850 Business Magazine Spring 2020

850 VOLUME 12 NUMBER 3

BUSINESS JOURNALS ESCAMBIA and GADSDEN COUNTIES

BASEBALL SCHOOL » DEFENSE BUDGET » CHOOSING VALUES

Downtown

REVIVAL Apartment project spurred Pensacola’s revitalization

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Task force experts anticipate the effects of a warming planet www.850businessmagazine.com

A product of Rowland Publishing, Inc.

SUCCESS MAKER NWFSC steers students along paths to employment

GROOMING TALENT Former big leaguer takes unconventional approach to coaching

lie

When Trulieve was deciding on a location for our cultivation and processing facilities, there was no doubt in our minds we wanted to build our headquarters in the Panhandle.

Over the past four years, we’ve been fortunate to call Gadsden County home and have worked hard to invest in a community that has invested in us. With nearly 1,000 employees in North Florida alone, we are proud to be one of Gadsden County’s largest employers.

Without the support of Gadsden County and its residents, Trulieve would not be where it is today. We look forward to continuing to grow and invest in our home.

Onward!

Kim Rivers Trulieve CEO

INTERESTED IN JOINING OUR TEAM?

WWW.TRULIEVE.COM/CAREERS CONTACT US 844-Truliev (844-878-5438) info@trulieve.com

@trulieve

@trulieve

Trulieve.com

@trulieve_fl

MEMBER FDIC

We’ll help handle the finances so you can focus on what matters.

As a leader, your time is best invested in big picture thinking. Count on Trustmark to help you do just that by getting to know your business inside and out. We provide online banking, lending, card services and other tools that free you to leave your mark.

Visit trustmark.com or stop by your nearest branch to speak with an expert.

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WE KNOW THE WAY To learn more email us at grow@compassmac.com or call 850.878.3370 for a free consultation.

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850 Magazine Spring 2020

IN THIS ISSUE FEATURE 26

Sustainability

Challenges associated with maintaining quality of life and quality of place in Northwest Florida are intensifying, given development pressures, a swiftly growing population, mountains of waste, environmental trends and sometimes devastating climatic events. Forwardthinking utilities, units of government, academic communities and businesses are focused on what it will take to secure a future that respects the resources and treasures of the region. By Steve Bornhoft

and Peter T. Reinwald

SPECIAL REPORTS

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ILLUSTRATION BY LINDSEY MASTERSON

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n the Cover: Andrew Rothfeder, CEO at Studer Properties, says the enterprise he leads is O committed to the broader goal of community development, not just business development. He has helped transform Pensacola, which rated highly as a place to work and play but lacked a residential component. Photo by Blake Jones

scambia County E Business Journal

The Pensacola area’s economic development organization recognizes that continuing diversification is a key to the future success of a county that historically has relied upon tourism, the military, piscatorial pursuits and pine trees as lifebloods. Private/ public partnerships in areas including additive manufacturing and cybersecurity suggest that Escambia County is well on its way to developing a workforce for tomorrow.

adsden County G Business Journal

For five years, the Gadsden County Development Council concentrated on supplying product — buildings, sites and infrastructure — in its efforts to attract new businesses and industry. The focus has now shifted to talent development and a more holistic approach.

The City of Quincy, for example, has launched an “Opportunity for All” initiative designed to meet the needs of both established and anticipated businesses.

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850 Magazine Spring 2020

IN THIS ISSUE PROMOTIONS MARKETING MIXES 17 Daryl Green of Compass Marketing in Tallahassee works with clients to arrive at optimal integrated marketing plans that take advantage of those media that will best unite a company with potential customers.

TRUSTWORTHY EXPERT 22 Tallahassee CPA firm James Moore & Co. goes beyond traditional accounting roles and serves customers with valuable advice in areas including retirement and succession planning, technology and human resources.

15 VISION BUILDING 58 Ryan Giles of Traction Strong discusses key components in assembling a company’s vision: a picture, a plan, goals and issues.

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73 Over the course of 20 years, Tallahassee’s Chain of Parks Art Festival, produced by LeMoyne Arts, has won awards and made coveted lists while growing bigger, more popular and more competitive.

Inside Escambia County Business Journal

In This Issue 10 From the Publisher 71 Sound Bytes 74 The Last Word from the Editor

Departments THE 850 LIFE 14 Dr. Devin Stephenson, the president of Northwest Florida State College, was a wanderer once, but today he encourages students to commit to goals and develop a plan for achieving them.

MILITARY AFFAIRS 18 Northwest Florida stands to benefit greatly from the record defense budget adopted last year. The

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appropriation includes money that guarantees the redevelopment of hurricane-ravaged Tyndall Air Force Base.

BUSINESS SPEAK

NEW LIFE FOR STRUCTURES 42 Phoenix Coatings in Pensacola is dedicated to revitalizing buildings by making them more durable, efficient and beautiful than they ever have been. The company’s founders proudly say that their work speaks for itself.

20 Author Frank Fiume, in Running with Your Head Down, describes his personal evolution, including decisions to de-emphasize financial success and to separate his own identity from that of his business.

Special Sections DEAL ESTATE

37 Available for lease is a Crestview property surrounded by established medical practices and includes offices, examining rooms, check-in counters and an ideal location with convenient access to I-10.

CRITICAL DECISION 48 Justin Beck, CEO at Beck Partners in Pensacola, finds that there are critical skills and experiences that Escambia County’s next superintendent of schools should possess.

PHOTOS BY FRAMEPHOTO / ISTOCK / GETTY IMAGES PLUS (42) AND COURTESY OF NORTHWEST FLORIDA STATE COLLEGE (14) AND JAMES MOORE & CO. (22)

ART IN THE PARKS

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APRIL 23-26, 2020

Spring 2020

Town Center of Grand Boulevard at Sandestin® Miramar Beach, FL

850 THE BUSINESS MAGAZINE OF NORTHWEST FLORIDA

Vol. 12, No. 3

PRESIDENT/PUBLISHER BRIAN E. ROWLAND EDITORIAL EDITOR Steve Bornhoft MANAGING EDITOR Jeff Price STAFF WRITER Hannah Burke CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Frank V. Fiume II, William S. Loiry, Rebecca Padgett, Peter T. Reinwald CREATIVE DIRECTOR OF PRODUCTION AND TECHNOLOGY Daniel Vitter CREATIVE DIRECTOR Jennifer Ekrut SENIOR PUBLICATION DESIGNER Shruti Shah PUBLICATION DESIGNERS Sarah Burger, Jordan Harrison, Lindsey Masterson GRAPHIC DESIGNER Sierra Thomas CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHERS Matt Burke, Mike Fender, Scott Holstein, Blake Jones, Saige Roberts, Phil Sears, Michael Spooneybarger, Stephen Vance

Thursday • Winemakers & Shakers • 5pm–7pm Friday • VIP Wine Tasting Kick-Off • 4pm–6pm Friday • Craft Beer & Spirits Jam • 6pm–9pm Saturday & Sunday • Grand Tastings • 1pm–4pm A dazzling roster of dozens of celebrity winemakers, distillers, chefs, brew masters and entertainers converge in South Walton, Florida to wine, dine, educate and entertain guests as part of the four-day celebration of wine during the South Walton Beaches Wine & Food Festival held April 23-26, 2020 throughout the Town Center of Grand Boulevard.

Attendees enjoy such attractions as Jackson Family Wine World, featured wine celebrity Alessia Antinori of Marchesi Antinori, Savor South Walton Culinary Village, Nosh Pavilions, Tasting Seminars, Craft Beer & Spirits Jam, live entertainment and more than 600 wines presented by knowledgeable wine industry insiders.

SALES, MARKETING & EVENTS VICE PRESIDENT/CORPORATE DEVELOPMENT McKenzie Burleigh SALES MANAGER, EASTERN DIVISION Lori Magee Yeaton SALES MANAGER, WESTERN DIVISION Rhonda Lynn Murray DIRECTOR OF NEW BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT, EASTERN DIVISION Daniel Parisi DIRECTOR OF NEW BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT, WESTERN DIVISION Dan Parker AD SERVICES COORDINATORS Tracy Mulligan, Lisa Sostre ACCOUNT EXECUTIVES Pamela “Missy” Atchison Kimbrough, David Doll, Julie Dorr, Darla Harrison MARKETING MANAGER Kate Pierson SALES AND MARKETING WRITER Rebecca Padgett SALES AND EVENTS MANAGER Mackenzie Little SENIOR INTEGRATED MARKETING COORDINATOR Javis Ogden OPERATIONS ADMINISTRATIVE SERVICES DIRECTOR Melissa Spear CUSTOM PUBLISHING MANAGER Sara Goldfarb CLIENT SERVICES REPRESENTATIVE/PRODUCTION SPECIALIST Melinda Lanigan ACCOUNTING ASSISTANT Amber Dennard EXECUTIVE ASSISTANT Caitlin Painter

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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 March 2020 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.

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Summer classes begin May 18.

Enroll today!

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(850) 678-5111 | NWFSC.EDU CRESTVIEW • DEFUNIAK SPRINGS • FT. WALTON BEACH • HURLBURT FIELD • NICEVILLE • SOUTH WALTON • ONLINE NORTHWEST FLORIDA STATE COLLEGE IS ACCREDITED BY THE SOUTHERN ASSOCIATION OF COLLEGES AND SCHOOLS COMMISSION ON COLLEGES TO AWARD CERTIFICATES, ASSOCIATE AND BACCALAUREATE DEGREES. CONTACT THE SOUTHERN ASSOCIATION OF COLLEGES AND SCHOOLS AT 1866 SOUTHERN LANE, DECATUR, GEORGIA 30033-4097 OR CALL 404-679-4500 FOR QUESTIONS ABOUT THE ACCREDITATION OF NORTHWEST FLORIDA STATE COLLEGE. NORTHWEST FLORIDA STATE COLLEGE IS COMMITTED TO EQUAL ACCESS/EQUAL OPPORTUNITY IN ITS PROGRAMS, ACTIVITIES, AND EMPLOYMENT. FOR ADDITIONAL INFORMATION, VISIT WWW.NWFSC.EDU. MATERIALES DE LA UNIVERSIDAD SON DISPONIBLES EN ESPAÑOLA LLAMANDO A LA OFICINA DE ADMISIONES DE NORTHWEST FLORIDA STATE COLLEGE AL 850-678-5111.

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From the Publisher

Navigating Roads to Progress Hard work, expert assistance make visions happen Last year, all of us at Rowland Publishing committed to an ambitious resolution.

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phone or email — (504) 500-1640; ryan@tractionstrong.com.

In our personal and professional journeys, we encounter many crossroads. Choosing the right turn requires knowledge and, in some cases, courage. An active, wellinformed approach always beats a passive one. “Decision by indecision” doesn’t often advance your interests.

You will never bat ı.000. (The most successful people I know talk about the importance of learning how to fail.) But you can better your odds by looking ahead, making contingency plans, seeking good counsel and making sure decisions are consistent with your core values.

The bigger the decision, the more important these considerations are.

Finally, find time to enjoy a great magazine.

In this edition of 850, discover how an apartment complex spurred the transformation of downtown Pensacola; learn what small towns in Gadsden County are doing to make themselves more attractive to visitors; and join us as we explore the future of resources and infrastructure in the region.

Seize the day,

BRIAN ROWLAND browland@rowlandpublishing.com

PHOTO BY SCOTT HOLSTEIN

Collectively, we determined that we would define, enhance and build a stronger corporate culture.

For 30 years, Rowland Publishing has built upon its successes and on the strength of two foundational, invaluable assets: its customers and its employees. Today, we are focusing on our future, identifying one-year, three-year and 10-year goals and shoring up our foundation so that it can support and sustain a bigger company.

Our goals are challenging but achievable — that is if we work hard, work smart and work together.

I won’t object, of course, to some good luck, and we have arranged for some help along the way.

Ryan Giles is the coach and facilitator at Traction Strong, whose program, Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS), has in one year changed the way that RPI operates. It has led us to think proactively, to solve problems more efficiently, communicate more effectively and bring about improved interdepartmental cooperation.

One of the tangible manifestations of this transformational progress is a wall project that our production team of Lindsey Masterson, Sierra Thomas and Jordan Harrison created. It’s a chalkboard like no other. Spaces on the “wall,” located in our kitchen, are reserved for our permanent core values, employee profiles, company milestones and “rocks,” which are issues that we give ourselves 90 days to resolve. It is updated frequently.

Should you be looking for someone who can show you the way to the next level in your company’s progress or better organize your business as it exists today, I would recommend that you check out Ryan and Traction Strong. Visit their website, tractionstrong.com, or reach out to Ryan by

At Gulf Power we are working together with the communities we serve to make Northwest Florida an even better place to raise a family and do business.

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850businessmagazine.com P RO M OT I O N

FROM THE MAI LBAG

LANDMARK REPORTING

When you think of a woman with character and integrity, who comes to mind?

Nominate her for our 2020 Pinnacle Awards! Nominations are due by April 30 and can be submitted online at 850BusinessMagazine.com/Pinnacle-Awards.

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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.

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ONLINE EXCLUSIVES

Browse residential and commercial real estate opportunities, recently sold properties and dreamy second homes, sponsored

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Pinnacle Nominations are live!

To the Editor: I just got to read the fall edition of 850.

That was a great read and an important landmark for the LGBTQ community.

2019 was quite a year in which Panama City witnessed its first Pride Festival! It reminds me of the story of the “one hundredth monkey.” The community has reached a collective acceptance that transforms values.

I am feeling hopeful and proud of Bay County.

(850) 830-4753 Miriam@MiriamDillon.com CoastalSouthWalton.com

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Executive Mindset

The (850) Life HIGHER EDUCATION

The Best of Intentions NWFSC encourages students to define pathways

BY STEVE BORNHOFT

A

t Northwest Florida State College, Dr. Devin Stephenson, the school’s president since January 2017, is waging a war on whirling.

And, it seems that he, along with lieutenants called navigators, may be winning. His chief weapon: intentionality.

“In post-secondary education, we’ve always had students who enroll and stay a little bit, and then stop out. Or drop out,” Stephenson said. “In most of these cases — I call them whirlers — students do not have a clear goal, a clear path to success in mind.”

Today, college presidents are acutely aware of calls by government overseers and their own boards for greater accountability and improved rates of educational attainment.

“We’ve been told to do a better job of moving students through the process to the finish line,” Stephenson said. “If students have a plan, they will work that plan and they will find individuals within the college environment who can help them reach their goals.

Without a plan, they wind up in insecure, poorly defined territory that in many cases is a great abyss. So our goal here is to create pathways.”

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DR. DEVIN STEPHENSON, PRESIDENT OF NORTHWEST FLORIDA STATE COLLEGE

That is, to make the college experience of students outcome-oriented or “intentional,” and to turn whirlers and wanderers into success stories.

There was a time when Stephenson was without a pathway. He had graduated from a liberal arts school, Birmingham Southern College, with a general business degree.

“I asked myself, ‘What am I going

to do now?’ ” Stephenson said. “I really had no idea. Fortunately, I had someone who took an interest in me. Otherwise, I don’t know what I would have done.

Now, we have to be more specific.”

Stephenson went to work at a technical college, where he established a financial aid office; he’s been in higher education ever since.

“At the point of application, some

PHOTO COURTESY OF NORTHWEST FLORIDA STATE COLLEGE

students know that they want to become a nurse or a welder, but most, especially those in university parallel programs (for students who move from UWFSC to four-year universities), don’t know exactly what they want to do yet,” Stephenson noted.

“That can be OK. It gives us time to help them explore.”

NWFSC navigators assist students identifying what they want to do and what they want to be, and then help them get there by closely monitoring their progress along the way. They were instrumental in moving the school’s combined graduation/transfer rate from 40 to 58 percent between 2018 and 2019.

LEAVING COAL COUNTRY Stephenson was serving as president of the four-campus Big Sandy Community & Technical College in Eastern Kentucky when a headhunter made him aware of NWFSC’s search for a new president.

“I worked in a decimated, coalmining part of the state,” Stephenson said. “At the peak, there were 28,000 people working in coal and, when I got there, it was 6,000. The challenges were great. You go to Pipeville, Kentucky, and you see the wealth of the coal barons and then you go to the hollers and you see abject poverty.”

Big Sandy created fiber-optic technician training and a coding academy as elements in its efforts to retrain one-time miners for new careers.

Stephenson regarded the miners highly as people with strong work ethics and was committed to helping them. He was reluctant to consider the NWFSC opening, but a friend convinced him that he should at least take a look.

“My wife Judy and I came down here in tourist clothes — sunglasses and

ball caps — and toured about four of the school’s sites and realized that this was a place where we could make a difference,” Stephenson said.

The Stephensons learned that NWFSC had a strong financial position and a robust foundation. Its academic programs had an outstanding reputation.

Too, the Stephensons were excited to discover NWFSC’s intercollegiate athletic programs and the quality of its fine arts programs and the presence of the state-of-the-art Mattie Kelly Arts Center on the Niceville campus. In Kentucky, community colleges are prohibited by state law from having athletic teams and, said Stephenson, the arts programs there were not equal to what NWFSC offers.

Devin, as it happens, is a pianist and Judy is a big women’s softball fan.

“The fit was there,” said Stephenson, who plays piano at the annual “Holiday Pops” concert at Mattie Kelly.

“We engaged along with 130 applicants and somehow I wound up being selected. And, it’s been the most rewarding position and opportunity that Judy and I have ever had.”

Stephenson is a passionate promoter who speaks with unchecked enthusiasm about NWFSC’s highly ranked nursing programs, its top-ranked welding program and the introduction of culinary management and hospitality/ tourism degrees.

“The American Welding Society named us as the No. 1 educational welding facility in America, and named our Scottie Smith the No. 1 welding faculty member,” Stephenson said. “We’ve expanded welding to include a night program, and we have a phenomenal inmate welding program in conjunction with the Walton County Sheriff’s Office. Our students graduate with industry certifications, and are eligible

to work at employers including Eastern Shipbuilding in Panama City.”

The Welding Society has made NWFSC an authorized testing facility, the only one between Tallahassee and Mobile, Alabama.

“Scottie treats the welding shop as a work site,” Stephenson said. “One welding student is the straw boss each week.

He manages the team. They clock in, they clock out. Students learn employability skills and how to work together as a team.”

Of 56 recent nursing program graduates, 55 went on to pass licensure exams.

The 56th, at this writing, had yet to take the exam. The average pass rate percentage in Florida is 79.

“We identified culinary and hospitality as areas that had a lot of potential for local support and external funding,” Stephenson said. “There are 885 members of the Florida Restaurant & Lodging Association along the Emerald Coast. It’s the largest industry in our area behind the military.”

Retired Air Force Maj. Gen. Don Litke, an NWFSC trustee, endowed scholarships for culinary students and is now funding construction of a hydroponic greenhouse where all the vegetables for the culinary program will be grown with enough left over to support pantries on campus and off.

Chef and culinary arts professor Layne Eggers calculated the greenhouse’s yield — it can produce a tomato in five weeks versus the usual nine — and found himself thinking about how to deal with the surplus food it will generate.

Stephenson said the culinary program is capable of drawing students from around the country and has speeded consideration for developing on-campus housing.

Culinary and hospitality students

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THE (850) LIFE

combine to serve meals in an on-campus “pop-up restaurant” whose offerings, Stephenson said, are superior to meals he has enjoyed at the Culinary Institute of New York.

BUSINESS AND INDUSTRY Stephenson has worked to ensure that NWFSC’s relationships with business leaders in its service area are close and strong.

“All of our programs must be relevant, lead to a job and support business and industry,” Stephenson said. “Our mantra is ‘improving lives,’ and I have expanded that to include improving the quality of place: where we play, where we live, where we work.”

At Stephenson’s direction, NWFSC has expanded its Division of Workforce Development Training. A staff member, Bill Allison, formerly with Okaloosa Gas, collects data on the business and industry community and finds out what its needs are so that the school can deliver programming

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that will help them secure and retain employees and become more efficient, effective and productive.

Referring to leadership training made possible by benefactors Dave Costa and Eileen Arpke, Stephenson commented, “The work we do transcends the assembly line or an engineering office. We devote a lot of resources to ensure that the business and industry community can be heard.”

Stephenson encourages members of his leadership team to become members of chambers of commerce or other civic organizations. He is an officer at the NicevilleValparaiso Chamber of Commerce and serves on the Okaloosa County Economic Development Council’s board. Cristie Kedroski, NWFSC’s vice president of college advancement, is a director at the Walton County Chamber.

