wines to discover. But wine isn’t all there is to drink in. Included in your ticket price are Savor South Walton Culinary Village, Tasting Seminars, Rosé All Day Garden, Spirits Row, chef demos and the Nashville Songwriters Showcase. Cheers to that! Each year, wine A-listers come to showcase trending wines, which infuse the event with fresh excitement. A must-not-miss this year is Château Minuty, the global leader in luxury Cotes de Provence Rosé, which will be making a special appearance. Château Minuty abounds in leading beach clubs, restaurants and luxury retailers from Saint-Tropez to Monaco and beyond. Join in the celebration of the French Riviera lifestyle, personified by these luxury rosé wines. Sample the Château Minuty wines with pairings by top local proprietor/chefs along with the VINTUS wine team. Master Sommelier Craig Collins will be presenting exciting educational seminars in Grand Park. Wine is best shared and paired. Food is in the name of this Festival for good reason. Top chefs from near and far gather at the

Festival to present their artfully curated creations designed to pair with the wines being poured. Foodies will delight in the delicious dishes artfully orchestrated by local Festival Culinary Director Scott Plumley throughout the Savor South Walton Culinary Village and peppered along EATS Street — the feast of flavors will satisfy and surprise. What pairs with good food and wine? Great music! Amplifying the atmosphere is the Great Florida Event’s Nashville Songwriters Showcase, creating a sensational live “soundtrack” of the Music City’s top talent. The toast of the event is surely Destin Charity Wine Auction Foundation (DCWAF), the beneficiary of this charity event. The Festival works in concert with DCWAF — of the nation’s Top Charity Wine Auctions in the U.S. — to raise funds for children in need in Northwest Florida. Whether your tasting tour has led you to an old flame or a new love, you can purchase your favorite wine discovery in the Retail Wine Tent located on-site. To purchase tickets and learn the latest, visit Sowalwine.com.

495 GRAND BLVD, MIRAMAR BEACH, FL 32550 (850) 837-3099 EXT. 203 | SOWALWINE.COM

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I-10 CORRIDOR

Gadsden, Leon Counties Northern Escambia, Santa Rosa,Jefferson, Okaloosa +&Walton Counties and Holmes, Washington, Calhoun, Jackson + Liberty Counties

HERE COMES THE SUN

Power T Play Calhoun County welcomes energy giant’s solar farms By Emma Witmer

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here’s a new kind of farm cropping up in Calhoun County. Joining the ranks of cotton and cattle are three new solar farms set for completion by the end of 2022. Since January, the County Commission has granted three conditional use permits to Florida Power & Light allowing for the conversion of a combined 2,046 acres of farm and timber land into three vast solar centers. The utility purchased the land from sellers, including Slavic Renewable Resources LLC, Olsson Forrest Inc. and Carolyn and Stephen Yoder.

Together, these facilities will produce enough energy to power 45,000 homes and will generate an estimated $21 million in tax revenue for the county over their 30-year lifespan. When FPL phases out the project, it will remove all related equipment and improvements and restore the land to its natural state. At this time, there are no FPL customers in Calhoun County. The energy generated there will be consumed elsewhere. What’s in it for Calhoun County? The short answer: green in the form of added property taxes.

PHOTOS COURTESY OF VISIT FLORIDA (BLOUNTSTOWN) AND NEXTERAENERGY.COM (SOLAR FARM) AND SCOTT MONLYN

Florida Power & Light has acquired three parcels in predominantly rural Calhoun County as sites for solar farms. The power produced by banks of solar panels will be consumed by FPL customers located outside the county.

Each center is expected to generate between $200,000 and $300,000 in new tax revenue annually, according to County Commission chairman Scott Monlyn, money that can be used to further hurricane recovery work, improve roads, provide housing and meet other needs. Jobs can be hard to come by in predominantly rural Calhoun County, acknowledged County Commission vice chairman Gene Bailey. Most professional jobs, Bailey explained, stem from local government, food service operations and the county’s hospital — which only recently came back online after being walloped by Hurricane Michael. Monlyn anticipates that construction of a new hospital and the revitalization of the county’s industrial park will generate jobs. Still, there is a desperate need for employment within the county. FPL is a subsidiary of NextEra Energy. Its solar farm project will produce about 600 construction jobs, a big help at least in the near term. “I’m here to try to bring jobs to the county, so we can make a better society for Calhoun County,” Monlyn said. The prospect of new jobs notwithstanding, the FPL project was not without opponents. A few people living near the solar farm sites told county commissioners that solar panels are an eyesore and expressed concerns that farmland would be rendered useless for decades. “You know how that goes,” Monlyn sighed. “Everybody doesn’t want everything, and then a lot of folks want a lot of new things. In order to grow and not be stagnant, you have to be able to move forward. It’s the way of the world now, everything is changing. If you ride down Interstate 10, you see them all along the highway for miles and miles. If you travel to Bainbridge, Georgia, it’s solar farm after solar farm after solar farm.” FPL’s Blue Indigo Solar Energy Center is up and running in Jackson County. Two additional centers are under construction and eight more are in development in Northwest Florida.

POWER GRID Calhoun County will soon be home to solar farms like this one, located at the FPL Sunshine Gateway Energy Center in Calhoun County.

Roughly six years ago, Chris Killenberg approached the county with plans to make land available for solar farms. “He kind of worked like a wildcatter that does oil wells,” Bailey said. “They were a wildcat solar farm. They would come to find land, try to put together a packet so they could develop solar there, and then they would end up selling it.” Despite discussion with landowners, numerous meetings and promises of creating the largest solar farm in the Southeast, discussions broke down.

Now, Bailey feels that the county is enjoying a second chance to get in on the “solar future.” “When FPL’s Shane Boyett came along, I was ready to jump on board with them big time,” Bailey said. As for FPL? “With 42 solar energy centers in operation across Florida today and more definitely on the way, it is our hope to continue to lead one of the largest solar expansions. We are excited to partner with Calhoun County,” said Tracy Andrews, Gulf Power’s external affairs manager.

“I’M HERE TO TRY TO BRING JOBS TO THE COUNTY, SO WE CAN MAKE A BETTER SOCIETY FOR CALHOUN COUNTY.” SCOTT MONLYN 850 Business Magazine

WINTER 2021

EMERALD COAST CORRIDOR

Coastal Escambia, Santa Rosa, Okaloosa + Walton Counties

Adding Life to Days Diversified Covenant Care improves outcomes and achieves efficiencies By Steve Bornhoft

WINTER 2021

850businessmagazine.com

of directors was looking to grow and pivot in a different direction. To that end, they tempted Mislevy out of the Upper Midwest. Mislevy had been working in Grand Rapids, Michigan, for the health care giant Spectrum Health, building out its portfolio of post-acute services. “Like most big systems, they were hospital-centric,” said Mislevy, who helped plan and oversee the addition of home health, hospice and skilled nursing services, patient rehab hospitals and long-term acute care hospitals. “I thought that at some point I might want to do something similar outside of the confines of a big, multi-billion dollar health system,” Mislevy recalled. “And, at the same time, I was getting tired of the bleak, miserable winters up there.”

Mislevy resolved to keep his eyes open. The Covenant opportunity appealed to him because the business operates from a (warm) community that is a leader in health care; because it had long been successful as a provider of hospice services; and because it had plans to diversify. Mislevy attended Michigan State University as an undergraduate, earning a bachelor’s degree in dietetics. He went on to Ohio State, where he added a master’s degree in allied medicine. (When the Spartans meet the Buckeyes in athletic contests, his heart is with MSU, but he cheers enthusiastically for OSU when they are matched against an SEC opponent.) “I wanted to be in health care, and I thought of myself being on the clinical side of things,” Mislevy said. “But early on in my