“You don’t know what you don’t know if you don’t get out. If you’re not externally facing and engaged with the bigger picture and the people that you serve, you’re

not going to know what their needs and demands are,” Stephenson said.

“As a community member, I want to keep this institution strong and flourishing because of the role it plays in economic development. Each of our programs has an advisory committee made up of people who work in that area.”

Community engagement also takes the form of the President’s Speaker Series, now in its second year. Lined up to address audiences at Mattie Kelly were Apollo astronaut Winston Scott; John Quinones, the host of ABC TV’s “What Would You Do?” and Dale Berra, who has written a memoir about growing up as the son of Yogi.

At this point in his career, Stephenson believes he is at the end of his professional pathway.

“I don’t intend to go anywhere,” he said.

“We have laid some foundational work here, and that work will lead to what will be some wonderful successes for the institution.”

DOWNTOWN TALLAHASSEE’S NEWEST EVENT SPACE 316 West Tennessee Street, Tallahassee FL 32301

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PROMOTION

BRINGING ABOUT RESULTS

Coordinated multi-media campaigns help businesses achieve their marketing goals

I

n getting to know a new client, Daryl Green asks a fundamental question: What is your goal?

Green, the agency director at Compass Marketing & Consulting in Tallahassee, finds that, in response, many business owners and managers struggle to articulate marketing objectives other than to say they would like to make more money.

“As an agency,” Green said, “our purpose is to help clients get a result. If your business relies upon phone calls, our role may be to get your phone to ring, and there are various ways to do that.

Profits — or, in the case of a charitable organization, more contributions or increased awareness — come as a byproduct of that result.”

In other words, Green is in the business of working to influence behavior.

“Think of a funnel,” he said. “You have lots of potential customers who are floating above the funnel. Then something happens in their lives to cause them to descend to the rim of the funnel. Maybe, your car was totaled and you need a new ride, or maybe you are just hungry.”

The business that has succeeded over time in achieving top-of-mind awareness in the mind of that consumer is the business most likely to sell him or her a sedan or a sandwich. If no auto dealer or eatery occupies that position, and the consumer resorts to typing general terms

into a search bar, a decided advantage goes to the business that has taken steps to ensure that it appears at the top of the list of search results.

Exiting the funnel are consumers who purchase a product or service.

“That is when the real work should begin,” Green said. “We want to understand the best practices along the journey of conversion that turns customers into brand ambassadors, because — and advertising agencies don’t like to hear this — the best, most valuable form of advertising is word of mouth.”

By way of example, Green cited an experience in the life of the Proctor Dealerships in Tallahassee.

Proctor was contemplating the addition of Subaru automobiles to its product line, but had a lot of questions.

In terms of market share and familiarity, Subaru was a niche brand and largely unknown in our area.

Subaru representatives encouraged Green, then Proctor’s director of marketing and public relations, and others at the dealership to approach Subaru drivers on the street and ask them how they liked their car.

“For a month, we did that,” Green said, “and people wouldn’t stop talking about how much they loved their Subarus. We became convinced that adding Subaru was a solid choice.”

Subaru, it seemed, had brought about a

highly desirable cycle: attract customers; satisfy them with a good product; and treat them so well that they lead others to become Subaru owners.

Through recent years in which advertising options have proliferated, the term “integrated marketing” has been applied to marketing campaigns that employ multiple alternatives.

Arriving at the optimal marketing mix for a given client, Green said, involves “working backward” by starting with a business’ target audience and marketing objectives and then identifying the best ways to achieve desired results while staying within the client’s budget.

“Digital options offer the advantage of targeting. The growth in the amount of information available about consumer behavior has been phenomenal.”

When clients working with Compass settle on a media mix, Green encourages them to ensure that all of the selected media and even the place of business complement one another.

“Details are important,” Green said.

“Fonts, tone of voice. It may be a good idea to match the background of a website with the wallpaper of its business.”

The best integrated marketing campaign, then, is one whose elements reinforce one another, one whose whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

C O M PA S S M A R K E T I N G 1 7 1 1 C a p i t a l C i r c l e N E | ( 8 5 0 ) 8 7 8 - 3 3 7 0 | C o m p a s s M A C .c o m

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Executive Mindset

Military Affairs DEFENSE SPENDING

Historic Budget Defense authorization includes Tyndall AFB reconstruction dollars

BY WILLIAM S. LOIRY

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U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) said, “Florida continues to be a priority in this NDAA, with funding for military construction projects across the state, including the recovery of Tyndall Air Force Base. The bill authorizes over $2.4 billion for the reconstruction of Tyndall Air Force Base and includes a Sense of Congress calling for the restoration of the base using innovative construction methods, materials, designs and technologies in order to achieve efficiencies, cost savings, resiliency and capability.”

Rubio said that the FY ’20 defense budget authorizes the following programs, which are operated, produced in, or supported in some form in Florida: Supports the budget request for 73 UH-60M Blackhawks, 48 AH-64 Apaches, nine MH-47G Chinooks, six CH-53K King Stallions, ı2 HH60W Combat Rescue Helicopters, and six MQ-ı Gray Eagles; Includes an additional $28 million for the CH-47 Block II program and

preserves the option for the Army to buy this helicopter in future years; Prohibits the retirement of RC-ı35 and KC-ı0 aircraft; Expands maritime patrols by adding three additional P-8 Poseidon and one E-2D Hawkeye aircraft; Increases inter-theater airlift by adding four additional C-ı30 Hercules aircraft; Fully supports the Air Force UH-ıN utility helicopter replacement program;

Supports the Army budget request for ı3ı Armored Multipurpose Vehicles, ı52 Stryker Combat Vehicles and ı65 Abrams Tanks; Provides for additional funding for Army medium and heavy tactical trucks; Authorizes an additional $ı billion for ı2 additional F-35A aircraft to address an identified Air Force unfunded requirement and accelerate delivery of needed fifth

PHOTO COURTESY OF WILLIAM LOIRY

T

he 2020 defense authorization bill was signed into law in December, providing $738 billion in the largest defense budget in U.S. history.

The historic defense budget is a big win for Northwest Florida, home to Eglin Air Force Base, Tyndall Air Force Base, Hurlburt Field, NAS Pensacola, Naval Support Activity Panama City and a variety of defense units at the bases.

As a member of the House Armed Services Committee, U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fort Walton Beach) applauded the U.S. House of Representatives for passing the fiscal year 2020 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).

Gaetz secured numerous provisions for Florida’s First Congressional district in the NDAA, including $ı24 million for Special Operations military construction at Eglin Air Force Base and Hurlburt Field.

“Northwest Florida’s dynamic military mission is strengthened with the passage of this year’s National Defense Authorization Act,” Gaetz said. “Our military members and families constitute the heartbeat of Northwest Florida, and this bill strengthens our military’s initiatives and hardens our readiness.”

IN-HOME & OFFICE I.T. SERVICES generation capability and $440 million for the purchase of additional F-35s originally ordered by Turkey; Provides the necessary authority for buying F-35 long lead spare parts in bulk to help achieve better cost savings for the F-35 program and authorizes buy-to-budget authority to capitalize on lower unit cost savings;

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Supports the budget request for ı0 F-35B and 20 F-35C fifth generation strike fighters to help address Navy and Marine Corps strike fighter shortfalls;

TECHNOLOGY SERVICES

Supports the budget request for 24 F/A-ı8E/F Super Hornets to help address Navy strike fighter shortfalls; Supports full funding for the B-2ı long-range strike aircraft development;

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Supports the budget request for eight F-ı5EX aircraft to begin replacing aging aircraft while also enhancing Congressional oversight of the program;

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Supports nearly $ı billion for the Air Force Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) Program ensuring U.S. air superiority for our future; and

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Authorizes an additional $249.2 million for the Stryker combat vehicle medium caliber weapon system, an identified Army unfunded requirement.

The substantial new increases in the defense budget mean more business activity in Northwest Florida as defense contractors expand their existing offices or open offices for the first time in the region. In Okaloosa County alone (home to Eglin AFB and Hurlburt Field), there were 620 defense contractors in 20ı8. From 2000 to 20ı8, defense contractors in the county secured more than $ıı.5 billion in defense contracts.

Timothy Krueger, senior vice president of Merrill Lynch Wealth Management in Destin said, “The growing defense budget and the growing number of military contractors in our region mean that defense is now a major economic anchor for Northwest Florida.”

CHANDLER AND OLIVIA PHOTOGRAPHY

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.

Visit NorthwestFloridaWeddings.net to submit their information so we can send them a congratulations package, including the Northwest Florida Weddings Magazine! They will also be submitted for a chance to be covered in the magazine after their wedding!

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Executive Mindset

Business Speak PROFESSIONAL FULFILLMENT

The importance of separating self from business

I

n December 2008, I attended “Date with Destiny,” my fifth Tony Robbins event, and the longest one he offers — a weeklong marathon.

All of it would lead to answering the question, “Why do you do what you do?” Our mission was to redesign our lives to create what we most desired.

Coming into the eavent, I believed my “story” was about equating my self-worth with achievement and defying the odds I had faced as a boy when I felt rejected, inadequate and underestimated. As I matured, I believed my story was all about me being or feeling significant in the world, being seen as valuable because of what I had accomplished. In fact, deep down, I felt that I would only be loved and respected because of my accolades. And finally, I believed that if I didn’t succeed, I would lose the love I wanted and needed.

It quickly dawned on me that my intense need for significance in business, which I defined as a need for power and admiration, had cost me the ability to maximize closeness in personal relationships. I often held back, fearful that I would not receive the love I wanted, especially if I weren’t significant enough. I also understood that my need for certainty had limited my success because of my need to control everything!

As Tony, a

BY FRANK V. FIUME II

preeminent life coach, pointed out, most people want love and connection, but they settle for significance instead. That’s exactly what I was doing. My false belief was that I was only worthy of love as long as I was successful in business.

I began to realize that I needed to be more loving, more accepting and more forgiving — of myself and others. I always demanded more from myself that anyone else ever did, but I wasn’t very forgiving if I disappointed myself by not getting results. I knew then that I would need to be more empathetic to everyone’s human needs and the necessity to express pain, heal it and move beyond it.

Tony stressed the difference between knowing your values and consciously choosing your values and prioritizing them in a new sequence.

As I thought about it, it became so obvious to me that gratitude should be my No. 1 and most important value.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t think I was ever an ungrateful person, but gratitude just wasn’t something I consciously cultivated — much less was it the driving force in my life. But as I heard Tony talk more about his own deep appreciation for his good fortune, I saw that gratitude is a crucial component of a positive mindset.

It gives you an instant feeling of well-being. It makes you feel happier and more satisfied in all areas of your

Frank Fiume explores ways in which people define significance.

life. And it reminds you to focus on all the good qualities of the people in your life and on the things you already have.

Tony also talked about creating a compelling future, about finding something that gives your life meaning and drives you with a sense of purpose toward your goals, but also allows you to give something back to life. He asked whether we had visions that were strong enough to allow us to push forward through the challenges of life regardless of the pain we would meet.

As I sat there listening intently, I felt as if my brain were being rewired.

No longer was I driven so completely by the need for significance through financial success. Instead, my primary needs had switched to love, connection and contribution. All these thoughts collided in a flash, and I realized that the business I created was never about me.

My business and I were two separate entities. That was the epiphany. While I was grateful beyond words for all that my business had done for me, my life could no any longer be defined by its success.

That realization was life-changing.

The forgoing commentary was excerpted with permission from “Running with My Head Down: An Entrepreneur’s Story of Passion, Perseverance and Purpose” by Frank V. Fiume II (Greenleaf Book Group Press, 2019).

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PHOTO COURTESY OF FRANK FIUME

Moving Beyond Success

DO YOU KNOW AN OUTSTANDING WOMAN BUSINESS LEADER? 850 — The Business Magazine of Northwest Florida is looking for YOUR HELP in recognizing women in our region who have demonstrated outstanding leadership skills in their businesses and communities.*

Nominations are now open at 850businessmagazine.com

Ten women will be selected to receive the 2020 Pinnacle Award — women of character and integrity, our leaders, mentors and community servants.

These honorees will be profiled in a future issue of 850 Business Magazine in 2020 and be recognized at the sixth annual Pinnacle Awards Luncheon.

For additional sponsorship opportunities contact Mac Little at mlittle@rowlandpublishing.com *Nominees must be a private or public sector business owner, CEO, primary manager or top executive in their companies. Nominees must have: 1) demonstrated professional excellence and outstanding leadership in her business or profession; 2) actively participated in civic and/or business-related organizations; 3) served as a mentor to others. Nominations must be received by April 30, 2020.

PRESENTED BY

SPONSORED BY PR E SE NT ING SP O N S O R

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PROMOTION

Keeping Your Business on Track James Moore & Co. Certified Public Accountants and Consultants

A

s a business owner or leader, you have an ever-growing list of priorities. James Moore & Co. shortens that list by providing knowledgeable insight and advice in all areas of financial advising — giving you time to focus on what’s important to you.

A premier resource for over 50 years, James Moore has pushed the boundaries of a traditional CPA firm to include every facet that impacts your financial success and security. Where clients might initially contact the company for traditional services such as tax, audits or small business accounting, they often add many of their other solutions — from retirement planning and succession planning to technology services and human resources consulting.

No matter the size of your business, James Moore is determined to keep it on the right track.

“Compliance, rules and regulations only become more complex, but they

are aspects that we deal with on a daily basis,” said Nadia Batey, a partner at James Moore. “As a business owner, it’s almost impossible for you to stay on top of all of this. That’s where we come in, to advise business owners and give them comfort that they are abiding by the rules and making secure decisions that will take their business to the next great level.”

Client success is the driving force behind all that James Moore does.

This is why every meeting begins with discussion before numbers. They educate themselves on each client’s history, current standing and hopes for the future.

The aim is to create a level of comfort and caring that leads to open lines of communication. In fact, many James Moore clients have their CPA’s cellphone number to call or text for advice.

“Our goal is to be an expert you can trust, and from that trust create a personal relationship with you,” said

Batey. “You should have comfort and peace of mind that your financial situation is in the right hands, and that you’re offered the advice and expertise that you need to be successful.”

JAMES MOORE & CO. 2477 Tim Gamble Place #200, Tallahassee | (850) 386-6184 | JMCO.com 22

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What arts and culture mean in our community

IMPACT

$201.9 million in total economic impact $100.4 million in organizational expenditures $125.7 million in household income to local residents $10.9 million in revenue to local government $15.6 million in revenue to state government

2,846,437 total attendance in Leon County 455,430 total non-resident attendance 16% of all attendees at arts and cultural events came from outside Leon County

TOURISM

BUSINESS BUSINESS

$101.4 million total event-related spending (excluding admission) $29.41 average dollars spent per attendee (residents) $68.28 average dollars spent per attendee (non-residents) 7161 full-time equivalent jobs supported

TallahasseeArts.org Source: Arts & Economic Prosperity 5: The Economic Impact of Non-profit Arts & Cultural Organizations and their Audiences in Leon County, Florida. Americans for the Arts - FY15 data

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PROMOTION

Chairman William Loiry with Air Force speakers and Summit leadership at the 2020 Air Force Contracting Summit

U Northwest Florida Bases Embrace the Future with New Funding

.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz, from Florida’s 1st Congressional District, said at the Defense Leadership Forum’s 2020 Air Force Contracting Summit that Eglin Air Force Base is currently in “a golden era of funding.” The same can be said about the entire Northwest Florida region, as the area prepares for the future of new defense investments in technology, cybersecurity, space, hypersonics, and economic development.

Northwest Florida is home to the 1st Special Operations Wing at Hurlburt Field, the most deployed wing in the Air Force, Eglin Air Force Base, the Army’s 7th Special Forces Group (Airborne) at Eglin Air Force Base, Tyndall Air Force Base, Naval Air Station Pensacola, and Naval Support Activity Panama City.

Brig. Gen. Patrice Melancon, Executive Director for the Tyndall Program Management Office, said in an article by WMBB-TV, “The Tyndall Program Management Office, alongside the 325th Fighter Wing, has been working together to devise a strategy on how and where we will house construction workers for our craft labor camps as we move forward on the $4.25 billion dollar rebuild of the base. We will be meeting with Air Force and industry leaders to proactively seek innovative solutions to construction and logistics issues

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PROMOTION

WILLIAM LOIRY

Congressman Matt Gaetz delivers the Keynote Address at the 2020 Air Force Contracting Summit.

that Tyndall may face in the future as we work toward building the base of the future.”

Nathan Nelson, the director of military affairs for Rep. Gaetz, also spoke at the seventh annual Air Force Contracting Summit about creating a Futures Park outside of Eglin AFB. The facility would aim to provide higher education opportunities, internships with the potential for future security clearance employment positions, and a space for collaboration between military contractors and military personnel.

Also addressing the Summit was Major Gen. (Ret) Burke E. (“Ed”) Wilson, until recently the Pentagon’s top

» WANT TO GO?

cyber official. Many want Northwest Florida to become Florida’s Cyber Coast. The region already houses the Center for Information Dominance at NAS Pensacola, the Navy Information Operations Command at NAS Pensacola, the 96th Cyberspace Test Group at Eglin AFB, and the 47th Cyberspace Test Squadron at Eglin AFB. William Loiry, Chairman of the Defense Leadership Forum which organizes the annual Air Force Contracting Summit, said, “The new and expanding defense investments in Northwest Florida are truly making the region both economically diversified and of critical importance to our nation.”

To register for future Defense Leadership Forum contracting summits, visit www.usdlf.org, contact us via email at marketing@defenseleadershipforum.org, or reach us by phone at (202) 552-0179.

William Loiry is chairman of the Defense Leadership Forum (DLF), headquartered in Washington, D.C. Loiry, who resides in South Walton County, is renowned for recognizing national and international needs and then bringing key decisionmakers together to identify the best solutions. Since 2010, he and his team have organized major defense business conferences in Washington, D.C., and around the country. In 1998, following the bombings of American embassies in Africa, Loiry organized the first conference on the threat of Osama bin Laden to American companies overseas. In 1999, he organized the first national cybersecurity conference in Washington. After 9/11, Loiry and his team organized the major homeland security forums in Washington, bringing together government and military officials, business leaders and homeland security experts.

Gov. Tom Ridge, the first Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, was a featured keynote speaker. More than 100,000 Congressional, government, military and industry leaders have attended the conferences organized by William Loiry and his team.

For more information, visit williamloiry.com.

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Sustainability

PORTENTS in Paradise

Rapidly growing ‘water state’ confronts urgent need to better treat the environment STORY BY STEVE BORNHOFT // ILLUSTRATIONS BY LINDSEY MASTERSON

U

riah Oblinger was a Union Army veteran who, tempted by the opportunity to stake a 160-acre homestead, departed Indiana in 1872 with his brothers-in-law to find a home for himself and his wife Mattie in the 5-year-old state of Nebraska.

Florida author Cynthia Barnett tracks Oblinger’s ramblings and travails in her landmark book, Rain: A Natural and Cultural History, an achievement, which, coupled with her previous work, Mirage: Florida Water and the Vanishing Water of the Eastern United States, had led some reviewers to a weighty ratio: Barnett is to fresh water as Rachel Carson was to birds.

America’s Great Plains, once viewed as an inhospitable, uninhabitable desert, were visited by above-average rainfall during the 1870s. Advanced was the theory that settlers unleashed the water cycle by tilling ground that had been trodden into hardpack by countless buffalo. Rain, it was said, followed the plow.

“Surely, the hand of Providence must be in this,” Oblinger wrote to his wife in a letter quoted by

Barnett. “It seems this desert, as it has been termed so long, has been specially reserved for the poor of our land to find a place to dwell in and where they can find a home.”

Oblinger built a house of sod and survived the Easter Sunday Blizzard of 1873, news of which development interests sought to suppress.

Oblinger downplayed the seriousness of the blizzard in sending word for Mattie to join him: “It seems as though we are destined to help make what was once called the Great American Desert blossom as the rose.”

For the seven years Mattie lived in Nebraska, the rains held out. She died during childbirth in 1880, leaving her husband with three daughters.

And, then, Nebraska’s typically arid conditions returned.

Lack of rain caused Oblinger’s crops to fail in 1880. By the end of the decade, a prolonged drought had overtaken the Great Plains. “Between 1888 and 1892,” writes Barnett, “half the population of western Kansas and Nebraska gave up and moved back east.”