PHOTOS BY PIKSEL / ISTOCK / GETTY IMAGES PLUS AND COURTESY OF COVENANT CARE (MISLEVY)

he course of a consumer’s encounters with health care systems is not often a straight line That may be particularly true of post-acute care, that is, services that providers deliver to patients following hospital stays, especially near the end of life. A given patient may proceed from hospitalization to palliative care to hospice care, said Jeff Mislevy, president and CEO of Covenant Care, headquartered in Pensacola. But more typical is the case where a patient is discharged from the hospital and he’s fine, and then all of a sudden he is not. “So, he goes back to the hospital and may come out the second time requiring home health care. He is doing well and then something else happens, and he needs palliative care. He is stabilized and then his needs change again, and he may need 24-7 personal care. And eventually, he may need hospice. It’s hard because everyone takes a different path.” It stands to reason, then, that a patient and his family might benefit if afforded the option of dealing with a single provider that offers multiple services. Just a few years ago, Covenant Care, then known as Covenant Hospice, specialized in just one aspect of post-acute care. But its board

health care career, I found that I enjoyed the operations and business side of it.” Mislevy worked for a year as a registered dietician, then married one and conceded that she was a better dietician than he was. “So, I picked something else to do,” he said. “I started down the health care leadership path and never looked back.” Community needs and the direction of

the industry drove the diversification initiative at Covenant. “Being really good at one aspect of health care works for the patient who needs just that service, but if you need multiple things or your needs change, it can be a real hardship to have to call a new provider every time,” Mislevy said. “You see a primary care physician and then maybe a specialist, then you go to the lab and you’ve got to get imaging. You start over and tell your story every time, fill out new forms, see a new doctor. You have new nurses and clinicians to interact with. It’s a very frustrating experience.” A one-stop shop, Mislevy said, “appeals to the patient and the community, and it also helps address what we are all struggling with — ever-rising health care costs.” When Mislevy arrived in Pensacola, Covenant Hospice was serving between 600 and 700 patients a day in a triangle defined by Mobile, Alabama; Dothan, Alabama; and Tallahassee. Today, Covenant Care is a hospice, home health, palliative care, personal care and assisted living organization serving close to 3,000 patients a day. The vision of the board of directors has been actualized. And Covenant’s service footprint has grown dramatically. For a period in Florida, a moratorium prevented home health agencies from starting up in Florida. “When that went away,” Mislevy said, “we responded to the demand and the phone calls that we had been getting on a regular basis. People were asking, ‘Why can’t you come in and serve me in my community?’” Covenant expanded to the entire state of Florida. Still, it faces daunting, big-picture challenges.

“How do you continue to create value in health care?” Mislevy said. “How do we bend the curve on the rising costs of health care and still provide premium quality care and better outcomes and deliver that care where people want to receive it? Our challenge is finding ways to do more to keep people out of the hospital.” The “front line,” Mislevy contends, “starts with our care, not with hospital care, because if we get out in front and take better care of people in their homes, we can prevent hospitalizations.” The opportunity to have such beneficial impacts appeals to clinicians, practitioners and nurses, Mislevy said, adding that Covenant has not struggled to maintain staffing levels during the pandemic in the way that many employers have. “But we are working harder to create a workplace environment and an experience for employees that is attractive,” Mislevy said. “We are making greater use of technology to support our caregivers.” Mislevy, to be sure, is an admirer of Covenant’s employees. “We look for people who really, really have a passion for what they do, especially in hospice,” Mislevy said. “You have to have qualities as a person that go beyond technical skill. “In a hospital, you are surrounded by nurses, physicians and specialists. Everything you need is right there. A home health or hospice-in-the-home situation, it’s just you. It takes a strong, independent, autonomous, confident person that has a passion for what we do and how we do it.” Mislevy has a favorite saying about the work that Covenant does: We add life to days when days can no longer be added to life. “For our people, that’s not a tagline. It’s how they approach their work.”