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Oblinger moved to Minnesota, where he worked for a railroad surveying company and remarried, then returned to farming. In succession, his farms in Nebraska, Kansas, Missouri and back in Nebraska failed. Exploded was the notion that human activity and a nod from Providence could cause optimal rains to fall.

Still, humans try to subjugate nature to their purposes. We have turned arboreal environments into cattle ranges and croplands at the expense of biological diversity; sought to bring rain by concussing the skies with explosives; and channelized rivers, preventing them from nourishing flood plains and delivering healthful detritus to destinations including the Gulf of Mexico.

Barnett’s books are collections of cautionary tales. She reminds us that a couple of millennia before the FloridaGeorgia water war developed and oysters began to vanish from Apalachicola Bay, ancient Rome, otherwise capable of getting by on natural water supplies, developed aqueducts to divert water to cities largely to fill imperial baths and to keep fountains flowing.

About the efforts by humans to deny nature its course, Barnett demonstrates

that we should know better by now.

From Mirage:

Making Water Safe

A nonprofit organization, Safe Water for Walton, with a little help from corporate friends, is coupling its efforts to prevent prescription medicines from reaching water supplies with production of a video that emphasizes home safety.

In 2019, Gulf Power Company, owned by NextEra Energy, was presenting sponsor of Safe Water’s Operation Medicine Cabinet, held for the second year.

Hundreds of people delivered unwanted meds to collection tents set up in three school parking lots for two days. The event marked the first time in Operation Medicine Cabinet’s 10-year history that three tent sites were operated in a single weekend, and the first time that an event was underwritten by a nongovernmental sponsor.

Nonprofit leads effort to ensure safe disposal of prescription meds

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Floridians are not so much defined by the sun. They are defined, instead, by the water.

It surrounds the peninsula on three sides.

It seeps into the skin from the heavy, humid air. Depictions of Florida … are usually waterfront: vistas of the state’s beaches, its wide bays, its 10,000 miles of rivers and streams, its 7,800 lakes. Like ancient Rome, Florida sits in a water-rich part of the world; it is blessed with an extraordinary supply of groundwater; and it is home to hundreds of springs — 700, to be precise. As much water as you can see in Florida, there is even more of it that you cannot. More than 1 quadrillion gallons pulse through deep cracks and channels in the state’s limestone core. But, like the Romans, Floridians are not satisfied with their natural water wonders.

They like to show off, to play in, their artificial ones. Fountains grace the wealthiest city centers, the entrances of the best of gated communities and the finest resort hotels.

Canals cut through subdivisions so middleclass residents can enjoy the waterfront lifestyle of the rich. Florida is second only to California in its number of swimming pools, with 681,340 installed in 2004 alone.

Residents and tourists not content with beaches and pools can visit water parks, and plunge down steep water slides or surf machine-made waves to a thumping beat of classic rock.

In short, we treat water like bison or passenger pigeons — inexhaustible.

In Northwest Florida and elsewhere around the state, issues related to the quantity and qualify of the water supply proliferate …

■ I n November, the Florida Springs Council and other springs advocates, at a seven-day administrative hearing, contended that the state Department of Environmental Protection’s Basin Management Action Plans do not sufficiently protect springs from pollution.

■ A bandoned landfills in Bay and Walton counties have not been adequately closed out.

■ A judge serving as a special master has recommended that the U.S. Supreme Court side with Georgia in its long-running water dispute with Florida. In so doing, U.S. Circuit Judge Paul Kelly Jr. said the high court should reject Florida’s

Organizers collected 95 pounds of over-the-counter and prescription meds.

Empty plastic bottles, enough to fill six storage containers, were chip-shredded for recycling. In addition, four banker’s boxes of aluminum foil and other packaging were shipped for recycling by waste vendors, thanks to Southern Waste Information Exchange. SWIX has run Operation Medicine Cabinet since its inception in 2010 for the Florida Department of Environmental Protection.

Unlike other toxic elements, prescription medicines are not regulated in the water supply chain. Exponential growth in the use of opioids and painkillers over the past decade has exacerbated the seriousness of that problem. Actions by federal and state governments have been limited to

Sustainability

“Skeptics use the great climate swings of Earth’s history … to argue that the heat-trapping gasses of modern life are not to blame for today’s global warming and the rise of extreme rains, storms and floods. The warming world has revealed how the emissions we send into the atmosphere … can wreak global havoc.” — Florida author Cynthia Barnett

■

■

request to limit how Georgia uses water from rivers that flow through both states.

Panama City will require hundreds of millions of dollars to redo its sanitary sewer system, whose lines were built from clay in the 1950s. “The infrastructure is crumbling beneath us,” City Manager Mark McQueen said in August following a sewage spill of more than 300,000 gallons.

The Florida DEP has granted a Texas company permission to sink six exploratory wells in the Apalachicola River basin. The permits allow the company, which prospects for oil and natural gas, to drill through the Floridan aquifer at locations in Calhoun County between the Dead Lakes/Chipola River and the Apalachicola River.

Such state and local issues are apart from the global impacts of climate

encouraging people to avoid flushing meds down the drain into the public water supply or into septic tanks connected to watersheds.

Now, Safe Water is culminating its twoyear education campaign with production of a video featuring Walton County Schools Superintendent Russell Hughes and Walton County Sheriff Mike Adkinson Jr. The video, called “The Pharmacy in Your House,” was to be posted to Safe Water’s web site and Facebook page. It combines the group’s environmental and watershed protection message with a powerful message about home safety.

“Coordinating with community partners on getting important information to our students and parents is a key part of a mission that we call EPIC — Excellence, Professionalism, Innovation and Collaboration,” Hughes

change. Those effects should not be confused with the naturally occurring climate cycles that repeatedly did in Oblinger’s farms.

“Skeptics,” writes Barnett, “use the great climate swings of Earth’s history — the civilization-crushing droughts and whatever epic deluge may have inspired our flood myths — to argue that the heat-trapping gasses of modern life are not to blame for today’s global warming and the rise of extreme rains, storms and floods.”

But, in truth, she later asserts, “The warming world has revealed how the emissions we send into the atmosphere … can wreak global havoc. A warmer atmosphere and oceans mean more energy left aloft must be dissipated; it finds release in extreme weather.

Dry areas get drier, rains falls in torrents rather than gentle downpours.

Proof that the strangest rains of all are wrought by humans.”

said. “We are proud of another significant project that involves the St. Joe Community Foundation and Safe Water for Walton.”

A St. Joe Community Foundation grant made the video project possible. Safe Water was seeking additional sponsors for clips planned for local media outlets.

Walton Public Schools made the parking lots available for Operation Medicine Cabinet collection tents, and sheriff’s deputies provided security and transport of collected medicines.

Safe Water for Walton was first organized to join with Jackson County in opposing a permit application filed by Waste Management Inc., who wished to place a deep-injection well for leachate disposal at the Springhill Landfill in Campbellton.

Safe Water promoted regional awareness

It has become increasingly difficult for today’s Oblingers to find a sweet spot.

Begged, then, is the question of sustainability. In this edition of 850 Magazine, we touch upon several aspects of that issue and find evidence that the region’s environmental awareness is increasing.

Transportation planners are working to design arteries that better allow for bicyclists and pedestrians. Utilities including NextEra Energy, which acquired Gulf Power in January 2019, are working toward sweeping clean energy goals. Cities including Pensacola, anticipating effects of climate change including sea level rise, are roughing in mitigation and adaptation plans. And, cities and counties are working to remove recyclables from the waste stream.

In all of this comes the realization that the implications of “sustainability” for how we make livings and how we live cannot be overstated.

of the issue and was instrumental in leading local governments to adopt resolutions opposing the permit application, which was submitted in August 2016 and stood to affect water consumers throughout the Choctawhatchee River and Bay Watershed in the Central Panhandle.

Waste Management withdrew its application in January after the state issued it a permit allowing for leachate disposal via a burning/evaporation alternative.

Safe Water also is distributing funds or reimbursements for electricity and safe running water at homes and family farms impacted by Hurricane Michael.

Information about that effort is located at safewaterforwalton.org/hurricane-relief.

— Steve Bornhoft

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Complete Streets Northwest Florida paves ways for bicyclists, pedestrians while wrestling with congestion

BY PETER T. REINWALD

I

n transportation planning circles, sustainability still takes a backseat to the decision-making driver: mobility.

Mobility inspires officials and stakeholders to push for a wider access route to an airport, the case in Tallahassee, or a bypass around a growing business district as in Crestview.

The Florida Department of Transportation says it puts mobility at the center of the five-year work plans it establishes for Northwest Florida.

“We specifically focus first on safety,” said Phillip Gainer, secretary of FDOT District 3. “After that, we look at mobility. What you’re trying to do is move vehicles and boost traffic without congestion, and that becomes an economic driver.”

Gainer’s district entirely covers Northwest Florida, and it includes communities where mobility happens in various ways. Green-conscious places emphasize bike lanes, foot traffic and multi-purpose pathways.

Gainer mentioned FDOT’s goal of designing “Complete Streets,” part of a national movement to serve road users of various types, ages and abilities, including pedestrians, cyclists, transit riders and freight handlers.

“The Complete Streets process is one

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that is pedestrian- and bicycle-friendly, and a lot of these communities are trying to go back in those directions,” Gainer said.

In DeFuniak Springs, the city council has endorsed a plan that would include a Complete Streets project, with enhanced pedestrian use, along a downtown section of U.S. 90, said Nathan Boyles, an Okaloosa County commissioner who serves as chairman of the Okaloosa-Walton Transportation Planning Organization.

“We’re certainly seeing it being discussed,” Boyles said of Complete Streets.

The Okaloosa-Walton TPO is one of four transportation planning organizations in the territory of FDOT District 3. The others are the Bay County TPO; the Florida-Alabama TPO, which includes Escambia and Santa Rosa counties; and the Capital Region Transportation Planning Agency, which includes Jefferson, Gadsden, Leon and Wakulla counties.

TPOs are made up of elected officials including county commissioners and city council members who establish transportation priorities and collaborate with FDOT and other entities on their implementation.

“They are the people’s voice,” the FDOT’s Gainer said of TPOs. And they too tend to let mobility lead the way.

FDOT District 3 says its priorities include an Okaloosa-Walton TPO project — a four-lane bypass around downtown Crestview. The project will happen in three main components, with the first underway, and connect State 85 on the south side to U.S. 90 on the west.

“We’re going to try to enhance the mobility and reduce congestion in that area,” Gainer said.

Gainer said he counts replacement of the Brooks Bridge on U.S. 98 as another priority of the District 3 five-year work program. The bridge, built in the mid1960s, connects Okaloosa Island to Fort Walton Beach. But it has exceeded its so-called design life, and it doesn’t meet

Sustainability

requirements for navigational clearance and for the Americans with Disabilities Act, FDOT says.

Plans for a new bridge include three lanes in each direction and a path for bicyclists and pedestrians.

Federal funds will pay for the project since it is on a U.S. highway, officials said. Construction could start in two to three years.

“DOT has a strict set of protocols,” said Boyles of the Okaloosa-Walton TPO. “When a bridge reaches its end of useful life, it is going to be replaced — it’s just how they do it. From that standpoint, there wasn’t a lot of public or local stakeholder involvement, (but) there has been tremendous interest.”

The Capital Region Transportation Planning Agency sees a Tallahassee project as its top priority: multilane reconstruction, with bike lanes, on Woodville Highway from Capital Circle to Paul Russell Road.

“But that doesn’t have any construction timing on it,” said Greg Slay, the agency’s executive director.

“That’s one of the struggles we have right now, just a lack of funding.”

FDOT is funding a high-profile CRTPA project that calls for the widening of Capital Circle from Orange Avenue to Springhill Road, including a sidewalk on one side of the road and a multi-use path on the other.

Construction could begin late this year, Slay said.

That project is separate from Tallahassee’s Gateway, a taxpayer-funded plan of the Blueprint Intergovernmental Agency to better link downtown Tallahassee and the universities to Tallahassee International Airport. The Gateway project contemplates the addition of landscaping, sidewalks, bike lanes and more to Springhill Road.

The CRTPA project will include some Blueprint money, mainly for beautification, Slay said.

“I think it will be pretty much identical to the Southeast portion of Capital Circle, with the multiuse path, the wider size of the road, landscaping and things,” Slay said.

Slay said the agency also thinks in terms of resiliency. Its long-range plan will consider the threat to U.S. 98 in Wakulla County of storm surge — a reality that the region’s three other TPOs know all too well.

In terms of sustainability, Okaloosa-Walton’s Boyles said: “There’s no such thing as a road that’s going to be big enough to solve all the problems, so you don’t want to just pursue capacity for capacity’s sake. But you also need to have enough capacity. And I think we’re as a community in that kind of awkward spot where we need to try to figure out how to do both at the same time.”

A Clean Revolution?

Solar power surges in region, but it won’t soon surpass natural gas

BY PETER T. REINWALD

A

s scientists continue to express alarm over the climate change resulting from use of fossil fuels, businesses, municipalities and energy companies may be seeing the light.

In Northwest Florida, solar energy increasingly is becoming a part of the landscape.

The City of Tallahassee has undertaken construction of a second solar farm on 240 acres at the Tallahassee International Airport, moving it closer to a goal of achieving 100 percent renewable energy by 2050.

Across the region, various businesses specialize in solar panels for residential and commercial use and cite their environmental benefits, long-term cost savings and limited maintenance requirements.

In terms of energy use in Northwest Florida, the sun indeed is on the rise. NextEra Energy says it aims to demonstrate that — and its appreciation for natural gas — after its purchase early last year of Pensacola-based Gulf Power.

NextEra, a Juno Beach-based company that also owns Florida Power & Light, trumpets itself as the global leader in renewable energy. It made Fortune magazine’s 2018 list of 25 companies that “Change the World.”

When it completed its Gulf Power purchase in January 2019, NextEra CEO Jim Robo pledged “low bills, clean energy, high reliability and outstanding customer service” for its new customers in Bay, Escambia, Holmes, Jackson, Okaloosa, Santa Rosa, Walton and Washington counties.

Prior to its acquisition by NextEra, Gulf Power, which serves about 450,000 customers in those eight counties, already had committed to a goal of supplying cleaner and renewable energy. The company several years ago partnered with the U.S. Navy and U.S. Air Force to build solar farms at Eglin Air Force Base near Fort Walton Beach, Naval Air Station Whiting Field near Navarre and Saufley Field near Pensacola.

“We’re joining with them in a great effort to continue to improve and work on delivering cleaner energy for our

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customers,” Gordon Paulus, senior communications specialist for Gulf Power, said in December. “We’re going to continue to deliver cleaner energy and reduce carbon emissions.”

To those ends, natural gas will play a major role.

Paulus said in December that renewable energy, including solar power, wind power and power from landfill methane, made up 11 percent of Gulf Power’s energy mix. He said that percentage “is growing every year,” but that a transition to solely solar power isn’t foreseeable.

“I don’t think there’s enough technology and enough solar energy developed, especially with battery technology to store solar energy,” he said. “So natural gas is going to have to be a big part of it.”

Like other energy companies, Gulf Power continues to turn to natural gas as a cleaner energy source than coal. The company plans this year to complete a conversion from coal to natural gas at its Crist power plant in Pensacola. That will mean a reduction of up to 45 percent in the plant’s carbon emissions, Paulus said. In 2015, the company shut down its Scholz coal-fired plant in Sneads. The

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following year, it retired the coal-burning units at its Lansing Smith plant near Panama City.

As part of its emphasis on natural gas, Paulus said, Gulf Power anticipates completion this year of a 39-mile underground pipeline in Escambia County, from the Florida Gas Transmission, or FGT, pipeline near the Alabama line to its Crist plant.

Mary Gutierrez, executive director of Pensacola-based Earth Ethics, a 501(c) (3) nonprofit organization, said she appreciates efforts to end coal-fired power plants. Her organization, however, remains concerned about natural gas-related issues including the process known as fracking, which uses chemicals and massive amounts of water in the extraction process.

She said the group supports solar energy so long as solar farms don’t sacrifice the environment, including trees, or affect people’s health, rights or property.

“If they’re looking at it holistically,” she said, “we can be on board.”

In response to questions about environmental considerations, Paulus wrote in an email that most of the

land that Gulf Power purchases for solar projects rests on or near property zoned for agricultural use, “and we are good neighbors with agricultural communities.”

Gulf Power has harnessed the decomposition of organic material at Pensacola’s Perdido Landfill to produce more than 221 million kilowatt hours of electricity since 2010, Paulus said. The average residential utility customer uses about 11,000 kilowatt hours per year, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

The company also buys enough wind energy, generated in Oklahoma, to power more than 77,000 homes. Even though its customers don’t directly use that electricity, the company takes credit for it as “part of our energy mix,” Paulus said.

Its three military-site solar projects produce a combined 120 megawatts, enough to power about 18,000 homes, the company says.

Additional projects include construction of two Jackson County facilities — Blue Indigo Solar Energy Center and Blue Springs Solar Energy Center — each with enough solar generation to power about 15,000 homes, Paulus said.

“We’re looking at other areas to put in solar as well,” he said.

The company also aims to connect, via transmission lines, Gulf Power in Panama City to Florida Power & Light in Lake City. If approved, Paulus said, that project will provide cost savings for customers and better power reliability for a region that hasn’t recovered from Hurricane Michael.

Customers at some point can expect to see lower electricity bills, Paulus said. Among other reasons, he said, the Panama City-Lake City project will offer more electricity to the region, and increased production of renewable energy will put less pressure on its Pensacola power plant. Also, natural gas is cheaper than coal.

“We going to continue to invest in those cleaner energy sources,” Paulus said.

Sustainability

I

Preparing for the Extreme Resilience has joined sustainability as a growing concern for planners

BY STEVE BORNHOFT

n 2018, the City of Pensacola Climate Mitigation and Adaptation Task Force issued a report intended as a framework for efforts to counter threats and impacts of climate change and extreme weather.

Task force objectives included advancing strategies “to enhance Pensacola’s and the surrounding region’s resilience and preparedness for withstanding the likely adverse effects of climate change.”

It cited threats including rising sea levels, intense hurricanes, heat waves and flooding due to heavy rains.

350 Pensacola, an organization that provides local support to 350.org, an international campaign seeking solutions to the climate crisis, first asked the city to establish the task force in 2014. The Pensacola City Council approved members recommended by 350 Pensacola and the city’s environmental advisory board, and the task force met in 2017-18.

“Extreme weather events are becoming less predictable, more intense and more frequent,” said Dr. Haris Alibašić , a University of West Florida professor who was a task force member. “There are places that may go without rain for six months and then experience a 500-year flood.”

For 15 years, Alibašić worked for the City of Grand Rapids, Michigan, where he was legislative director when sustainability and resilience planning was added to his portfolio of duties.

“Sustainability is about more than environmental concerns,” said Alibašić , who has written a book, Sustainability and Resilience Planning for Local Governments: The Quadruple Bottom Line Strategy, that communities including Tallahassee, he said, are using in planning efforts.

“Sustainability encompasses social and economic elements.”

And one more element.

“Quadruple Bottom Line strategy looks at the issue of sustainability from an added perspective of focusing on governance,” Alibašić writes in his book. “Governance is defined to include fiscal responsibility and resilience, community engagement

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ensuring effective service delivery, and transparency and accountability.”

The strategy can be used to assess both private entities and units of government.

Disasters, be they natural or otherwise, threaten sustainability and necessitate another level of preparedness. Resiliency planning addresses emergency preparedness and risks related to climate change, including possible impacts on infrastructure, health and population.

“It’s sustainability plus,” Alibašić said.

Alibašić said most U.S. cities are engaged in sustainability and resiliency planning. In Pensacola, the task force was “on the right track, but the city will need to be more proactive. The question is whether the recommendations of the task force are going to be implemented.”

“It has been over a year since the task force recommendations were presented, yet neither the mayor or council has taken any action,” 350 Pensacola board member Christian Wagley said in November.

Wagley and others were meeting with City Council members late last year to encourage three priorities: membership in ICLEI (Local Governments for Sustainability), headquartered in Bonn, Germany; conducting a greenhouse gas emissions inventory; and transitioning city operations to renewable energy.

To begin with, cities or counties may take small steps such as conducting a greenhouse gas emissions inventory without adding personnel. But, ultimately, sustainability and resilience planning requires a champion, in addition to tacticians, to succeed, Alibašić emphasized.

And it needs a budget.

Alibašić spearheaded the compiling of a greenhouse gas emissions inventory in Grand Rapids, an effort that “was lengthy and comprehensive — and it did cost money. We have to ask how activities like that are going to be funded.”