“… EVERYTHING YOU NEED IS RIGHT THERE. A HOME HEALTH OR HOSPICE-IN-THE-HOME SITUATION, IT’S JUST YOU. IT TAKES A STRONG, INDEPENDENT, AUTONOMOUS, CONFIDENT PERSON THAT HAS A PASSION FOR WHAT WE DO AND HOW WE DO IT.” JEFF MISLEVY 850 Business Magazine

WINTER 2021

P RO M OT I O N

DEAL ESTATE Just Listed

Business and Industrial Space Available in Commerce Park

Lease Price: $11.75–$12.75 sf/yr (NNN) // Address: 5031 Commerce Park Circle, Pensacola 32505 // Square Footage: 8,800– 9,600 SF // Year Built: 1994 // Features: Estimated 120-day delivery from a fully executed lease. A 24-hour generator that runs the entire building. Laydown yard. Units can measure 80-by-110 feet to 80-by-120 feet with 40-foot column spacing. // Appeal: Great ingress and egress, plus an abundance of parking with current site plan showing 2.25 spaces per 1,000 square feet. Parking can be expanded to the north if needed. // Contact Information: Justin Beck, Stacy Taylor or Thomas McVoy, Beck Partners; (850) 477-7044

WINTER 2021

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PHOTOS COURTESY OF BECK PARTNERS

PREVIOUSLY A CALL CENTER, this industrial/flex space in Marcus Point Commerce Park is perfect for any opportunity. This 58,564-square-foot building is completely climate controlled and is conveniently located near Highway 29, Interstate ı0 and numerous other industrial/flex users in Commerce Park. This building has an eave height of ı7-feet-4-inches, with three shared dock doors that measure ı4 feet. There’s also ample parking and outstanding power (3-phase-480 volts). Available units range in size from 8,800 to 9,600 square feet. There is also an additional laydown yard that will be accessible by all tenants at additional costs.

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NorthwestFloridaWeddings.net 850 Business Magazine

WINTER 2021

CUSTOM CONTENT

ReliantSouth: A Commercial Contractor You Can Trust

ased in Northwest Florida, ReliantSouth Construction Group has become a much sought-after contractor that provides full-service commercial general contractor/construction management services. Led by professional engineer Richard Dodd, ReliantSouth has completed various exemplary projects throughout Northwest Florida and the Southeast. Having started his construction career 38 years ago, Dodd has been leading successful and award-winning construction companies in this area for more than three decades. What makes ReliantSouth stand out from its competitors is its adherence to one primary mission: “We provide solutions and value to our clients while working collaboratively with all our stakeholders,” Dodd said. The past two years — first with Hurricane Michael and then the pandemic — have dealt some unexpected hardships all across Northwest Florida. Contracting has certainly been anything but ordinary. However, ReliantSouth has both persevered and excelled. So, what’s their secret? “I believe it’s our perspective,” Dodd explained. “Because you see, life is truly a gift and should be appreciated all the time. Perspective helps you appreciate the little things.” ReliantSouth takes great pride in adapting to circumstances, remaining

steady in uncertainty, and building quality projects that exceed client expectations. Perhaps that stability comes from the fact that the firm is blessed with a rich legacy. Also, seasoned, integrity-filled construction professionals make up the team who have worked together for years. And then there are the grateful ReliantSouth clients: Hurricane Michael decimated Southerland Family Funeral Home. Steve Southerland, principal in the business and former member of Congress, felt contracting with ReliantSouth was an excellent decision. “When Hurricane Michael completely destroyed our family’s business structure, we were devastated,” Southerland said. “However, we knew that in order to pick up the pieces and build back better, it would require contracting with the best commercial contractor we could find. In our mind, there was only one choice — Richard Dodd and the ReliantSouth team. “They didn’t just meet our expectations — they far exceeded them and did so under budget as well as with the highest professional standards,” Southerland said. “Quite simply, we believe they are the ‘gold standard’ in construction, with their team of

honest, respectful, and competent experts. When businesses are searching for a builder that will serve as a trusted advisor, who will also deliver value that exceeds price, look no further than Richard Dodd and ReliantSouth. It was one of the best decisions our family has ever made.” This proven track record is also why Bay District Schools chose ReliantSouth to build their $37 million elementary school in Panama City Beach, and why other business entities rely on this ethical firm to build their projects. Wayne Lindsey, owner of Sonny’s BBQ, shared why he chose ReliantSouth to handle his restaurant construction. “I’ve been in the restaurant business for more than 35 years, and I was looking for a contractor who was honest and had my best interests at heart,” Lindsey said. “Once I found ReliantSouth, I knew I could quit looking. They do business the right way, with attention to detail, which is second to none.” Richard Dodd explained what sets ReliantSouth apart within the industry. “It all boils down to ReliantSouth’s corporate culture and engrained core values,” Dodd said. ReliantSouth has the expertise and values to make any dream a reality.

R E L I A N T S O U T H 2 3 0 W. 5 T H S T. , PA N A M A C I T Y | ( 8 5 0 ) 2 1 5 - 5 5 4 0 | R E L I A N T S O U T H .C O M 94

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850businessmagazine.com

Guy Harvey’s

at Tropic Star Lodge Sept. 24-29, 2022 • Nov. 2022 (TBD) Twenty-five anglers each trip will have the opportunity to join Guy and Jessica Harvey on a 5 day/5 night VIP experience at the world-famous Tropic Star Lodge in Piñas Bay, Panama.

Total Cost: $9,800 ■

Five day/five night all-inclusive stay at Tropic Star Lodge.

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Personalized 30-minute video of your adventure.

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Five people each day will fish with Guy Harvey.

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Breakfast/lunch and happy hour snacks.

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Jessica Harvey and a Guy Harvey team scientist will also join the trip and be available to fish with anglers.

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Additional fishing days will be standard trips on a Tropic Star boat with captain and a mate.

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A personalized Guy Harvey print for each angler.

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Welcome bag with Guy Harvey Tropic Star clothing and souvenir items.

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Lifetime subscription to Guy Harvey Magazine.

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Private dinners each night with Guy, Jessica Harvey and a scientist from Guy Harvey Enterprises.

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Two drinks per day and wine at dinner.

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Lodging at Tropic Star, double occupancy.

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During the week, Guy will paint an original piece to be auctioned off on the last night.

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Two private “arrival” and “departure” cocktail parties at Tropic Star’s mountaintop Palace.

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Round trip air charter from Panama City to Piñas Bay.

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Ground transportation from airport to hotel and domestic/international airport.

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VIP greeting by Tropic Star representative as you depart your flight and personal support while going through customs. While waiting for transfer, admission to airport VIP lounge pending COVID restrictions.

For available expedition dates, contact browland@GuyHarvey.com

850 Business Magazine

WINTER 2021

SOUNDBYTES

CAPITAL

LOCAL HAPPENINGS

» HCA Healthcare North Florida Division announced the appointment of Peter Lindquist, LINDQUIST DNP, RN, NEABC, as division chief nursing executive, effective Sept. 7. Dr. Lindquist will assume oversight of nursing operations across HCA Healthcare North Florida Division’s 15 hospitals and other care sites. In this role, he will work to advance the division’s commitment to delivering high quality care through a focus on patient safety, developing crossfunctional collaboration among nursing teams across hospital departments, and implementing evidence-based, innovative practices that further clinical operational excellence. Lindquist most recently served as division chief nursing executive for the HCA MidAmerica Division, a multi-market health care network that spans Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Missouri and includes 13 hospitals, outpatient centers, physician clinics and eight ambulatory surgery centers with a team of more than 4,500 registered nurses, among other clinical and non-clinical staff. Previously, he served on the HCA Healthcare Corporate Nursing Team, providing mentorship to nursing executives across HCA Healthcare and executive leadership at facilities during critical times. » The Southern Group of Florida announced that John Thrasher has rejoined the firm, after representing the First Coast in the Florida Senate and leading Florida State University to its status as a Top 25 institution nationwide. Before his first stint at Southern, Thrasher served Florida as speaker of the House. He is a U.S. Army veteran and received two Bronze Stars for his valor in Vietnam. Founder of the firm and chairman of the board Paul Bradshaw said, “The culture and character of our firm was shaped by President Thrasher. There is literally no person in Florida who has his breadth of experience as a public servant.”