The task force’s report enumerates 13 recommendations related to planning for energy efficiency and climate change mitigation, some of them much more readily accomplished than others.

Here are a few:

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■

■

■

■

■

Commit to meet a 30% renewable energy target by 2030 for city-owned facilities and operations, with a goal of 100% renewable by 2040.

Complete an inventory of citywide greenhouse gas emissions and prepare a climate adaptation plan.

Incorporate language about climate change in updated comprehensive plans, and pass local laws or codes that uphold these values.

Reduce greenhouse gas emissions from municipal facilities and operations, including increasing energy efficiency and conservation measures.

Educate the public about the changing climate, and involve and engage local citizens and volunteers in the processes of adaptation and mitigation.

As the report moves on to address planning for resilience and climate change adaptation, additional goals are listed, including: ■ Develop emergency management plans and Federal Emergency Management Agency all-hazard mitigation plans that include climate change projections and adaptation strategies, and participate in the National Flood Insurance Program as well as FEMA’s Community Rating System (which is used for calculating flood insurance premium discounts).

■ Utilize local authority to protect open space, wetlands and riparian buffers to increase resilience to extreme weather events.

■ Use a watershed-level rather than a site-level approach to manage stormwater runoff and flooding.

Wide-scale watershed management can reduce impacts of downstream flooding from stormwater through the use of better urban planning and design principles including a multi-jurisdictional approach.

■ Encourage higher density development where appropriate as

an urban stormwater best-management practice. More compact development patterns generate less stormwater runoff overall than low-density development.

In Grand Rapids, sustainability and resilience planning began as an initiative of the West Michigan Sustainable Business Forum, a coalition made formidable by the participation of large employers including Amway, a multi-level marketing company and seller of beauty products, and two furniture companies, Steelcase and Herman Miller.

Established 20 years ago, the forum remains active.

“Businesses recognize that you can’t have a strong economy with a lot of poverty,” Alibašić said. “You can’t have a strong economy if the environment is decimated.”

Alibašić finds that there is a groundswell of support in many communities, including Pensacola and Escambia County, for sustainability and resilience planning among young people, schools, universities, units of local government and businesses.

“People focus on the negative including the current administration’s withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement and, yes, we are lacking national leadership,” said Alibašić , who co-chaired the energy sector of the White House Climate Preparedness and Resilience Task Force in 2014 during the Obama presidency. “Ideally, we would have every national government around the world commit to positive steps related to climate change. And, we need it faster, sooner, quicker. A lot more could be done.”

For now, Alibašić expects that, in the United States, businesses, cities and counties will champion sustainability and resilience planning efforts.

“Corporations are planning for climate change,” Alibašić said. “Climate change has become a factor in investment risk analysis. Things have changed dramatically in the last 10 years.”

Sustainability

Flouting the Waste Stream State’s ambitious recycling goal eludes Northwest Florida counties

BY PETER T. REINWALD

P

ensacola is a beautiful city that, according to the city’s new sanitation services director, needs a better recycling program.

“Our program overall is not good,” John Pittman said in December.

That doesn’t bode well for efforts to hit a state Department of Environmental Protection goal of 75 percent recycling statewide by this year. “We won’t hit it,” Pittman said.

In that regard, Pensacola and Escambia County hardly stand alone — though they in fact stand stronger than most. DEP tracks progress by county, and only four of the state’s 67 counties met a 2018 interim goal of 70 percent recycling.

No Northwest Florida counties met the goal, though Leon County tied for third in the state at 60 percent in so-called traditional recycling and ranked 10th in the state at 62 percent in overall recycling. Though way off the state target, Escambia County ranked in the top 20 in both categories.

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Sustainability

Traditional recycling emphasizes items collected in curbside and drop-off services.

Overall recycling rates include credits for renewable energy from facilities that convert municipal solid waste to energy.

The statewide overall recycling rate for 2018 stood at 49 percent, down from 52 percent in 2017, according to DEP. The statewide traditional recycling rate dropped to 40 percent in 2018 from 42 percent in 2017.

Citing “unnecessary waste and depletion of our natural resources,” the Florida Legislature established the recycling initiative in 2008. It called the weight-based program aspirational but required public entities to annually report recycling data to counties.

Repeated attempts to obtain comment from DEP officials for this story were unsuccessful.

Regarding the DEP’s goal, waste management officials point to problems that counties and municipalities have faced, including insufficient staff, resources and outreach; a high percentage of recycled items contaminated with food and other materials; and a sharp decline in markets for recycled items.

In response to the contamination problem, for example, China has implemented strict standards on the quality of recycled materials it receives, leaving U.S. counties and municipalities with an oversupply of glass, plastics, mixed paper and other items.

In addition to the labor to collect the items, governments now must pay to get rid of items for which they used to get paid, experts pointed out.

“A lot of the glass right now we’re collecting at curbside, we don’t have end markets for, and it’s going right back to landfill,” said Gene Jones, CEO of Southern Waste Information Exchange, a nonprofit organization that helps businesses and municipalities on waste management issues. “We’ve got to have end markets. In real estate, we talk about the three key words: location, location, location. In the recycling industry, it’s markets, markets, markets.”

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The state set a tough target, Jones and Michael devastated the city and the reothers agreed. Legislation introduced gion in October 2018, the county had last year in the Florida Senate aimed for kept bins in Panama City and elsewhere an extension beyond 2020 on the state’s for residents who preferred such pro75 percent goal. The bill was still pendgrams, Murray said. In 2018, the couning in December. ty’s traditional recycling rate stood at “Plain and simple, 75 percent is a very 25 percent, tied for 37th in the state, and high goal to achieve,” said Tessa Schreiner, its overall recycling rate at 39 percent, sustainability manager at Leon County’s tied for 25th in the state.

Office of Sustainability. “We always say After Michael hit, Murray said, the that the most difficult part about our job county stopped its recycling-bins prois enacting behavior change, and to reach gram and turned its attention to recova goal like 75 percent is going to take a ery and collection of debris — 17 milmassive effort for all stakelion cubic yards through holders — businesses, prolate 2019.

“Plain and simple, ducers, citizens, etc.”

He said county officials 75 percent is a She said the state, have chosen not to revive very high goal through DEP, has providthe bins program because to achieve. … ed technical assistance, people were filling the to reach a goal research and insight on bins with trash. That has like 75 percent is best practices. She said left recycling enthusiasts going to take a Leon County emphasizes frustrated. massive effort for related sustainability con“I can’t even encourage all stakeholders cepts, such as reducing recycling now, because no— businesses, and reusing, which debody’s doing any recycling producers, crease the waste stream. except for the metal scrap citizens, etc.”

Schreiner pointed out yards that take batteries, — Tessa Schreiner, that public entities difaluminum, steel, cast iron, sustainability manager at fer broadly on how they copper, stainless steel and Leon County’s Office of handle recycling. In Leon all that stuff,” said Henry Sustainability County, both the county Lawrence, a Bay County and the City of Tallahassee resident and Green Party provide curbside pickup of recycled items. member. “Those are the only people who Some Florida counties, including are doing any serious recycling.”

Bay, use waste-to-energy facilities that In Pensacola, new sanitation services create electricity but also ash that must director John Pittman said he aimed to go in a landfill. roll out early in the year a campaign to Bay County’s facility, which began educate residents on recycling. And in a operation in 1987, burns enough housekey change, he said, residents would have hold garbage including recyclable items recycling bins emptied on the same day to create about 60,000 megawatts a year as garbage collection. of electricity that it sells to Gulf Power, He said he was eager to help the city said Don Murray, the county’s general and county reach the state’s recycling services director. The process includes goal. In 2018, Escambia County ranked the extraction and recycling of metals 19th in the state at 44 percent in overall from ash residue. recycling and 20th in the state at 40 per“That was the biggest investment this cent in traditional recycling. county ever made to work toward a bet“It’s important from an environmental ter goal of recycling,” Murray said. perspective,” said Pittman, who started in Bay County municipalities includjob in June. “The more we recycle, the less ing Panama City don’t offer traditional we have to throw away, and there is a big recycling programs. Before Hurricane cost when it comes to garbage.”

DEAL ESTATE Just Listed

Excellent Opportunity to Lease Medical Space in Crestview THIS PROPERTY IS LOCATED JUST NORTH OF INTERSTATE 10 with excellent access to South Ferdon Boulevard. It is surrounded by a number of other medical facilities as well as the newly constructed 70-room assisted living facility. Other medical facilities in the immediate area include Sacred Heart Medical Group, Davita Dialysis, NOMC Surgery Center, 21st Century Oncology and Caring Hearts Pediatrics to name a few. It's truly a medical hotbed.

Listed Price: $18.50 per square foot per year Address: 332 Medcrest Drive, Crestview Square Footage: 7,326 Year Built: 2005

PHOTOS COURTESY OF BECK PARTNERS

Features: Approximately 7,326 square feet, potential to subdivide, abundant parking with covered ambulance awning, outstanding location, surrounded by a large number of other medical practices, tremendous access to Ferdon Boulevard and I-10.

Appeal: The building itself consists of five offices, 12 exam rooms, two waiting areas and two check-in counters. It’s movein ready for the user that can occupy the entire facility, but it would also be an easy subdivide.

Contact information: Amanda Harper, Beck Partners (850) 249-3640 aharper@teambeck.com

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Escambia County Business Journal S P E C I A L R EPO R T

Job training at Pensacola High School

PROCEEDING STRATEGICALLY FloridaWest has embarked on a five-year plan to diversify economy and boost wages BY STEVE BORNHOFT

I

n 2014, when FloridaWest was established as the Pensacola area’s economic development organization, it worked to take advantage of the cyclical growth in business and industry that occurred as the nation rebounded from the Great Recession.

Today, FloridaWest is more intentional and targeted with its approach.

“Right now, our unemployment rate (2.9% in Escambia County at this writing) is as low it has ever been, and we have more job holders (143,377) than ever before,” noted Scott Luth, FloridaWest’s chief executive officer. “Things are good right now, but you can’t let up. We will be focusing on our workforce development issues and diversification strategies to prepare our area for the future.”

Those issues and strategies are identified in FloridaWest’s new five-year strategic plan.

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“We are out there knocking on doors, and we’ve opened up the third floor of our small business incubator — we’re growing our entrepreneurial community,” Luth said. “We have established strategic partnerships with the Studer Community Institute, the University of West Florida, Pensacola State College and the Pensacola Chamber of Commerce, and together we’re rolling out new mentoring programs.

“We are committed to growing our own, expanding existing businesses where we can and bringing in new employers.”

As to workforce development, the strategic plan commits FloridaWest to helping to bring about a highly trained workforce that is compatible with targeted industries and capable of attracting new employers while supporting existing industry.

Further, workforce development efforts, according to the plan, should help meet the skills-training needs of area residents.

Calculating those needs, Luth said, requires a baseline assessment of the local workforce and an understanding of what the jobs of the future will be and the skills, knowledge and experience they will require.

To those ends, FloridaWest is fortunate, said Luth, to be one of five economic development organizations nationwide who were selected to participate in the Inclusive Development Network (IDN), a project of the Chicago-based Council for Adult and Experiential Learning.

The initiative seeks to identify and implement strategies that reduce equity gaps in local workforce development. At this stage, FloridaWest is taking what Luth described as a deep statistical dive into the Pensacola area.

“We’re looking at populations within the community based on age, race, gender and education levels,” Luth said. “We’re looking at levels of educational attainment, which fields people are choosing and which jobs are susceptible to automation.”

The data collection phase will be followed by the formulation of strategies and related action items. Organizations including Achieve Escambia, Workforce EscaRosa and the Community Action Program Committee are participating in the project, which includes both Escambia and Santa Rosa counties.

In addition to Pensacola, the IDN selected Cleveland; Corpus Christi, Texas; Coweta,

PHOTOS COURTESY OF FLORIDAWEST

Oklahoma; and Spokane, Washington, for its inaugural group of participants. Thirty-five organizations applied.

“This program, as well as our own commitment over the coming years, will allow us to focus on making sure that all individuals in our community have the opportunity for success,” Luth said.

Communities receive a $60,000 dollar stipend to offset the costs of participation in the IDN. FloridaWest’s strategic plan details a program of work aimed at diversifying employment and increasing wages and per capita income. It focuses on two sectors: manufacturing/cyber and information technologies.

FloridaWest intends that over the five years covered by the plan, the effort will generate an average of 400 jobs per year for a total of 2,000 new jobs by 2023.

“THIS PROGRAM, AS WELL AS OUR OWN COMMITMENT OVER THE COMING YEARS, WILL ALLOW US TO FOCUS ON MAKING SURE THAT ALL INDIVIDUALS IN OUR COMMUNITY HAVE THE OPPORTUNITY FOR SUCCESS.” -SCOTT LUTH

FloridaWest looks to its “Live Coastal,Work Cyber” initiative to be a jobs generator.

“There is a lot of momentum behind that program right now,” Luth said. “It’s an initiative that has to be workforce-led. Many times, we bring a company in and we build a workforce around the company, but in this area we knew we needed to start with a workforce.”

Cybersecurity figures in career academies in the public K-12 school system and in degree programs at Pensacola State College and the University of West Florida.

“The cybersecurity center at UWF is receiving a lot of regional, state and national attention,” said Luth, who has closely monitored public-sector activity related to cybertechnology.

“We are seeing a very strong cluster of public-sector cyber develop here,” Luth said.

He cited expansion and growth at the Naval Center for Information Warfare Training’s Corry Station and at the Department of Homeland Security.

“Private-sector activity will follow,” Luth said. “This is, for us, a definite strategy and opportunity.”

FloridaWest, in emphasizing workforce development and other jobs-producing activities, recognizes that whales the size of ST Engineering Aerospace occur maybe once in an economic developer’s career, if at all.

ST Aerospace, based in Singapore, is the world’s largest commercial airframe maintenance, repair and overhaul service provider and, since 2018, has been in operation in a hangar at Pensacola International Airport. Luth and a cadre of others had pursued it for eight years.

“They are moving along and supporting their launch customer, United Parcel Service,” Luth said. “We have been in discussions with them regarding significant expansion and have received great support from the Triumph Gulf Coast board, the Governor’s Office, the City of Pensacola, Escambia County, Congressman Matt Gaetz and the federal Economic Development Administration.”

Contemplated is a $211 million expansion to included construction of three hangars and an administration building.

“We have conditional approval from all the funding sources and support from the company, so we are now going through the contracting negotiation stage,” Luth said late last year. “We anticipate that in four to five

years, whenever construction is complete, we will have 1,700 to 2,000 people working at ST Aerospace.

“All along Northwest Florida’s Gulf Coast and extending into Baldwin County, Alabama, good things are happening,” Luth said. “As the largest city and MSA in the area, we are happy to play a leadership role and to be one of the region’s greatest champions.”

STRATEGIC PLANNING Six planks make up the overall work program:

BUSINESS INCUBATOR Operate a business incubator (Co:Lab) to encourage entrepreneurship and create new businesses.

Five-year budget: $2,062,000

BUSINESS EXPANSION Encourage business expansion and expansion of existing industries.

Five-year budget: $1,158,000

BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT Attract new employers offering wages higher than the state average.

Five-year budget: $2,311,000

WORKFORCE DEVELOPMENT Provide support to help recruit and create a well-trained, diverse workforce that will appeal to targeted industries.

Five-year budget: $926,000

SITES AND BUILDINGS Work with the Pensacola-Escambia Development Commission to support and advocate for the development of high quality business parks and industrial sites.

Five-year budget: $864,000

ORGANIZATIONAL SUPPORT Pursue organizational strategies to secure the resources and partnerships needed to carry out the mission.

Five-year budget: $508,000

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Escambia County Business Journal S P E CI A L R EPO R T

Items generated using additive printers at Sea3D lab

F A NEW DIMENSION UWF embraces the vast possibilities presented by additive manufacturing

BY STEVE BORNHOFT

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or sea turtles of a modest size, they were such a drag.

Satellite tags, the same ones used for large marine mammals, including dolphins and whales, were enough to reduce the hydrodynamics of sea turtles, making it more difficult for them to swim.

And, from the standpoint of researchers, the tags presented additional problems. The tags, about the size of a deck of cards, have a limited battery life and stay attached to a turtle for only about three months. They are affixed to the shells of juvenile turtles, but as the animals grow, the tags fall off.

Two University of West Florida faculty members, marine biologist Dr. Susan Piacenza and her husband, Dr. Joseph Piacenza, a mechanical engineer, selected students Alexia Kenney and Niklolai Shields to design a better tag.

Their quest led the students to the Sea3D Additive Manufacturing Laboratory, which has been made part of the Hass Center at UWF. Taking

advantage of the scanning capacity available at the lab, Kenney and Shields created a durable, three-dimensional model of a turtle to be used in fluid dynamics studies and in an effort to find ways to use a turtle’s movements to extend battery life.

Dr. Nicole Gislason, at this writing the interim assistant director of the Haas Center with oversight responsibilities for the Sea3D lab, cited the sea turtle research as an example of the public service work it has been engaged in.

Too, the lab has manufactured a replica of an anchor from one of the vessels that a Spanish explorer, Adm. Don Tristan de Luna, left behind after arriving in Escambia Bay in 1559.

The original artifact, measuring 10 feet in length, is on display at the T.T. Wentworth Jr. Museum in the Historic Pensacola Village complex, while the knockoff, made of polylactic acid (cheap plastic) is housed on campus and is readily available for study by archaeology students.

PHOTOS BY STEPHEN VANCE AND MICHAEL SPOONEYBARGER/ DIVISION OF RESEARCH AND STRATEGIC INNOVATION COURTESY OF SEA3D ADDITIVE MANUFACTURING LABRORATORY (BORTHWICK, GISLASON)

In 2017, the Florida Legislature funded a UWF request for seed money to establish the lab. That one-time $351,000 appropriation was used to buy equipment and training computers and to upgrade the Museum of Commerce in downtown Pensacola, where the lab is housed.

The lab’s setting, then, makes for an odd juxtaposition. The Museum of Commerce is given to displays that depict Pensacola businesses as they existed 100 years ago. And there in their midst is a lab dedicated to studying and employing the world’s latest manufacturing technologies while serving as a community resource.

“I thought the museum might be a temporary home for the lab, but as soon as we moved in and got set up, I recognized the value of having a storefront for our research in downtown Pensacola,” Gislason said.

“We have a lot of tourists visiting the area, many of whom come from science backgrounds, who have an interest in Pensacola’s rich history. When they walk into the Museum of Commerce and find a research space related to additive manufacturing, it piques their curiosity. It adds another layer to the experience.”

Entrepreneurs involved in product development are finding the lab, too. They reimburse the lab for time and materials — the costs are modest, Gislason said — while students and faculty pay for materials, only.

Sea3D’s openness to visitors — Sea stands for science, engineering and art — is unique among labs at UWF. “Oftentimes, we have to close off labs on campus for safety reasons, and it is not often essential that a community member come in and utilize a lab,” Gislason said. “Sea3D is different.”

On Tuesdays, Sea3D hosts Open Build Night, which gives the general public an opportunity to learn about the hardware and software used in additive manufacturing.

The lab has one full-time employee, manager Murilo Basso, who was UWF’s top mechanical engineering graduate of 2018. He supervises several “innovation ambassadors” who assist visitors. Among the ambassadors are artists, engineers and MBA students.

“We want to put manufacturing on display, not only our own research, but manufacturing in general because it is an area of opportunity and, in my role as the leader of the Haas Center, I want to see that we have a diverse economy and that manufacturing continues to be a part of it,” Gislason said. “We want to demonstrate that manufacturing is no longer dirty. It’s not smokestacks. It’s very high tech,

and it is something that appeals to both men and women and to kids of all ages.”

Gislason said that throughout her 25 years at the Hass Center, her chief passion has been finding ways to accelerate business growth and enhance the region’s competitiveness.

“And I’m guilty of being partial to manufacturing,” she said.

It’s clear that she is cozying up to 3D printing.

“It requires not only a hard skill set, but artistic talent and creativity,” Gislason said.

“Ultimately, on a practical level, it abbreviates the supply chain in many instances. We had a maritime company visit us recently, and you can imagine what an advantage it would be to have shipboard 3D printers that could be used to replace parts as needed.”

Gislason said she believes that 3D printers will soon be a commonplace household item.

Already, some models are available at big box stores.

“These are not Easy-Bake ovens,” Gislason said. She advises people ready to invest in a printer to pay up and get one with a print bed that can be heated.