WINTER 2021

» Trulieve has become the nation’s largest cannabis retailer after closing a $2.1 billion deal to acquire competitor Harvest Health & Recreation, Inc. Trulieve will now have 149 retail locations in 11 states. Trulieve, a pioneering medical marijuana operation, was opened in 2014 under the leadership of CEO Kim Rivers. LOCAL HONORS

» The Tallahassee-Leon County Office of Economic Vitality (OEV) has been recognized with four Excellence in Economic Development Awards by the International Economic Development Council (IEDC) for the following initiatives: • Data Driver, a project in the category of Print Brochure. • Minority, Women and Small Business Enterprise (MWSBE) Division, a project in the category of Economic Equity and Inclusion. • Love Your Local, a project in the category of Digital Media. • OEV Website, a project in the category of General Purpose Website. IEDC’s Excellence in Economic Development Awards recognized the world’s best economic

development programs and partnerships, marketing materials and the year’s most influential leaders. The 25 award categories honored organizations and individuals for their efforts in creating positive change in urban, suburban and rural communities. Awards are judged by a diverse panel of economic and community developers. IEDC received over 500 submissions from four countries. “The winners of IEDC’s Excellence in Economic Development awards represent the best of economic development and exemplify the leadership that our profession strives for every day,” said 2021 IEDC Board Chair and Invest Buffalo Niagara president, and CEO Tom Kucharski. The winners of the Excellence in Economic Development Awards were recognized at IEDC’s Annual Conference in Nashville. OEV director Cristina Paredes and deputy director Drew Dietrich were there to accept the awards for OEV.

» Leon County commissioner Kristin Dozier has been elected president of the Florida Regional Councils Association. FRCA promotes regional collaboration among the 10 Florida planning councils.

» Zoe Linafelt became president of the Capital Chapter of the Florida Public Relations Association, effective Sept. 1 and will serve a one-year term. Linafelt is the communications director for the Ounce of Prevention Fund of Florida. » Former Tallahassee congresswoman Gwen Graham is now serving as assistant U.S. secretary of education. Her nomination was unanimously approved by the U.S. Senate. Graham has made education a priority throughout her career. NEW & NOTABLE

» The Governors Inn, located in downtown Tallahassee, is undergoing a multimillion-dollar renovation scheduled for completion in August 2022. The renovation will include upgrades to guest rooms, suites, the lobby, public spaces and the addition of a lounge and patio. Architects Lewis+Whitlock of Tallahassee, Childers Construction of Tallahassee and Hungerford Design Inc. of Orlando are combining to complete design and construction. » Tallulah CBD + Juicebar, owner Ashley Guy has opened

Chris Rutledge, CEO/President of Gulf Winds Credit Union, was named CEO of the Year by the National Association of Federally-Insured Credit Unions (NAFCU). Rutledge was honored during NAFCU’s Congressional Caucus in September along with other winners in NAFCU’s 2021 Annual Awards Competition. Rutledge has served as Gulf Wind’s CEO/president since 2002. During his tenure, the credit union has grown from 29,000 members to over 76,000 members.

850businessmagazine.com

PHOTOS PROVIDED BY INDIVIDUALS

BUSINESS NEWS

accounting firms by INSIDE Public Accounting for the fourth time in a row. “It is an honor to be named one of the nation’s top accounting firms once again,” said Lee Bell, CPA, Saltmarsh president. “This recognition confirms how dedicated our team members are — always doing what is best for the client and delivering legendary service.” Earlier this year, Saltmarsh was also recognized as a Regional Leader by Accounting Today and named one of Forbes’ “Top Recommended U.S. Tax and Accounting Firms.”

her third location, Tallulah Delta 8 + Floating, at Railroad Square. The store features Delta 8 CBD products and two float pods. The therapeutic float pods promote good physical and mental health. A fourth store is coming soon to Thomasville, Georgia.

EMERALD COAST

LOCAL HAPPENINGS

» The Okaloosa County Commission hired Sheila Fitzgerald as deputy county administrator of support services. Fitzgerald brings 17 years of experience in project management, budget and grant administration to her new role.

» James Uthmeier, a Destin native, was named chief of staff for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. Uthmeier replaced chief of staff Adrian Lukis upon his resignation. Uthmeier previously served as general counsel for DeSantis. In previous roles, he served as senior adviser and counsel to U.S. Department of Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and was an associate at the Jones Day law firm.

LOCAL HONORS

» Saltmarsh, Cleaveland & Gund, one of the largest CPAled business advisory firms in the Southeast with offices in Pensacola and Tampa, has been ranked among the top 200

NEW & NOTABLE

» Dr. Carl Speer, a Pensacola

native, opened the Emerald Coast Foot and Ankle Center at the Gulf Region Medical Tower. The clinic treats food and ankle injuries and offers services including reconstructions, surgeries, sports medicine, digital imaging and more. Speer earned his doctorate at the Barry University School of Podiatric Medicine. The center is located at 8333 N. Davis Highway, Suite 6E, in Pensacola.

BAY

LOCAL HONORS

» Hope Abbott of Keller Williams Realty Emerald Coast is ranked 124th in Florida on the 2021 America’s Best Real Estate Professionals list. RealTrends + Tom Ferry America’s Real Estate Professionals ranked more than 18,000 real estate professionals based on their excellence in sales in 2020.

NEW & NOTABLE

» Progress Bank has received regulatory approval to open a full-service office in Panama City. It will be the bank’s 13th office, and the fourth in Florida. The fullservice office will be temporarily located at 107 W. 23rd St., Suite W-4, in Panama City, Florida, and is expected to open in November. The permanent office is currently under construction at 1805 W. 23rd St. and is expected to open in 2023. Progress Bank also has locations in Destin, Inlet Beach and Santa Rosa Beach. » A 668-acre solar power plant is expected to open in 2022 and will provide renewable energy to Bay County. The Bay County Commission granted Duke Energy a conditional use permit in March 2021, and they are now in the process of completing permitting for construction. — COMPILED BY REBECCA PADGETT FRETT

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850 Business Magazine

WINTER 2021

The Last Word

Venerable and Invaluable We should listen to the mindemooyenh among us Civil rights leader Clyde Bellecourt, a co-founder in ı968 of the American Indian Movement, began his remarks by acknowledging the special status of women and the indispensable roles they play as life-givers and as mindemooyenh, an Ojibwe word meaning one who holds things together.

WINTER 2021

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who champions small-business owners; an attorney who dedicated much of her career working for a public defender’s office and North Florida Legal Services, doing her part to see that there is justice for all; a poet/professor who is an advocate and ambassador for disabled people; a careerlong employee of the United Way with a huge heart for people living in poverty; a college dean who figured out how to start a college from scratch; a physician who stabilizes infants who enter the world with lungs too small and holes in their hearts; and a teenage business owner studying to become a speech pathologist. They are nurturers not just of the people closest to them, but also of communities. I stumbled the other day on a scholarly paper that looked at 25 community-level positive psychology exercises designed to foster optimal human flourishing. The report was published in the September 202ı edition of Frontiers in Psychology. Its authors, from the Université du Québec à Montréal and the University of Miami, note that positive psychology is a fast-growing discipline in the area of well-being research that focuses on factors that “contribute to the development of citizenship and communities such as social responsibility, nurturance, altruism, civility, tolerance, workplace ethics and positive institutions.” Might it be possible at the community level to bring about increased levels of tolerance, civility and more good stuff with mere interventions? Sounds utopian, doesn’t it? One intervention targeted a group of older adults with the aim of improving their psychological well-being. Participants attended weekly 90-minute sessions that

incorporated elements from the fields of stress management, cognitive/behavioral therapy and positive psychology. They engaged in practices including mindful eating, yoga and the keeping of journals of appreciation. After nine weeks, coping self-efficacy and morale were measurably better, a good thing for the subjects involved. But did a better community result from the intervention? The “Healthy Aging Mind/Body Intervention,” like the other interventions that figure in the report, “aimed to improve society one person at a time.” And, the report concludes, “Individual happiness does not necessarily translate into happier organizations and communities. … It’s not the same as creating settings based on fairness and equity.” Countless little interventions will not bring about the cultural changes we need as a collective. When given a chance, the most effective cultural change agents among us are the mindemooyenh. We should do a better job of listening to them and elevating them. I again offer my congratulations to this year’s Pinnacle honorees. I would do well to list you in my journal of appreciation. Be well,