Gislason, herself, has met with some modest success as a beginning 3D printer, albeit one who completed a course in additive manufacturing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) last summer. Her first design was a snowman with sunglasses.

It won Sea3D’s Christmas tree ornament contest.

“IT REQUIRES NOT ONLY A HARD SKILL SET, BUT ARTISTIC TALENT AND CREATIVITY.” -DR. NICOLE GISLASON

Technician Christopher Borthwick perfects a replica anchor at the Sea3D Additive Manufacturing Laboratory.

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PROMOTION PROMOTION

Escambia County Court House Escambia County Court House

THE PHOENIX WAY public facilities, industrial plants, public facilities, industrial plants, government facilities and historical government facilities and historical buildings in Florida, Alabama and buildings in Florida, Alabama and Mississippi. Recent Northwest Mississippi. Recent Northwest Florida restoration projects include Florida restoration projects include Maritime Park in Pensacola, Emerald Maritime Park in Pensacola, Emerald Grande in Destin, Navy Sea Systems Grande in Destin, Navy Sea Systems Command in Panama City Beach and Command in Panama City Beach and Pinnacle Port Vacation Rentals in Pinnacle Port Vacation Rentals in Panama City Beach.

Panama City Beach.

Many of their clients are repeat Many of their clients are repeat customers or have been referred by customers or have been referred by long-existing clients. long-existing clients.

“Our work and our repeat “Our work and our repeat customers are our best marketing customers are our best marketing tools,” said Atchison. “Everyone tools,” said Atchison. “Everyone on our staff and all of our clients on our staff and all of our clients know that we do things the Phoenix know that we do things the Phoenix way, which includes quality service, way, which includes quality service, durability and cost-effectiveness.” durability and cost-effectiveness.”

The Atchisons credit their staff as The Atchisons credit their staff as their greatest asset and contribution to their greatest asset and contribution to three decades of success. They believe three decades of success. They believe that providing a safe, friendly and that providing a safe, friendly and gainful work environment benefits gainful work environment benefits their employees, many of whom have their employees, many of whom have been with the company from the start. been with the company from the start.

“Our goal is to keep people “Our goal is to keep people employed in our local economy and employed in our local economy and provide quality products to our clients,” provide quality products to our clients,” said Atchison. “Tourism is the driving said Atchison. “Tourism is the driving engine to this market, and facilities engine to this market, and facilities must be maintained to the highest must be maintained to the highest degree. That’s what we intend to do degree. That’s what we intend to do with each project.” with each project.”

PHOENIX Industrial Court, Pensacola | (850) 857-4740 | PhoenixPensacola.com PHOENIX COATINGS COATINGS 900 900 Industrial Court, Pensacola | (850) 857-4740 | PhoenixPensacola.com 42

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PHOTO PHOTO COURTESY COURTESY OFOF MISSY MISSY KIMBROUGH KIMBROUGH

A

phoenix is a powerful bird that phoenix is a powerful bird that rises from the ashes revitalized rises from the ashes revitalized with strength and renewed with strength and renewed with perseverance. As a structural with perseverance. As a structural restoration company, Phoenix restoration company, Phoenix Coatings strives for each project to Coatings strives for each project to transform into a structure that is transform into a structure that is more durable, more efficient and more more durable, more efficient and more beautiful than before. beautiful than before.

George Atchison and wife Louise George Atchison and wife Louise opened the company in 1988. opened the company in 1988.

Building was in his blood as both of Building was in his blood as both of his grandfathers and his father were his grandfathers and his father were in the construction business. After in the construction business. After serving seven years in the Marines, he serving seven years in the Marines, he sought the work his life was rooted in sought the work his life was rooted in — building and restoration.

— building and restoration.

Today, he fulfills many roles — Today, he fulfills many roles — founder, owner, president, qualifier, founder, owner, president, qualifier, license holder and general contractor, license holder and general contractor, to name a few — alongside his to name a few — alongside his partner in business and life, Louise, partner in business and life, Louise, who is madam chairman of the who is madam chairman of the board, co-founder and owner. board, co-founder and owner.

As a structural restoration As a structural restoration company, their focus is on existing company, their focus is on existing facilities, including industrial sites, facilities, including industrial sites,

workforce manufacturing red tape experience zoning connection location implementatio liason permitting aviation skill population aviation incentives development expediting water sit selection access trained personnel gas acreage ownership logistics workforce red tape locatio industry transportation electricity results certification labor water distribution manufacturin zoning connection location experience logistics implementation telecom liason tax developmen permitting skill incentives population transportation development expediting access site selectio access trained certification gas acreage owner water site selection access training pers`onnel result industry owner logistics location distribution red tape acreage electricity aviation transportatio results implementation workforce manufacturing zoning connection certification industr location distribution electricity certification results workforce manufacturing experience zonin connection site selection red tape industry skill transportation electricity results developmen

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Escambia County Business Journal S P E CI A L R EPO R T

SMALL F FIRM, MONSTER CLIENT

Pensacola architect is grateful for his relationship with the St. Joe Company

BY STEVE BORNHOFT

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rank Daughtry has an old college chum to thank for uniting his small Pensacola architectural firm with the colossal place-builder, the St. Joe Company, in projects including a 130,000-square-foot spec building in Bay County.

Daughtry and Kyle Walker have been the best of friends since they attended Auburn University together in the 1970s. Decades later, Walker was working for White Construction when the St. Joe Company identified the contractor as a candidate to construct what would become the first building in the VentureCrossings commerce park near the Northwest Florida Beaches International Airport.

Walker suggested to his bosses that White team up with Daughtry and collaborate on a design/build proposal. They did, and together the architect and the contractor pitched St. Joe — successfully.

Daughtry, White and St. Joe combined to bring about a 105,000-square-foot facility that was first occupied by Exelis ITT, a defense contractor that produced minesweeping sleds. Exelis commenced operations at

VentureCrossings in 2012 and the triad has been building buildings ever since — notably a spec building at the commerce park and a building in Panama City Beach that will house St. Joe’s corporate offices.

St. Joe CEO Jorge Gonzalez maintains a watchful eye over the company’s projects, but Daughtry works more closely with Dan Velazquez, the vice president for asset management, and project manager Ben Moorman.

“I cannot say enough good things about St. Joe,” Daughtry said. “You work with developers over the course of your life and you discover that half of these guys will steal from you or lead you along and leave you holding the bag. But St. Joe is a stand-up company. We have had nothing but good experiences with them.”

Daughtry grew up outside of Hartford, Alabama, a small farming community located about 20 miles southwest of Dothan. His father grew peanuts and cotton and bought and sold livestock in a small way. Daughtry drove his cow truck from time to time.

After graduating from Auburn, Daughtry

PHOTOS BY BLAKE JONES

Left to right: Connie Formby, Scott Dean, Frank Daughtry, Kathren Simmons and John Schang

went to work for the Atlanta architectural firm of Toombs, Amisano & Wells before earning a master’s degree at the University of Pennsylvania.

Architects weren’t hiring when Daughtry exited Penn. The 1979 oil crisis precipitated by the Iranian Revolution had disrupted economies around the world, and Daughtry caught on instead with an interior design firm in Manhattan.

“I tell people that I have lived in one of the most rural and one of the most urban settings in the world,” Daughtry said.

As the ’80s started to roar, Daughtry hung out a shingle, establishing Frank Daughtry Architect PL in New York City in 1982. A claim to fame, he said, was working on five floors in the so-called Lipstick Building, which was designed by Philip Johnson and John Burgee and developed by Gerald Hines, who would become a major client of Daughtry. The building housed the offices of notorious Ponzi schemer Bernie Madoff.

“New York City in the ’80s was like the Wild West,” Daughtry said. “There were a lot of people personally making more money than some banana republics.”

Daughtry exited the fast lane, moving from New York to Pensacola in 1991 and quickly picking up Department of Defense contracts.

Such work has helped sustain his business through economic downturns including the Great Recession of 2008.

Daughtry has designed U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service offices on Big Pine Key and at the Arthur R. Marshall National Wildlife Refuge near Boynton Beach. At present, he is working on a 252-foot pedestrian bridge that will link a parking garage to a hospital at the James H. Quillen VA Healthcare System in Mountain Home, Tennessee.

Construction of the parking garage was itself a challenge. In pouring foundation pilings for the structure, contractors encountered numerous large voids that had to be filled.

“We were rebuilding the mountain,” Daughtry said.

The bridge, he said, is a “tour de force.” The project required huge trusses at either end, and a section of the bridge as it approaches the hospital is being cantilevered to avoid the need to tie it into the hospital.

At 66, Daughtry has begun to think about preparing a succession plan for his business.

He employs six people, including one other licensed architect.

“I operate like a general contractor,” he said. “You have to delegate and rely on other people. My staff is wonderful, and my hat is completely off to them. I am the traffic director herding everyone together.”

The herd can include a cast of subcontractor engineers: structural, mechanical, electrical, life safety and civil. Most are from Pensacola.

The Beckrich Office Park on Richard Jackson Boulevard in Panama City Beach includes three office buildings. The third, under construction at this writing, will be home to St. Joe’s corporate offices.

“We took the layout for the previous two buildings and modified it at St. Joe’s direction,” Daughtry said. “The exterior looks similar, but once you get inside, everything starts to change.”

Finishes are upgraded. Ceilings are recessed and feature indirect lighting. A glass staircase is “cantilevered out from four

massive columns buried in the wall and really appears to float like it is not supported by anything,” Daughtry said. “I hope people won’t be afraid to take the stairs.”

All of the St. Joe projects that Daughtry has worked on have been built using tilt-up construction. First, the floor slab is poured and walls are then poured into forms that are placed on the floor.

“They tilt up the walls and, in 48 hours, you’ll go from just a slab to a full box,” Daughtry said. “It’s not like a concrete block building where each block is individually stacked.”

The speed of construction notwithstanding, the St. Joe projects are built to last.

“These are 100-year buildings or better,” Daughtry said. “They aren’t going to blow down or wash away. They are substantial, and that’s a St. Joe hallmark. They always deliver a quality product, and that’s what people come to them for.”

Frank Daughtry, left, and his team inspect plans.

The firm’s clients include the St. Joe company.

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Escambia County Business Journal S P E CI A L R EPO R T

CONTEMPORARY FEAR Small and medium businesses now see data breaches as more damaging than other disasters BY STEVE BORNHOFT

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AppRiver, founded in 2002, was one of Microsoft’s original syndication partners for Office 365.

“We provide our partners with the Microsoft mail service,” Wagner said, “and then layer on top of it advanced threat protection, phishing scheme protection and solutions that meet archival requirements and requirements for the safeguarding of personal information.”

Financial institutions account for about half of the archival needs addressed by AppRiver, but, Wagner said, the transparency mandated of government agencies increasingly will lead to more work in that area.

In addition to email, AppRiver archives activity on some 50 different communication channels, including video and messages delivered via platforms ranging from the familiar, such as Facebook and Pinterest, to the likes of Bupa and Flock.

“Social media are an important part of keeping in touch with customers,” Wagner said.

“Businesses want to sell, customers want to buy and customers are moving to social platforms.

We have to be there and, as we go there, we have to understand the risks that come with increasing your attack footprint with your social media presence.”

Wagner advises businesses to provide employees with specific guidelines about posting and to educate themselves about phishing attacks and compromise attacks.

For Wagner, Zix’s move to enlarge its footprint by purchasing AppRiver made abundant sense.

“I couldn’t be more pleased about joining the Pensacola community, which truly has made a commitment to cybersecurity,” Wagner said. “The underlying investment in defense in this area brings a lot of talent and resources to town. Dovetail that with UWF, Pensacola State College and the work that Eman El-Sheikh is doing at the Center for Cybersecurity, and then add AppRiver, and you have a strong cybersecurity presence.

I am even more excited about the future of what we can do in this area.”

AppRiver, Wagner predicted, will eventually double the number of its employees from 250 to 500. At present, he said, it is growing

David Wagner, CEO

PHOTOS COURTESY OF APPRIVER

M

any small businesses that would not be without a staff accountant or an attorney on retainer choose to try to get along without a human resources director or consultant. This, despite a general awareness that people issues can be messy and costly.

They may effectively reason that HR is not a problem until it occurs.

In like fashion, said Dave Wagner, the CEO of Zix, a Dallas-based email security firm, new and small businesses often fail to consider their assets, identify the cybersecurity risks associated with them and then mitigate those risks by establishing a relationship with a managed security provider.

Zix doubled its size in February 2019 with its acquisition of AppRiver in Pensacola.

Wagner said AppRiver’s marketing director, Jim McClellan, along with Eman El-Sheikh, director of the Center for Cybersecurity at the University of West Florida, regularly survey businesses across the country and consistently arrive at the same finding: Businesses are concerned about risks to cybersecurity that they know are real, but they do not recognize that they are so complex as to require outsourcing of risk management.

“We are up against cybercriminals of all kinds,” Wagner said. “The state-sponsored actors that you read about in the news are highly sophisticated about exposing vulnerabilities.

We encourage everyone to move their services to the cloud and take advantage of Microsoft Office 365 security solutions.”

revenue by 50 percent per year. In total, Zix employs more than 560 people.

“Pensacola is a place where we have enjoyed great success in hiring talented employees with a real commitment to the company’s mission, to providing security and customer service,” Wagner enthused.

In doing its due diligence about AppRiver, Zix was impressed by its net promoter score, a measure of overall satisfaction with the company, arrived at by subtracting the percentage of the company’s detractors from the percentage of people who would recommend it to others.

AppRiver’s score was 78.

“That was Apple’s score when they were doing their best,” Wagner said. “It’s a world-class score, and it is delivered by the people here and how they interact with customers all over the country and the world. Their commitment to mission and purpose and to each other will differentiate us in years to come and allow us to continue to grow.”

In the second half of 2019, AppRiver added a team of outside salespeople who jet about the country, meeting with “partners,” as the company prefers to call its customers. It hires graduates of UWF and Pensacola State College

and otherwise from leading universities in the South and beyond.

Wagner is recognized as an IT industry leader. After the 2013 data breach at Target Corp. that exposed credit card and personal data on more than 110 million consumers, he testified before the Energy and Commerce Committee in the U.S. Senate.

There, he described the “asymmetric” relationship between big technology companies and consumers in which the Apples and Facebooks of the world have “all the power.”

“I am not a huge fan of government regulation, but in this case, because the asymmetry is so dramatic, we need some protection for individuals to bring about some balance,” Wagner said.

“There are rules in Europe, and we are moving forward in the United States with California being the first to adopt the kind of regulation that puts some control back in the hands of individuals.”

Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation was designed to give consumers a greater say about their data and to provide them with legal avenues for holding companies accountable. GDPR requires that

companies ask users to opt in before their data can be processed by third parties.

But “the rules are relatively loose when it comes to metadata,” writes Canadian journalist Brian Barth. “Even if the contents of a phone call are protected, the time of the call or the parties involved may not be.”

Bottom line: Regulations are not about to obviate concerns about privacy or the activity of cybercriminals — or the need for firms like AppRiver.

AppRiver employees work to secure client email systems.

WHICH OF THE FOLLOWING EVENTS DO YOU FEAR WOULD BE THE MOST DETRIMENTAL TO YOUR BUSINESS? Source: U.S. Small Business Administration

All SMBs 1-250 employees

Large SMBs 100-250 employees

Business Services, Consulting

Financial Services, Insurance

Health Care, Pharma

Legal Services

Tech

Transport, Logistics

Marketing, Media

Office Fire

28%

17%

13%

17%

25%

16%

23%

14%

24%

Office Flood

5%

6%

3%

4%

3%

0%

7%

3%

5%

Office Theft

7%

9%

5%

2%

5%

16%

9%

10%

5%

Transit Strike or City-wide Road Closure

2%

2%

4%

2%

0%

0%

4%

14%

0%

Security Breach of Clients’ Records

58%

66%

74%

76%

67%

68%

57%

59%

67%

850 Business Magazine

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PROMOTION

Next School Superintendent Must Be a Courageous Problem Solver With a Record of Success

By Justin Beck, CCIM, CPM, & Beck Partners CEO, Greater Pensacola Chamber of Commerce Board President

T

he Escambia County School Board will make a decision this year that will greatly impact every aspect of our community when they select our first appointed school superintendent. The choice of our next superintendent will not only impact the children served by our public school system but will also signal what type of community we want in the coming decades. The importance of this decision cannot be overstated.

As a part of the selection process, the Greater Pensacola Chamber of Commerce Board of Directors recently participated in a focus group session, similar to those held throughout the community, where we were able to provide our input on the types of characteristics and qualifications that an ideal superintendent would possess.

In those discussions, board members identified some key characteristics that our next school board superintendent should own.

One attribute that Chamber board members repeatedly stated that our next superintendent needs is the BECK PARTNERS 48

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courage to bring bold, new solutions to the challenges facing our K–12 public education system. While our high school graduation rate has increased dramatically over the past decade, there are still pockets in our community that have not experienced the same gains.

To narrow the achievement gap and provide opportunities for students in those communities, it will take someone willing to implement new approaches until substantial progress is made throughout the district.

Our next school superintendent must also develop strategies that will prepare the workforce of the future. We live in a rapidly changing world where many of the jobs of tomorrow do not exist today. To make Escambia County the best place for businesses to grow and thrive, we must be able to create and attract the talent to fill these jobs and attract new businesses. We need a superintendent that has a proven record of success in addressing this essential issue if we are to remain competitive with other communities in maintaining and attracting talent.

A final quality that Chamber board members repeatedly mentioned they want to see in our next superintendent is someone who is a true bridge-builder and connector, someone willing to work with our entire community to address our public education needs. We are blessed to live in a diverse community with an engaged population that wants the best for Escambia County. Our next school superintendent must be willing to reach out and work with all constituencies — including our minority communities, our military, higher education and our business community — so we can collectively address our educational needs.

We thank outgoing superintendent Malcolm Thomas for his decades of service to our public schools and the leadership displayed in dramatically improving the graduation rate in Escambia County. Now it is time for our school board to take the next step and appoint a forward-looking superintendent with the will to implement strategies needed to address the educational challenges of the coming decade.

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Escambia County Business Journal S P E CI A L R EPO R T

IMPACT’S IMPACT Philanthropic group of women helps nonprofits fulfill their missions

BY HANNAH BURKE

T

he Health and Hope Clinic is bringing supplies, emergency response training and a public education program to Santa Rosa and Escambia counties in an effort to combat the opioid epidemic and save lives.

Pensacola’s First City Art Center is expanding its Youth Art Program building to accommodate new classrooms and a technology center.

Manna Food Pantries is installing a generator that will prevent the loss of hundreds of thousands of pounds of food in the event of power outages.

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While they are diverse, these projects have the fact that 100% of its $1,000 membership something in common. All have been made fees goes toward funding the program activities possible by the generosity of the 1,006 women of nonprofits not administrative expenses. In who make up IMPACT 100 Pensacola that way, grants, in amounts of $100,000 or Bay Area Inc., a philanthropic organization more, benefit sustainable projects that further devoted to awarding transformative grants the organizations’ missions. to nonprofit organizations in Escambia and IMPACT receives grant applications in the Santa Rosa counties. spring. The criteria are simple: A qualifying The IMPACT idea was born in 2003 nonprofit must be a locally sourced 501(c) when 100 women in Cincinnati, Ohio, each (3) organization registered with the Florida donated $1,000 toward a $100,000 communal Department of Agriculture and Consumer grant. Pensacola Bay Area Services; must show proof IMPACT 100 was founded of filing an annual report in 2004 by 233 women and to the Florida Department “IMPACT today is the largest IMPACT of State; and must submit a DEMONSTRATES organization in the world. letter of intent.

As of late 2019, it had “The letter of intent is an THE POWER OF bestowed 109 grants to 78 opportunity to furnish us COLLECTIVE nonprofits. with the project’s specifics,” GIVING.” “IMPACT demonstrates said Brooks. “When will -BRIGETTE BROOKS the power of collective it commence? What’s the giving,” said Pensacola budget? What is the need Bay Area IMPACT 100 in the community for this president Brigette Brooks. “Pensacola is a project, and how will it sustain that fulfillment?” small community, but it is not without its IMPACT 100 grant review comittees relate poverty and socioeconomic challenges. We to five areas of focus: arts and culture; education; have been fortunate to grow our membership environment; recreation and preservation; and every year since our founding, and it’s those family and health/wellness. numbers that determine how many grants we “Some may argue that there is a greater can afford to award.” need in health and wellness than there is for IMPACT’s success, Brooks said, stems from arts and culture,” said Brooks. “But we believe

PHOTOS COURTESY OF IMPACT 100

IMPACT 100 Pensacola Bay Area’s membership grew to 1,166 women in 2019, a number worthy of celebration.

F R A N K D A U G H T R Y President Brigette Brooks and President Elect Roz Leahy (far right) present a ceremonial check to a 2019 grant recipient, Healing Paws for Warriors.

an investment in all five areas is what creates a balanced, wellrounded community.”

Review committees assess applications, conduct site visits and select three finalists.

For disappointed applicants, IMPACT provides a “wish list” on its website, allowing nonprofits to submit requests for specific items or volunteers. By monitoring wishes, Brooks said, IMPACT members become aware of a range of initiatives.

“This sometimes leads to us losing members because these women fall in love and go on to become major contributors or members of these other organizations’ boards,” laughed Brooks, “but that’s the impact of IMPACT, and I love that.”

At IMPACT’s annual meeting, finalists make 5-minute presentations about their projects and the effect they would have on the areas and people served. Brooks said about 400 women participate in final voting.

“We are one woman, one vote,” said Brooks. “We are very devoted to, from an integrity standpoint, ensuring every part of this process is vetted.”

Elections offices personnel from Escambia and Santa Rosa counties provide voting machines and report the results.

Last year, IMPACT contributed a total of $1,166,000 to 11 beneficiaries.

“To see someone’s $1,000 transform into $1 million is amazing,” Brooks said. “Our membership is very diverse, ranging from the woman who can easily write a check to those who put back a little bit each month to do their part. For the woman who maybe doesn’t have the time to be as involved in her community as she’d like, she can feel comfortable knowing her money has been well invested.”

IMPACT board liaisons are assigned to each recipient organization. They monitor progress and ensure that grant money is expended in accordance with applications.

The more evident Impact’s influence on communities becomes, the more its membership rolls grow.

“I can still remember when I first heard IMPACT’s president at the time being interviewed on a local radio station,” Brooks said. “And that moment has led me to a wonderful group of like-minded, philanthropic women. What we do is a labor of love, and the generosity it spurs consistently amazes me.”

A r c h i t e c t P L Lic: A A 2 6 0 0 2 0 4 8 260 S TARRAGONA ST STE 240A PENSACOLA FLORIDA 32502

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Escambia County Business Journal S P E CI A L R EPO R T

PHOTOS BY BLAKE JONES (ROTHFEDER) AND COURTESY OF STUDER PROPERTIES

Southtowne, the largest apartment project in Pensacola history, spurred the revitalization of downtown by adding an attractive residential component to what the core city has to offer.

QUALITY OF PLACE To secure talent, first create a highly desirable place to live

BY STEVE BORNHOFT

I

n his book, Building a Vibrant Community, Quint Studer, a Pensacola businessman and founder of the Studer Community Institute, recounts a meeting with Jim Clifton, the chairman and CEO of Gallup, an organization best known for its public opinion research.

Clifton mentioned to Studer that Gallup had conducted a study aimed at discovering why some cities thrive and others do not.

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Among factors accounting for municipal success, Gallup identified a vibrant downtown as highly important.

“And a big takeaway from this meeting was that four elements are needed to create a vibrant downtown,” Studer writes.

They are, Clifton relayed: P rogramming (events and gatherings) that attracts people downtown on a regular basis.

R etail and entertainment options.

O ffice space options.

Diverse

residential options.

Regarding the latter, Studer notes, “If there is not a stable residential foundation downtown, the community gets very dependent on the state of the economy. When the economy gets tough, non-residents stop coming to bars and restaurants. This is less likely to happen if they live nearby.”

“Today, all of greater Pensacola is celebrating the vibrancy of our downtown,” said Andrew Rothfeder, the CEO of Studer Properties. “But

Andrew Rothfeder, the CEO of Studer Properties

nine years ago, our downtown was not what it is Pensacola, “work” and “play” were decent, but “live” was nonexistent despite market research today, despite a lot of entrepreneurs who came data and anecdotes from the road that pointed before us and did a lot of great stuff to try to to a strong appetite among people for living make it better. Sometimes, the moon and stars near the center of town. just don’t align, so we Studer Properties started to do a bunch of conducted more market homework and visiting research and discovered other cities.”

“WE HAD A a demand for downThat is, Studer FORMULA MADE town housing across a Properties, for a time, UP OF THREE spectrum that included became an anthropoall income levels and logical research team, COMPONENTS: types of housing — for searching for the secret LIVE, WORK AND rent, for sale, townhosauce that enabled PLAY. THEY ALL mes, single family, consome Southern downSUPPORT EACH dos, apartments. towns to rebound and The fattest part of succeed while others OTHER, AND YOU that demand, Rothfeder continue to deteriorate.

HAVE TO HAVE found, was for The team visited cities ALL THREE. multi-family, mixedincluding Charleston IT’S A THREEuse development. and Greenville in South “Downtown apartCarolina; Asheville, LEGGED STOOL.” ment buildings were North Carolina; and -ANDREW ROTHFEDER what was most needed St. Petersburg, Florida. to raise the quality of “For thousands of life and lift the residenyears, we all lived in tial leg of the stool,” Rothfeder said. “Then the close, tight clusters,” Rothfeder said, almost challenge became, if it’s so obvious, how come as if reciting the opening line in a dissertation. no one has done it?”

“We lived around the city center where all the The short answer: It was hard to make the commercial activity took place. The markets numbers work. and residences were separated by just a few feet.

“The cost to build a large apartment comThen we invented this thing called a car, and it plex with a parking garage downtown, given changed everything.

“Throughout the South, downtowns died as we suburbanized.”

A clubhouse is among the For generations, idle Schwinns rusted in amenities at the Southtowne dusty garage corners. The car, as a conveyance, apartments in Pensacola. was king. Of late, however, baby boomers have relinquished the driver’s seat to millennials.

“If you are raising kids, you are probably OK living in the suburbs,” Rothfeder said. “You want a house with a yard near the mall and the schools and the soccer fields. But millennials are saying, ‘This is not the way we want to live; we don’t want to live in our cars.’ Today’s younger generation — and the data is there — want to live in a walkable, vibrant downtown where they don’t have to rely on automobiles.”

The Studer anthropologists processed the lessons they learned and asked themselves what role they might play in revitalizing Pensacola.

“We felt like we now had the recipe,” Rothfeder said. “We had a formula made up of three components: live, work and play.

They all support each other, and you have to have all three. It’s a three-legged stool.”

The Studer team deemed that, in downtown

the established market rents, was very risky,” Rothfeder said.

The result, he said, was that many business people kept to the sidelines waiting for someone to assume that risk and make a big, bold first move. In cities visited by the Studer team, a family or an individual, typically with multi-generational ties to their community, had emerged as a pioneer. And because they were wealthy, they could proceed without profit being a necessary or their principal motive.

In Pensacola, Rishy and Quint Studer would lead the revitalization charge. Personally, they didn’t have generations of history in Pensacola, but they had resources.

So it was that Studer Properties, on four acres obtained from the Pensacola News Journal, undertook the development of Southtowne, a project that would become the largest residential project ever built in Pensacola at $58 million and 258 apartment units.

“We don’t view the business that we are in as the real estate development business,” Rothfeder said. “We see it as the community development business, and building buildings is just a tactic in pursuit of the vision of making Pensacola the greatest city in the world.”

Southtowne has been an unqualified success.

Two years ago, Studer Properties pre-leased all units. Today, when a unit becomes available, it remains on the market for an average of 22 minutes. Rather like trying to reserve a court at a popular tennis club.

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Escambia County Business Journal S P E CI A L R EPO R T

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“A walkable, safe, stimulating downtown is important.”

Studer Properties isn’t resting on Southtowne laurels and plaudits, far from it.

In the Belmont-DeVilliers neighborhood of Pensacola, the historic center of the city’s African American community and a one-time stop on a Southern blues trail, the Chitlin’ Circuit, Studer Properties has completed two projects and is at work on a third. Savoy Place, like Southtowne, is a residential-over-restaurant/retail development, and it will include 24 apartments.

“There is tremendous, authentic history there,” Rothfeder said. “And, you can’t fake that kind of character anymore, not in the era of the Internet. Belmont-Devilliers is a hip, up-andcoming neighborhood. You can’t find a parking place there after 9 o’clock at night.”

Studer Properties also has acquired a 19acre waterfront parcel that was home to a wastewater treatment plant until 15 years ago when Hurricane Ivan walloped the facility. The acreage is located just two blocks west of downtown’s chief north-south artery, Palafox Street.

“We are working with the city on how best to develop the property, and we have solicited input from the community,” Rothfeder said.

“This is big. It is going to be Pensacola’s next mixed-use neighborhood of real consequence.”

Studer Properties has retained as a project partner DPZ, a placemaker out of Miami that shaped the development of Seaside, Rosemary Beach and Alys Beach in Walton County.

“Capital follows talent, but talent follows place, and that’s a relatively new dynamic,” Rothfeder said. “It used to be that young people entering the workforce went where they could find a job. Now, they go to where they want to live and figure they will find a job when they get there. They are deciding where to live based on quality of life.”

So it is that Studer Properties is focused on talent.

“Smaller cities all need to get the work-playlive playbook and figure that out,” Rothfeder said. “At Studer Properties, we are always working to determine what we can do — be it properties, leadership development, philanthropy, retail, entertainment, entrepreneurial institutes — to make Pensacola a place where talented people want to live and start a business.”

Not long ago a researcher seeking secret sauce, Rothfeder now finds himself fielding calls from other cities curious to learn about the keys to Pensacola’s recent success.

“Our phone is ringing,” Rothfeder said. “At first, I was like, ‘You want to know how we

did it?’ The interest from other cities is blowing my head off.”

Downtown living is among 10 cornerstone ideas that undergird a strategic vision for historic downtown Panama City and its waterfront, prepared by Dover, Kohl & Partners.

Associated concepts, much like those at play in Pensacola, are: The active downtown has a mix of uses that draws and supports a residential community.

Downtown offers many types of housing (apartments, accessory units, cottages, townhouses) for students, seniors, all ages.

Investigation of potential for uses that support residents — grocery, pharmacy, etc. — is warranted.

The vision document stresses that new housing construction is a critical element in Panama City’s recovery from Hurricane Michael.

“With appropriate zoning changes and utilization of opportunity sites, downtown can provide suitable sites for new construction,” the report notes. “A larger downtown residential population is needed to support area businesses and provide 24-hour activity.

“Planned public improvements and safety/ security upgrades will give people the confidence to live downtown. The return of more people downtown can then make viable the return of businesses that can support them. There are many opportunity sites that can support future development, and a primary focus of these sites should be housing. There is capacity to add a lot of development to the downtown in a variety of building and unit types.”

In 2004, efforts to revitalize Pensacola’s downtown had just begun to gain traction when Hurricane Ivan struck the city. Community leaders got together to discuss a now urgent rebuilding effort and to study how other cities had responded to disasters.

“We realized,” Studer writes, “that the hurricane had not stopped plans after all. It was not a roadblock, but an opportunity. In fact, it had become the springboard for bringing big, real, meaningful change to Pensacola.”

Building lasting success would require creating a community capable of attracting and retaining young talent.

And that would mean furnishing them with desirable places to live, consistent with their lifestyles.

“Hurricane Ivan did have a silver lining for Pensacola,” Rothfeder said. “But it was not worth those gray clouds in the middle.”

PHOTOS COURTESY OF STUDER PROPERTIES

“I guess there are people who are set up to get alerts on their phones,” Rothfeder said.

For Rothfeder and Studer Properties, building buildings is just one tactic required to move a community forward.

“Our goal from the beginning has been to do enough tactically to seed downtown redevelopment to the point where other investors would say to themselves, ‘The water’s fine, let’s jump in.’ ” Rothfeder said. “Now, we are seeing so much development, and Quint is just a part of it. Tax revenue is up over 30 percent.

There are tons of new housing and offices.

Downtown is having its moment right now.”

Momentum has been achieved. Growing tax revenues enable the city to make infrastructure improvements and funds the enhancement of public education.

“And, the better that stuff gets, the more development you see,” Rothfeder said.

The Southtowne project at the old newspaper plant produced three wins, Rothfeder said.

It addressed the “live” leg, eliminated a blighted area that isolated downtown from residential areas and resulted in the environmental cleanup of the project site.

That blighted area was so bad that people would get in their cars and drive two blocks to avoid walking through it.

“It offered nothing interesting, just old, falling down brick walls,” Rothfeder said.

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SPONSORED REPORT

P

reviously … We’ve been following the journey of a Pensacola-based engineering firm as they’re getting started on EOS® (the Entrepreneurial Operating System)*. The company’s leaders (John, Ray, Roberto and Sarah) were concerned that the team wasn’t working well together. They also had people and process issues which ultimately led to low profits.

During their first full EOS® session day (Focus Day™) with Ryan Giles, the team built their first accountability chart, weekly scorecard, set quarterly goals and established a weekly meeting time. During the second full session day (Vision Building Day 1), the team started working on their business plan. Unlike long, complicated business planning, the EOS® planning method walks teams through answering eight questions (these eight questions are called the Vision/ Traction Organizer™ … or V/TO™ for short).

VISION BUILDING — DAY 2

About a month after their first Vision Building Day™, the team met with Giles again … this time to finish their vision.

The day began with a quick recap from their previous sessions. Sarah had been tasked with wordsmithing the company’s Core Values, and she presented her work.

After Giles answered a few questions, the team was ready to finish their V/TO™ by answering the final four questions:

1. What is your 3-Year Picture™? If you’re

familiar with goal-setting, you’ve probably heard that writing a goal down makes you 60% more likely to achieve it. Did you know that writing it down AND visualizing it even further increases your likelihood of success? That’s the point behind the 3-Year Picture™. Once the leadership team is clear on our 3-year goals and can SEE them, we can begin sharing with the rest of the company. Once the entire company aligns with the 3-Year Picture, we WILL hit it! Our 3-Year Picture starts with the due date (in this case, the date was set to December 31, 2022). The due date was followed by a revenue and profit goal for 2022. The team then decided to add a few metrics to help them track their progress. (Roberto wanted to measure the number of clients, and John suggested average profit per employee.) The team finished their 3-Year Picture by brainstorming what the

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company would look like in 3 years if they were hitting all of their goals. Some of these bullet points included: winning best place to work in Pensacola, opening a second location, decreasing our response time on new bids to 5 days and starting a 401K program.

2. What is your 1-Year Plan™? Like the 3-Year

Picture, the next section answered is the 1-Year Plan. The team started with the due date (December 31, 2020). They then set revenue and profit goals followed by how many clients they would need and the profit per employee goal.

They then brainstormed the three-to-five goals for the year that would help them achieve the numbers above (revenue, profit, clients, etc…). Giles then spent time with the team to make each goal SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and timely) to remove all ambiguity and give them the best chance of success.

3. What are your Rocks™? In EOS, Rocks are 90-day goals. You may remember that the team set Rocks in their first session (Focus Day). These Rocks were now due, so they spent time discussing each goal and deciding if it was complete. Since this was the first quarter that the team had set quarterly goals, they discussed lessons learned and how to increase the completion percentage (the team had successfully completed 66% of their Rocks). Ray, who had not completed his Rock, said he underestimated the time it would take. Giles then discussed the second most important job of any leader (predicting), and Ray agreed to use his calendar to time-block for the next 90 days. He would also be more realistic when reporting on his Rock at each weekly meeting.

After a successful post-mortem on the old Rocks, the team used their new 1-year goals to set strategic Rocks for the next 90 days. They assigned an owner to each Rock and spent time making each Rock SMART. Giles reminded the team that at least 80% of Rocks must be achieved each quarter, and that this measurement could be used to determine if an Integrator was doing the job well.

Everyone committed to his or her new Rock, and the team took a break.

SPONSORED REPORT

4. What are your Issues? For the last question on the team’s V/TO™, Giles explained that they were doing a great job each week by solving issues in their meetings. However, the team had noticed that some of their issues didn’t seem to be urgent. These long-term issues live on the V/TO. This is a great place to brainstorm long-term plans and ideas without bogging down the weekly meetings. After this epiphany, the team was able to move almost 30% of their weekly issues to the long-term list (and keep their weekly meetings focused on more short-term items).

Though the day was long, the team gave it their highest scores yet. Seeing the puzzle pieces all fit together gave John satisfaction, while Susan liked the strategic method for setting Rocks (using our 3-Year Picture to set great 1-Year Goals and using these goals to set great quarterly Rocks). Giles ended the day by assigning homework and reminding the team that 80% Rock completion was expected at the next meeting (in about 90 days). At the next meeting, the first Quarterly Session, the team would look back on the past 90 days, plan the upcoming quarter, set new Rocks, and learn another EOS® tool. They would also plan the EOS® rollout to the rest of their company. *EOS® is a system, a framework, for helping business leaders get what they want from their businesses. For this reason, EOS® can help you achieve your business goals, regardless of what they are. Giles offers a free 90-minute workshop that explains EOS® and allows leaders to find out if it’s right for them.

TRACTIONSTRONG.COM | (504) 500-1640 RYAN@TRACTIONSTRONG.COM 850 Business Magazine

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Gadsden County Business Journal S P E C IA L R EPO R T

People and Product Gadsden County embarks on inclusive approaches to economic development

By Steve Bornhoft

T

he Gadsden County Development Council has undertaken a strategic planning process that represents an evolution in its approach to providing a better future for the county’s residents.

That is, the council is not going it alone.

In August of last year, the council coordinated two planningprocess kickoff sessions, one with educators and representatives of industry and the other with community-based partners in the areas of health and human services.

Ronnie Bryant, a certified economic developer and the principal at RLB, LLC, facilitated the conversations, held pursuant to the theme of “Opportunity for All: Strategies for Inclusive Economic Development.” In his work, Bryant strives to link discussions of innovation, change and economic development with cultural inclusion and diversity.

Beth Cicchetti, the executive director of the Gadsden County Development Council, said the sessions helped determine the level of interest among community stakeholders in economic development. She was pleased with the buy-in that resulted from the outreach effort.

“For five years,” Cicchetti said, “we have focused on developing marketable product along Interstate 10 and other arteries in our strategic intermodal system including U.S. 27, U.S. 90 and the Florida Gulf & Atlantic Railroad, and over near the Apalachicola Northern Railroad, which runs up into Chattahoochee.

“But in order to better serve expanding businesses or the new ones that we attract such as Trulieve, Four Star Freightliner and Hoover Treated Wood Products, we are going to need a real focus on attracting, retaining and developing talent.”

Trulieve cultivates, prepares and sells medical marijuana.

Four Star Freightliner services large trucks. Hoover commenced operations in Gadsden County near Havana in April 2019 and now runs with two shifts.

Cicchetti said a key to the talent procurement process is oneon-one meetings with employers designed to provide an understanding of their human resource needs so that instruction and

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curriculum at public K-12 schools, charter schools and vocational-technical schools, community colleges and universities can be developed accordingly.

“We have businesses that are here and are going to be in our market for a long time to come, and new businesses will be arriving,” Cicchetti said. “They have needs for employees in transportation, manufacturing and distribution. It’s up to us to provide the workforce to meet those needs. And, it’s important for parents in the area to know what the employment opportunities will be for their children in Gadsden County.”

Willie Simmons, the head football coach at Florida A&M University and a native of Gadsden County, has championed the inclusive planning effort, and local government officials echoed Cicchetti’s remarks.

“We want the barber, the hairdresser, the grocery owner and everyone to know what the plans are for Gadsden County,” said County Commissioner Brenda Hold.

Gretna City Commissioner Gary Ross Jr. said he saw the kickoff meetings as an opportunity for a cross-section of the community from millennials to seniors to come together “to benefit the whole spectrum of residents in our county.”

Added Gretna City Manager Antonio Jefferson, “The strategies that came out of this meeting of the minds will result in action items that we can assign to our community partners, our Beth Cicchetti, executive elected officials and anyone who director of the Gadsden wants to see the change that we County Development Council need in Gadsden County.”

Above, Four Star Freightliner Edward Dixon, a former operates a truck service center in Midway.

Gadsden County commissioner,

PHOTOS BY SAIGE ROBERTS (CICCHETTI AND FOUR STAR FREIGHTLINER) AND COURTESTY OF INDIVIDUALS

said, “What we are doing now is Gadsden County’s future.

It’s tomorrow today, here right now. If we do this well, we aren’t going to have to worry that our kids are going to grow up and leave Gadsden County.”