STEVE BORNHOFT, EDITOR, 850 MAGAZINE sbornhoft@rowlandpublishing.com

PHOTO BY SAIGE ROBERTS

As a reporter for the Daily Press in Ashland, Wisconsin, I had been assigned to cover Bellecourt’s speech to an assembly at the Bad River Indian Reservation, which had devolved into factionalism and wrangling about the use of federal funds. I remember less about the political body of Bellecourt’s speech than I do about his praise for women and for Mother Earth. In Ojibwe culture, the earth is a woman, and it is women who are responsible for passing along cultural values and spirituality to succeeding generations. They hold things together and because they do, women are venerated and accorded considerable power and authority in the Ojibwe world. Over the course of recent years, I have interviewed dozens of women who were selected to receive Pinnacle Awards, presented annually by Rowland Publishing and 850 Business Magazine to honorees who have distinguished themselves professionally and as community servants. These women represent diverse backgrounds, demographics, occupations, passions, strivings and life experiences. Still, there is a powerful common denominator that emerges among them. They are nurturers. They are mindemooyenh. They hold things together. Profiles of the Pinnacle Award winners for 202ı appear in this edition of 850. Among them are two community bankers who work each day to help people reach their life goals; a broadcast journalist who uses her platform to elevate people in need; a college official dedicated to setting students up for success; a pastor and teacher who infects children with the joy of music; a community institute president

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The funds can be equipment financing ndustry owner logistics location distribution cut red tape acreage electricity aviation used to provide abatement and utilization of transport esults implementation workforce manufacturing zoning connection certification industry loc of property taxes, support statutory tax distribution electricityneeds certification zoning connectio infrastructure — such results workforce manufacturing experience efficiencies to reduce election as cut red tape industry skill transportation electricity results development access tax perso buildings, roadways, rail short- and long-term water acreage owner logistics workforce elect spurs, utilities and more — population location distribution skill industry capital costs. ransportation certification results manufacturing cut red tape experience zoning connection loc and to develop workforce mplementation liaison aviation permitting skill population aviation incentives development exped training programs. water access site selection trained personnel gas acreage ownership logistics workforce cut red ocation industry transportation results labor certification water distribution manufacturing elect onnection location zoning experience aviation implementation telecom permitting develop Santa transportation Rosa Countyincentives expediting access liaison personnel gas acreage o kill population ogistics electricity workforce manufacturing zoning logistics population location distribution ind Aggressive Incentives ransportation electricity results certification workforce manufacturing cut red tape experience zo Companies in target industries can also qualify for onnection location implementation liaison permitting several local programs to offset the costs of training new aviation skill population aviation incen development expediting water site access trained personnel gas acreage ownership log or existing team members, get selection rebates on property and workforce cut red tape location industry transportation electricity results certification labor w ad valorem taxes, and purchase industrial property at a distribution manufacturing connection location discount. There are alsozoning breaks on sales and use taxes forexperience logistics implementation tel aison taxequipment development permitting skill incentives population transportation development exped and electricity. ccess site selection access trained certification gas acreage owner water site selection access tra personnel results industry owner logistics location distribution cut red tape acreage electricity av ransportation results implementation workforce manufacturing zoning connection certific ndustry location distribution electricity certification results workforce manufacturing exper Find out how Rosacut County can industry sweeten skill transportation electricity results develop oning connection siteSanta selection red tape ccess tax personnel water your bottom line. Giveacreage us a call owner today. logistics population location distribution skill ind workforce electricity transportation certification results manufacturing cut red tape experience zo onnection location implementation liaison aviation permitting skill population aviation incen Contact Shannon Ogletree today. development expediting water access site selection trained personnel gas acreage ownership log (850) 623-0174 • shannon@santarosa.fl.gov workforce cut red tape location industry transportation results labor certification water distrib or visit SantaRosaEDO.com manufacturing electricity connection location zoning experience aviation implementation tele permitting development skill population transportation incentives expediting access liaison perso

Santa Rosa County hits the incentive sweet spot for aviation and aerospace companies.