In January, the Governor’s Office announced grant awards to the City of Quincy and Gadsden County from the state’s Rural Infrastructure Fund, which is administered by the Department of Economic Opportunity.

Quincy received $297,800 to complete a feasibility study and an environmental survey needed to finalize a plan for attracting new business to the Joe Adams Commerce Park. In addition, the funding will help further the city’s “Opportunity for All” strategic economic development plan, encompassing a holistic approach to economic development planning and workforce development for new and existing businesses.

The county received $20,000 to complete a road inventory project for prioritizing needed improvements to public, unpaved roads and bridges.

Regarding economic development planning, Cicchetti said, “There is a process that we want to take the community through. Educators and service providers like the United Way and the Capital Area Community Action agency and other community-based partners need to understand our world, and we need to understand theirs. Collectively, we need to have a picture of the demographics we are serving, and we need to work together to have an impact on the generational poverty that occurs in our area.”

Cicchetti was pleased by the participation in the kickoff meetings by classroom teachers from private schools, including the Robert F. Munroe Day School in Quincy, charter schools and traditional public schools.

“They are the folks with their boots on the ground,” Cicchetti said. “We need to understand what is being taught.”

Cicchetti said she expects the conversations with businesses that will be part of the planning process to enable the development council to better understand their operations and supply chains and to supply leads for filling up the county’s industrial parks.

For Cicchetti, the impact of Hurricane Michael on Gadsden County’s food cluster provides an example of the need for a holistic approach to economic development and recovery. The Cal-Maine Foods egg-producing facility in Quincy was among the storm’s casualties.

“Cal-Maine had been part of our business landscape for decades,” Cicchetti said. “The Florida-Georgia Workforce Alliance is working with the 60 employees who are losing their jobs due to the closure, and we are looking at the possibilities of repurposing buildings there.”

One possibility: the industrial hemp industry, which is expected to become a significant agricultural product in Florida over coming years.

“We want to identify and showcase buildings that could be used for storage of industrial hemp after it is harvested,” Cicchetti said. “Gadsden County has the potential to become a player in both the cultivation and processing of hemp, but it will take a team effort for us to get there.”

Gadsden County Development Council Officers Antonio Jefferson, Chairman Antonio Jefferson has served as city manager in Gretna since August 2006. In that role, he has created the city’s first economic development plan; secured more than $10 million in grants for construction and renovation of recreational, water, wastewater and transportation facilities; led the city in annexing 2,800 acres, updating its comprehensive plan and rewriting its land development code; and secured 30 acres for facilities to include a city civic and agricultural center. His background includes service to the U.S. Army Reserves and the U.S. Marine Corps, and in law enforcement. He was a sergeant with the Leon County Sheriff’s Office and was police chief in Gretna. He holds a bachelor’s degree in public administration from Barry University and a master’s degree in business administration from the University of Phoenix.

Jim McShane, Immediate Past Chairman Jim McShane is the chief executive officer at CareerSource Capital Region and has an extensive background in sales, management, interior design, workforce development and economic development. He was president of a family business in Munster, Indiana, and served as an elected official for four years. He has earned a reputation for systems thinking and a collaborative approach. He serves on the U.S. Conference of Mayors Workforce Development Council nationally and has chaired the Big Bend Continuum of Care Council. He is entering his 19th year in workforce development.

Under his innovative leadership, CareerSource Capital Region has become a valued asset in training career seekers and meeting the talent needs of businesses.

Blake Flowers, Chairman Elect Blake Flowers joined Talquin Electric Cooperative in 2016 as its director of member services. He provides leadership in areas including member services, information services, key account management, energy services, communications and community outreach. Prior to joining Talquin, Flowers spent more than 10 years at Georgia Power Company, working in departments including land acquisition, procurement, financial management, supply chain operations and sales.

He earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in business administration from Georgia Southern University.

Stella Murray, Treasurer For 23 years, Stella Murray has worked in the banking industry. Today, she is branch manager at Centennial Bank’s Quincy location. She began her career at Capital City Bank where she worked as a teller, head teller and customer service representative and moved to Premier Bank where she worked as a CSR and assistant branch manager prior to its acquisition by Centennial Bank. She is a graduate of James A. Shanks High School in Quincy and completed coursework at Tallahassee Community College. She is married to Eddie Murray, and has three children and three grandchildren.

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Gadsden County Business Journal S P E C IA L R EPO R T

Interstate Cooperation Workforce centers in Georgia, Florida jointly strive to meet employers’ needs

W

hen a significant employer in Gadsden County — say an egg producer — closes up shop, economic development interests are likely to assess the buildings and other assets it leaves behind with an eye toward the possible repurposing of them for use by another business.

But what of the employees who lose their jobs due to the closure? To whom can they turn?

Gadsden County, along with Leon and Wakulla counties, falls within an area served by CareerSource Capital Region, whose mission is to unite job seekers with employers. Effective with an agreement signed in 2016, its capacity to conduct job searches was greatly expanded — and that just might prove helpful to workers displaced by the shutting down of the Cal-Maine Foods egg plant in Quincy.

That agreement established the Florida-Georgia Workforce Alliance by uniting as partners two workforce boards in Florida — CareerSource Capital Region and CareerSource North Florida — with two in Georgia, WorkSource Southwest Georgia and WorkSource Southern Georgia.

“Every day, you have people commuting between Gadsden County and Bainbridge, Georgia, and between

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Tallahassee and Thomasville to go to work,” said Jim McShane, CEO at CareerSource Capital Region. “So, when you are looking at labor markets, you have to keep in mind that people don’t view a state line as a barrier to accepting a job.”

McShane noted that lines on maps notwithstanding, the two-state region’s media market is the same, “which is helpful, because it kind of unifies the area.”

Two years ago, workforce boards in Jacksonville and Savannah, Georgia, joined in the agreement in the interest of fostering interstate cooperation along the Atlantic coast.

The agreement followed by a year the enactment of the federal Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act whose reauthorization McShane and his board members are petitioning for this year.

WIOA was heralded as landmark legislation designed to strengthen and improve the nation's public workforce system and help get Americans, including youth and those with significant barriers to employment, into high-quality jobs and careers, while helping employers hire and retain skilled workers.

The parties to the 2016 agreement commissioned a study by a Michiganbased consultant EPSi, which recommended that the workforce boards focus on four growing components of local

economies: health care; advanced manufacturing, which McShane sees as one of Gadsden County’s strengths; information technologies; and transportation/ distribution/logistics.

In a meeting held late last year, McShane said, the boards established committees that will explore “ways that we can leverage what we bring to the table and help each other out without adding to our costs.”

McShane, noting funding cuts sustained by the boards last year, said, “We are always trying to do more with less, but we are about at that tipping point where if there is not some reinvestment by the Congress in our system, our capacity is really going to be injured.”

Even at that, McShane sounded an optimistic note.

“Regardless,” he said, “our economic development partners are at the table, and our training and education providers are also at the table.”

Gadsden County and CareerSource Capital Region are closely aligned.

Beth Cicchetti, the executive director of the Gadsden County Development Council, is the immediate past chair of the CareerSource Capital Region board and McShane is a board member and past chair at the Gadsden County Development Council.

The Gadsden Career Center logged

PHOTOS BY MATT BURKE / ROWLAND PUBLISHING FILE PHOTO AND COURTESY OF CAREER SOURCE CAPITAL REGION

By Steve Bornhoft

7,927 visits during the program year that ran from July 1, 2018, to June 30, 2019.

Over that period, CareerSource Capital Region conducted 35 recruitment events and seven hiring fairs attended by 1,832 people and posted 3,880 job openings.

“People think of us as helping the unemployed and the hard to employ, and that’s true,” McShane said. “But we also help Ph.D.s and master’s degree people and everything in between. Our goal is to provide the business community with the talent that they are looking for, and the talent that walks into our career centers every day. That’s our inventory, so to speak.”

And if that talent is a concert pianist?

“We may not have a job for him or her in our service area, but there may be a need for one in Valdosta or Jacksonville,” McShane said.

McShane said that workforce boards are hopeful about getting legislatures in Florida and Georgia to agree to a new aspect of cooperation related to training.

“Maybe there is an employer in

Gadsden County whose employees could use training available at Thomas University in Thomasville,” McShane said. “We would like to be able to pay for that training out of state as long as the provider is on a Georgia board’s Employer Training Provider List and we can demonstrate a need for the training in our region.”

Beyond that, McShane is a big believer in early childhood education as a foundation for talent development. Studies have established that third-graders not reading at the third-grade level are four times less likely to graduate high school on time and may never catch up with their peers.

Statewide in Florida, 58% of thirdgraders are reading at the third grade level, according to Florida Scorecard data published by the Florida Chamber of Commerce. In Gadsden County, that figure is 37%.

“Communities everywhere need to be investing at the front end,” McShane said.

Applied Fiber manufactures heavy duty cable in Havana

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Gadsden County Business Journal S P E C IA L R EPO R T

Hemp is on the Way Crop of many uses is expected to assist struggling timber farmers

F

armers whose lives are tied to trees are hurting in the Sunshine State.

In Central Florida, a pathogen that originated in China is devastating the citrus industry. The bacterium huang long bing prevents fruit from ripening or may cause ripening fruit to fall to the ground prematurely.

A few hours north and west of the state’s orange groves, timber growers took a big hit in October 2018. The penultimate cause may have been global warming — who knows? — but the immediate cause was winds that blew too darn hard.

Timber farmers and citrus growers, then, are united in a quest to find a replacement crop that doesn’t require years to mature. Hemp, some believe, may be an answer.

State Sen. George Gainer (R-Panama City) is optimistic about hemp, which interests him from two perspectives: He is the vice chairman of the Senate Committee on Agriculture, and he represents a district that was molested

by Michael.

“I think it’s got all kinda possibilities,” said Gainer, quickly adding, “What I like about it is that it doesn’t really have an addiction danger to it.”

The Senate Agriculture Committee, Gainer said, has taken in several presentations on hemp, and he has grown convinced that a hemp industry could flourish in Florida.

“We’re tryin’ to get this thing hurried up, so that they can at least get a test crop planted in the spring,” Gainer said in December.

He noted that Kentucky got a head start on hemp production due in part to the influence of Mitch McConnell, the majority leader in the U.S. Senate. In Kentucky, the issue was not green oranges or fallen trees, but a disappearing tobacco industry.

“We’re going to make an official request to Sen. McConnell to do what he can to give Florida the same green light,” Gainer said.

Gainer noted that FAMU has been engaged in hemp research for years and has a test farm in Gadsden County for that

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purpose. He said the presence of that farm may affect the location of a hemp receiving or production facility.

Robert Presnell is the city manager in Chattahoochee and was county administrator in Gadsden County when it landed the Trulieve medical marijuana production facility. Three plant nursery owners, including two in Gadsden County, combined to bring about that project, he said. Presnell was instrumental in getting the approval process fast tracked.

“The medical marijuana business has been a tremendous boost for us,” said Presnell, who estimated that it employs 1,000 Gadsden County residents.

State Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried has predicted that hemp could become a $20 billion to $30 billion a year industry in Florida.

“It's going to be something that is going to replace all of our Styrofoam, our plastics, our paper,” Fried has said. “Hemp is going to be what I call an industrial revolution in our state and across the country, and it's all biodegradable.”

“Any time you have that much money on the table, things get very competitive,” Presnell said. “Growing hemp will only be successful in areas reasonably close to receiving facilities. I could grow 40 acres of it here in Gadsden County, but if I have to take it to Atlanta, that’s not a very viable option.”

Presnell can relate to farmers who lost timber crops to Michael. He grows “trees and cows” on a farm a couple of miles east of Chattahoochee.

“I was lucky,” he said. “I cut my trees and replanted a few years ago, so I had a lot of young, limber trees in rotation.

Timing is everything.”

Presnell likes a suggestion made by Beth Cicchetti, executive director of the Gadsden County Development Council.

Cicchetti is hopeful that Cal-Maine’s egg-producing facilities in Quincy, shuttered after Hurricane Michael, might be converted to hemp industry use.

PHOTOS BY SAIGE ROBERTS (HEM)P) AND COURTESY OF TAYLOR BIEHL

By Steve Bornhoft

“If that could happen, Gadsden County might become a hemp industry hub for a multi-county region,” Presnell said.

Taylor Biehl is a co-founder and the vice president of the Florida Hemp Association, based in Tallahassee.

Taylor Biehl, co-founder He said that, in Florida, the and the vice president of Florida Hemp Association Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services (FDACS) will regulate the hemp industry and has been responsible for developing rules regarding hemp for approval by the federal government.

“The rules have been finalized and they have made it through a challenge period,” Biehl said in December.

Still being worked on was a concern on the part of the federal government that the hemp crop in Florida might run “too hot,” that is, it might exceed the federally imposed THC limit of 0.3 percent. Tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) is the psychoactive ingredient in cannabis; hemp and marijuana are classifications of cannabis.

Biehl relayed to 850 Magazine an update supplied by FDACS. In it, the department clarified that permits to engage in any aspect of the hemp business in Florida will not be limited, and the

industry will be horizontal in character. That is, a business may choose to participate in a single part of the hemp business, a few parts or all of them. In this regard, the hemp industry, as proposed, differs from the vertically integrated medical marijuana industry.

Also, according to FDACS: A rule governing the use of hemp extract in animal feed was set to become effective Jan. 1.

A rule to allow university research pilot projects to certify seeds under Florida law was due to be filed for final adoption in January.

FDACS’s proposed cultivation rule was being revised to align it with U.S. Department of Agriculture rules.

FDACS was recommending to USDA sampling and testing methodologies designed to lower the incidence of “hot plants” and subsequent requirements to destroy crops.

FDACS said that, consistent with Gainer’s wishes, it expected cultivation to occur in the first quarter of 2020.

“People are heavily focused on revitalizing the timber industry, and we have received many, many calls from timber farmers,” Biehl said.

Citrus growers and entrepreneurs, too, are ringing the Florida Hemp Association’s phones.

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Transportation Hub Project at Gretna exchange will be important feature of logistics zone

By Steve Bornhoft

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chances for priority funding for projects within its boundaries, and it is intended to stimulate greater use of the Port of Port St. Joe and to revitalize the Apalachicola Northern Railway line that connects Port St. Joe and Chattahoochee. The FLZ will link port, airport, rail and highway systems to help increase the flow of freight and increase economic development in the region.

Strategically, Jefferson said, the Highway 12 site “made a lot of sense. We have a willing seller, the interstate and a railroad are at close proximity to the site and water and sewer are already present at the northwest and northeast corners of the exchange.”

Other exchanges in Gadsden County, Jefferson pointed out, were less suitable as a candidate for an intermodal distribution center, either given hurdles to development or because, in the case of the Midway exchange, it is already nearing build-out.

Jefferson said the extension of utilities to the Highway 12 site will make some 2,000 adjoining acres, most of them within the city of Gretna, developable.

He said he hopes the feasibility study will be completed no later than the first part of the fourth quarter of this year and that construction of a lift station to serve the south side of the exchange will begin prior to year’s end.

Additional rounds of state and federal funding will be more easily secured once the feasibility hurdle is cleared.

And, Jefferson said, the City of Gretna will work with Gadsden County and the neighboring Town of Greensboro to assemble a funding package for the project’s build-out.

“We get a lot of inquiries about the site, but the challenging question from interested parties always has been, ‘How long will it take you to deliver the infrastructure?’ Jefferson said. “We’re getting a lot closer to being able to give people a good answer the that question. We’re excited.

“I believe we will have tenants in place by 2021 or 2022 and, conservatively, the project will bring about 300 permanent jobs.”

PHOTOS BY SAIGE ROBERTS

G

retna City Manager Antonio Jefferson looks out upon 600 acres at the Highway 12/Interstate 10 exchange in Gadsden County and sees 300 jobs.

The Gadsden County Development Council holds a purchase option on the acreage, and the City of Gretna has been awarded almost $300,000 in state funds with which to complete a feasibility study at the site.

That work, Jefferson said, will include an environmental assessment, the delineation of developable property and design work related to roadways, sewer and water. It will be reviewed by the state Department of Economic Opportunity and agencies including the Department of Environmental Protection and the Northwest Florida Water Management District.

Jefferson envisions that the site will become an intermodal distribution center and a key component within the Gulf to Gadsden Freight Logistics Zone (FLZ), which extends from the Port of Port St. Joe to the I-10 corridor.

The FLZ project was made possible by a community planning technical assistance grant from the Department of Economic Opportunity to Gulf County, and it encompasses all or parts of Gulf, Franklin, Liberty and Gadsden counties.

An FLZ designation increases the

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Mural in Havana created by Sarah Painter and Cosby Hayes

Downtown Resuscitation Main Street organizations are working to breathe life into communities’ centers

By Steve Bornhoft

P

enny O’Connell tells a story about a gentleman from Los Angeles who, sight unseen, purchased a building in Quincy’s historic downtown and visited the property for the first time in December.

He was impressed, so much so that he likened Quincy to Napa Valley in its early days.

“He said he’d like to park a DeLorean (like those featured in “Back to the Future” movies) in front of his building and get a picture of it and our courthouse,” O’Connell said. “He told me, ‘You don’t know what you’ve got here.’ ” Well, O’Connell, for one, sees great potential in Quincy. In November of last year, she became the first full-time director in the history of the city’s Main Street program. In so doing, she filled a job that had been vacant for almost a year.

“Five years from now, it will be an entirely different ballgame in Quincy,” O’Connell said. “There are opportunities for people to buy a building here, lease it and later turn around and sell it at a big profit. If I didn’t believe in this place passionately, I wouldn’t be in my job.”

Like Main Street programs elsewhere,

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the Quincy initiative’s budget comprises, roughly in thirds, private donations, grants and support from local government — at least for now.

At this writing, O’Connell said, the city is considering withdrawing its support for Main Street and taking ownership of events such as Quincyfest and Porchfest that the nonprofit has conducted in the past with the city’s financial assistance.

Regardless, O’Connell said, “I’m happy. If we don’t get funding from the city, we will go forward. It just means that our schedule will change and our events won’t be as big and showy.”

Those more modest events include Food Truck Fridays.

Generally, O’Connell said, she is striving to provide activities that will lead people to visit Quincy’s nine-block historic district and to get downtown buildings occupied, ideally with attractive shops and restaurants.

“We are trying to match owners with renters who are good fits,” O’Connell said. “We are working with code enforcement to ensure that buildings are being taken care of.

“I believe that when you have a thriving

downtown that is active with places to eat and shop, money will spread through the whole county. Downtown is the heart and the veins run out from there. And, when downtown does well, that will make the development of businesses outside the city’s core more feasible.”

Penny O'Connell, executive director of Quincy Main Street

PHOTOS BY SAIGE ROBERTS

O’Connell said people from around the country own buildings in Quincy’s historic district and conceded that absentee owners are not always the city’s best friends, especially when they are content to sit on properties and wait for their value to increase when they come to be surrounded by the activities of others.

She is optimistic, however, that her lessor-lessee matchmaking activity and “the consistency of someone actively working full time downtown is going to make a difference.”

She takes nothing away from the restaurants and accommodations businesses already situated downtown — Odells restaurant, Damfino’s Café, the White Squirrel Inn, the McFarlin House bed and breakfast and the Allison House Inn. “They’re great,” she said. “We just need more options. I’ve met people staying at our inns in Quincy who were having dinner at Rutabaga’s in Chattahoochee 30 miles away.”

Dean Mitchell, an artist with a national reputation who grew up in poverty in Quincy, would seem to have done as McConnell would have him do.

Mitchell, who is black, acquired a building on the “African American side of the square” downtown, restored it and made it the home of the Marie Brooks Gallery, named for his grandmother.

In that way, Mitchell was a pioneer, a role that he is familiar with. He committed to life as an artist long before African American art was recognized as a genre.

For as many as 20 years, he attended art shows where he was the only black person present.

Mitchell has held shows of his work at the Gadsden Art Center, shows that were well attended, but that support has not thus far extended to his business on the square.

Mitchell lives in Tampa but visits his hometown and family there six to eight times a year.

“People complain about folks from small towns who do well that they never come back,” Mitchell said. “I wanted to go back and be part of the renaissance that they were trying to bring about in Quincy. And, I’m trying to hang on to my gallery, but I am looking at possibly moving it to Tampa.”

Mitchell believes that people may see

Artist Dean Mitchell is hopeful that his Marie Brooks Gallery in Quincy will come to enjoy greater local support.

his business as taking away from the Art Center. Some have accused him of gentrification.

“But I came back to try to benefit everybody by creating something that would bring people to town,” Mitchell said. “I came back to remind people that you can emerge from poverty if you choose a path and work hard.

“But, as anybody knows, no matter what you’re are selling, be it automobiles or hamburgers, you need the local community to support you.”

Still, Mitchell remains hopeful that he will be able to stabilize the gallery, begin to more heavily promote it, hire an employee and then maybe buy another building and open a restaurant.

“I sold an expensive piece to a library in Brookhaven, Mississippi,” Mitchell said. He later visited the city of some 12,000 people.

“It is booming in the middle of nowhere,” he said. “They renovate a warehouse in Brookhaven, and it is occupied right away. The same thing could happen here. We’re right next door to the state capital.”

RALLYING AROUND THE BANK Tony Lombardo retired in 1999 at the age of 57 as a vice president from BellSouth, where he served as a

regulatory liaison with the state Public Service Commission.

Eighteen years later, he went back to work as the executive director of Havana Main Street. He has been in that job since August 2017, when the nonprofit was chartered.

While he lives in Tallahassee, Lombardo, along with his daughter, has owned a store in Havana for 27 years.

For most of its existence, it sold international craft items. Following the Great Recession, when business dropped off by half, it evolved to become a seller of furniture, home accessories and jewelry.

Two years ago, he opened a second business, a coffee shop.

“Downtown is built on the fortunes of the merchants, be they good or bad,” Lombardo said. “When they lost their disposable income, the economy plummeted. I was approached three years ago by people who asked me if I would help revitalize downtown. When I got the job, I thought it was a lark and I would be able to turn things around in a year, but it has become a very, very big undertaking.”

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Havana State Bank building

As of January, $48,000 had been raised, enough to replace the building’s roof and arrest its deterioration due to the elements.

“The building was the only bank in town for over 100 years, so it played a big part in the lives of a lot of people,” Lombardo said.

“Among families with history in Havana, no one wants to see it torn down.”

Havana Main Street has four standing committees — Design, Promotion and Events, Economic Revitalization and Organization — per an organizational template established by the national Main Street organization. All are active.

In 2019, Havana Main Street absorbed a 35-year-old merchant’s association and, with it, events the that group had conducted. As a result, Main Street’s event list is long and includes activities ranging from a Pinewood Derby to an AirStream Rally and a Quilt Show to a Pumpkin Fest.

The AirStream Rally, which overtakes the streets of downtown, is scheduled this year for March 26–29. A popular open house, which affords the public an opportunity to inspect interiors of the trailers, will take place on Saturday, March 28, from 1 to 5 p.m.

Havana Main Street priorities, Lombardo said, include making the Main Street (Highway 27) entrance to downtown more inviting and attractive and giving downtown a facelift with the addition of murals, decorative signage, façade improvements and restoration of the bank building.

In addition, Havana Main Street plans to enhance its marketing outreach through social media, television and other media outlets.

“Downtown Havana will never fulfill its potential unless we convince the greater Havana community to fully embrace their downtown,” Lombardo said. “Somehow, over the years, we have lost the sense of pride and proprietorship the community once had for their downtown. We are channeling much of our effort to rebuild a partnership with the community, its businesses and the town’s government.”

PARK REDEVELOPMENT In Chattahoochee, said Robert Presnell, the Main Street program and the city

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Tony Lombardo, executive director of Havana Main Street, with his daughter Terri Paul

collaborated in securing a National Park Service planning grant, resulting in a blueprint for redevelopment of a cityowned RV park on the Apalachicola River.

Presnell, formerly Gadsden County manager, was coaxed out of retirement following Hurricane Michael and, as city manager, is working to help rehabilitate Chattahoochee.

He was highly complimentary of Park Service personnel from Atlanta who conducted public meetings, notified stakeholders, prepared maps and arrived at a park redevelopment plan.

The city has now applied to the state for funds to cover engineering costs related to the project.

Presnell said that the city will be receiving from the state 140 acres that are contiguous to the park and will provide enough room for the installation of bicycle trails.

Federal New Market Tax Credit funds totaling $2.6 million, Presnell said, will be used for park construction and to acquire and fix up dilapidated buildings and install sidewalks and other amenities downtown.

Presnell credited Chattahoochee Main Street and its director, Pam Medley, with conducting foot traffic-generating events, including a Christmas in the Park celebration, a Business Recognition Day and Final Friday activities featuring food vendors and bands.

PHOTOS BY SAIGE ROBERTS (HAVANA STATE BANK) AND PHIL SEARS (LOMBARDO)

structures that are at least 50 years old.

Down the road, Lombardo and others hope Havana will be established as a National Historic District. That designation, or “brand,” as Lombardo called it, would serve as a tourist draw and open avenues for additional grants.

Perhaps the most prominent historic structure in town is the Havana State Bank building, constructed in 1906 at Havana’s main intersection — 7th Avenue and Main Street. Havana Main Street acquired the building after an anonymous donor supplied the organization with enough money to buy it, and Main Street is now conducting a capital campaign aimed at raising enough money to thoroughly restore the structure.

BUSINESS NEWS

CAPITAL

APPOINTMENTS

» The Florida Board of Governors has appointed business executives John Thiel and Bob Sasser to the Florida State University Board of Trustees. They will serve fiveyear terms. Thiel, who earned a bachelor’s degree in accounting from FSU in 1983, recently retired as vice chairman of Global Wealth and Investment Management at Merrill Lynch and is now a partner and senior advisor at My Next Season, which specializes in executive retirement and career transitions. Sasser, who first joined the FSU Board of Trustees in 2015, was reappointed to a second term. A Florida State alumnus, Sasser is executive chairman of Dollar Tree Inc. LOCAL HAPPENINGS

» Tallahassee financial services leader and veteran banker Paul Sullivan has joined Hancock SULLIVAN Whitney as a senior vice president and commercial banker. Given his 17-year career at BB&T, which included 13 years as Tallahassee market president, Sullivan comes to Hancock Whitney with a long professional and personal history in Tallahassee banking. In his new role, he will serve businesses in the market by managing, protecting and helping to grow their assets.

PHOTOS PROVIDED BY INDIVIDUALS

» The Jim Moran College of Entrepreneurship at Florida State University has become the nation’s first stand-alone college of entrepreneurship. » Real estate industry experts from across the country gathered for the FSU Real Estate Center’s 25th Real Estate TRENDS Conference, held Oct. 24–25, 2019. The event featured speakers, including top real estate investment executives David Rubenstein of the Carlyle Group in Washington, D.C., and Dan Quayle, former vice president of the United States, who is now with Cerberus

Global Investments in New York.

Grammy Award winner and FSU graduate Rita Coolidge performed at a special reception. More than 700 registrants attended the conference, including FSU finance and real estate students.

» Jessica Icerman has joined Stearns Weaver Miller as an attorney in the Land Development, Zoning, Environmental & Government Affairs group.

Prior to joining the firm, Icerman served as an assistant county attorney in the Leon County ICERMAN Attorney’s Office. » Baker Donelson

has appointed Lauren D. Brooks to serve as pro bono committee office chair for the firm’s BROOKS Tallahassee office.

In that role, she will work to identify and address local pro bono needs while coordinating with Baker Donelson pro bono shareholder Samuel T. Bowman for global pro bono initiatives.

» Second Harvest of the Big Bend announced the appointment of James R. McGowan as director of philanthropy. As the newest Second Harvest team member, McGowan will lead the food bank’s fundraising efforts. » Bank of America presented local nonprofit CESC Inc. with $15,000 in funding to support the organization’s goal to reduce homelessness in the Tallahassee area. As part of this initiative, CESC Inc. constructed the nation’s first tiny home community, The Dwellings, to accommodate lowto moderate-income individuals.

SOUNDBYTES

The grant is part of the bank’s commitment to addressing affordable housing challenges by providing families and individuals with security and stability.

» The Stearns Weaver Miller law firm and attorney Gigi Rollini have been named members of America’s Second ROLLINI Harvest of the Big Bend’s Feeding Hope Society.

Rollini has been involved with America’s Second Harvest of the Big Bend since 2012.

LOCAL HONORS

» Florida State University

recognized freshmen Kiara Guerrier and Alejandro Robins as 2019 Jim Moran Scholars. Jim Moran Foundation chairman and president Jan Moran and FSU president John Thrasher celebrated the scholars during a private reception held at the Jim Moran Building in downtown Tallahassee. Each year, the Jim Moran Foundation and FSU recognize two exemplary African Americans who have been admitted to the university, with one graduating from a South Florida high school and one from a North Florida high school. Jim Moran Scholars receive a fouryear, needs-based scholarship with funding provided through the Jim Moran Institute for Global Entrepreneurship, housed in the College of Business at FSU.

» Tallahassee native Nicholas

Burnette was recently named regional champion of LongHorn Steakhouse’s Steak Master

Series, a culinary competition where the restaurant’s top-performing grill experts vie for the title of Steak Master.

BURNETTE He is one of 57 team members from LongHorn Steakhouse to achieve this distinction. Nicholas Burnette is grill master at the LongHorn Steakhouse on North Monroe Street in Tallahassee.

» Gloria Pugh, CEO of AMWAT Moving Warehousing Storage, is the 2019 Women Business PUGH Enterprise Award recipient. She was recognized at the 27th Annual Big Bend Minority Enterprise Development Week, organized by the Tallahassee-Leon County Office of Economic Vitality. » Reid Rushing, president of insurance at Beck Partners, was named a Seminole 100 Award Recipient by the Jim Moran Institute for Global RUSHING Enterprise in Florida State University’s College of Business. The annual list recognizes the 100 fastest growing Florida State University alumni-owned or managed businesses. Beck Partners creates innovative partnerships that bring people together to forge successful futures in commercial real estate, property management and insurance. » The Association of Florida Colleges has announced that Tallahassee Community College has been honored with 12 awards of excellence, including the highly regarded Exemplary Practice Award, in the 2019 annual marketing and communications competition among the 28 Florida colleges.

TCC received the AFC’s only communications and marketing Exemplary Practice Award for its TCC2WORK integrated marketing campaign and branding initiative.

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SOUNDBYTES

» FSU Credit Union was recognized by the League of Southeastern Credit Unions & Affiliates with the first place Dora Maxwell Award for credit unions in its asset division for exhibiting excellence in community social responsibility in 2018. » Domi Station has been named

one of 60 national winners in the Small Business Administration Growth Accelerator Fund Competition. Domi competed in collaboration with Innovation Park of Tallahassee, and will receive $50,000 to support startups and entrepreneurs researching and developing STEM-related innovations.

NEW & NOTABLE

» Barberitos, a fast-casual burrito restaurant with 50 locations across the Southeast, awarded Tallahassee restaurant owners Jessica and Todd Jones with the prestigious “Bigger than a Burrito Award” at the chain’s annual conference. The award is given to the franchisees who embody Barberitos’ mission to offer farmfresh food and give back to the community. The Jones’ location is at 1817 Thomasville Road.

EMERALD COAST

LOCAL HAPPENINGS

» Master developer Minto Communities USA, global lifestyle brand Margaritaville Holdings and The St. Joe Company announced that they have started land development activities for Latitude Margaritaville Watersound. The site for the active adult community is in Bay County near Panama City Beach. » Rosemary Beach

Realty has announced the promotion of Amanda Hampel to vice president and broker. She will HAMPEL continue to serve as general counsel for Rosemary Beach Holdings and its subsidiary companies.

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» Proffitt PR, a boutique public relations, marketing and event planning firm, has announced SHEEKLEY the promotion of Taylor Sheekley to marketing manager. She will have primary responsibility for managing public relations, marketing and advertising initiatives for the firm’s 40-plus clients. » The City of Panama City is purchasing three homes from Out of the Box Building Systems to provide affordable housing for people recovering from Hurricane Michael. » The Legal Services Corporation (LSC) announced that Legal Services of North Florida will receive $3 million to help low-income Floridians with disaster-related legal needs. LSC’s grant will allow Legal Services of North Florida to provide direct legal representation to survivors of Hurricane Michael by increasing its disaster legal services staff and expanding its outreach to disasteraffected areas. It will also enhance its pro bono recruitment efforts to increase access to services. » The Joint Chiropractic has opened its second location in Pensacola. The Joint Chiropractic is the nation’s largest provider of chiropractic care. The new office is located at 7175 North Davis Highway. » The Studer Community Institute welcomed new members to the SCI Board of Directors. They will bring expertise in business, entrepreneurship, community outreach, education and health care to the work that SCI does to improve the quality of life in communities, including Pensacola.

The new members are: Tosh Belsinger, Jules Kariher, Van Mansker, Tia Robbins, Kathy Sandstrom, Joy Sharp, Michelle Snow and Bert Thornton.

LOCAL HONORS

» The Pearl Hotel has been named No. 2 among the Top Hotels in Florida, No. 10 in the U.S. and No. 37 in the world. Additionally, WaterColor

850businessmagazine.com

Inn was selected as No. 12 among the Top Resorts in Florida. These rankings are based on more than 600,000 votes cast by Condé Nast Traveler readers in the magazine’s 2019 Readers’ Choice Awards.

» Another Broken Egg Café, an upscale breakfast, brunch and lunch restaurant, has opened a new location in Destin Commons.

» Complete DKI, the largest

LOCAL HAPPENINGS

restoration company on the Gulf Coast, headquartered in Pensacola with additional offices in Tallahassee and Mobile, Alabama, was named employer of the year at Entrecon 2019. Entrecon is an annual national symposium hosted by Studer Community Institute to foster and provide resources for business leaders and entrepreneurs.

» Otmar Yakaboski, a lead engineer and analyst for the U.S. Department of Defense, has been YAKABOSKI elected to the grade of Associate Fellow – Class of 2020 in the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA). Yakaboski lives in Fort Walton Beach and works at Eglin Air Force Base. Each year, only one for every 150 AIAA members is selected for the honor, which recognizes notable contributions to the aerospace community.

Yakaboski was formally inducted as an AIAA Associate fellow at a ceremony held in Orlando in January. » For the second year in a row, Hancock Whitney, in partnership with the Greater New Orleans Foundation, has awarded competitive grants to help nonprofits broaden community development efforts across the five Gulf South states the bank serves. The Boys & Girls Clubs of the Emerald Coast is one of the organizations receiving a grant.

NEW & NOTABLE

» Fort Walton Beach Medical Center announced that it will launch an $80 million expansion and renovation project that will benefit the community, patients and team members. The first project to get underway will be the building of a free-standing ER in Navarre.

FWBMC anticipates the facility will open in November 2020.

BAY

» The longtime manager of the City of Panama City’s Community Redevelopment SHAMPLAIN Agency, Toni Shamplain, has taken on a new role as president of the Florida Redevelopment Association (FRA). Shamplain plans to advocate for Florida’s 221 Community Redevelopment Agencies (CRAs) by addressing redevelopment issues and seeking new partnerships with FRA members.

LOCAL HONORS

» The Bay County Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) has received the national SHRM organization’s Pinnacle Award — the highest honor given to SHRM state councils and chapters for notable contributions to the human resource profession. The Bay County SHRM chapter was recognized for its “Hurricane Michael Outreach and Recovery Efforts” program that supported devastated chapter members in the wake of Hurricane Michael.

I-10

» The Jackson County Education Foundation awarded the following area teachers with grants: Lisa Taylor, Donna Wilson, Genia Smith, Angela Newsom, Jill Berquist, Tami Hall, Amy Miller, Cindy Franklin, Wade Caudle, Sydney Dickson, Brittany McKee, Alana Green, Sue Ingram, Vickie Hogan, DeeAnna Golden, Alanna Russ, Dr. Jeri Benton, Rosie Wade, Reanna Logan, LuAnn Law, Shuana Ferguson, Niki White, Miranda Jordan, Melody Parrish, Teresa Martin, Monice Mobley, Kerrianne Edwards, Shannie Bess, Catherine Conner, Daryl Williams, Missy Mitchell, Kim Williams and Lechael Baylock.

— COMPILED BY REBECCA PADGETT

PHOTOS PROVIDED BY INDIVIDUALS

BUSINESS NEWS

P RO M OT I O N

JURIED ART COMPETITION

During the two-day event, people from around the Big Bend area and Southeast region of the country come to see talented artists who have been juried into the festival, each competing for more than $10,000 in awards.

North Florida’s Premier Fine Art Festival is a Tallahassee Legacy

C

PHOTO COURTESY OF BOB O’LARY

T

elebrating the arts is a Tallahassee tradition. Now celebrating its 20th year, the Chain of Parks Art Festival produced by LeMoyne Arts will be held Saturday and Sunday, April 18–19, 2020, at the Bloxham, Lewis and Randolph “Chain of Parks” in downtown Tallahassee.

“The 20-year mark is a huge milestone for us,” said Festival Chair Kelly Dozier. “Planning this incredible event alongside passionate volunteers for two decades has been a lot of fun and a labor of love. We enjoy bringing such fabulous artists to our community and booking new, exciting talent.

Each year, the festival has grown more popular and even more competitive for artists to participate — seeing it evolve into the community cornerstone has been such a joy.”

The festival will be open all weekend, 10 a.m.–5 p.m., with an evening groove on Saturday from 5:30–7:30 p.m. with Tallahassee Nights Live! performing.

Admission is free of charge and open to the public. Proceeds from the festival benefit LeMoyne Arts’ educational and exhibition programs.

Announced by Sunshine Artist™ magazine in their September issue, LeMoyne’s Chain of Parks Art Festival is ranked No. 3 in Best 100 Fine Art and Design Festivals in the country!

Each year, the magazine names the “100 Best Fine Art & Design Shows” in the country and Tallahassee’s Chain of Parks Art Festival has made the list five years in a row. Sunshine Artist™ is the leading publication for art and craft show exhibitors, promoters and patrons in the United States.

3D CHALK ART ADDITION

On its 20th anniversary, the Chain of Parks Art Festival is introducing a new and exciting dimension featuring four national street chalk artists creating original works of art at the festival! The guest chalk artists will beautify the streets with elaborate 3-dimensional pieces, focusing on North Florida themes. These artistic illusions will make for a fun photo op and will be an interactive experience for the whole family.

2020 COVER ARTIST The 2020 cover artist is Tallahassee local Kelly Rysavy. Her work, “Under the Oaks,” will grace the cover of the festival program in addition to being featured on festival souvenirs available for purchase.

PHOTO COURTESY OF BOB O’LARY

Chain of Parks Art Festival Shines in 20th Year

CHAIN OF PARKS ART FESTIVAL 125 N. Gadsden St., Tallahassee, FL 32301 | (850) 222-8800 | ChainOfParks.com

You can also follow and engage with Chain of Parks on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter (@ChainofParks).

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The Last Word

AN ILLUMINATING PARTNERSHIP Agency leads nonprofit to a brand that reflects its essence

where the Methodist Church was about to shutter the place. Had that happened, a building that occupies a full city block would have been left vacant.

Instead, that building today is alive with people on the rebound, and the church lives on.

On Sundays, Robin Noble serves Richards Memorial as its pastor. Through the remainder of the week, she is the executive director of Bright Bridge Ministries, which rents space from the church and has become a resource center for people who are hungry, homeless and battling addiction.

The ministry got its start when neighborhood residents began knocking on the door of the church kitchen, seeking food. The church responded to the need by preparing bag lunches for distribution to people stopping by.

Word got around.

The meals program expanded, and the Methodist Church approved use of the church building for a full-time ministry. In 2007, Pensacola United Methodist Community Ministries was established as a 501(c)(3) organization separate from Richards Memorial. Last year, PUMCM became Bright Bridge Ministries. More on that in a bit.

The ministry serves hot lunches four days a week to anyone who wants one, no questions asked. It serves meals, too, on Friday evenings in conjunction with a 12-step Celebrate Recovery program and following Sunday afternoon worship services.

The meals program enabled Noble and others to get to know the regulars and their circumstances. They included

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men who had completed drug and alcohol addiction treatment programs and found themselves without a place to live upon discharge.

At this writing, 34 men are living at Bright Bridge, working on themselves and their futures as participants in a transitional housing program, His Place, that is in its third year.

“When they entered treatment, many of these men had already lost their jobs and their car and had lost touch with family because they were battling addiction so badly,” Noble said. “After treatment, they can come here (instead of returning to hanging out with their drinking and drugging buddies), and we can help get them re-established, help them find a job, help them get to the job.”

Most of the people who eat meals at the Center take life-skills classes there, attend Alcoholics Anonymous or Celebrate Recovery meetings or spend time at His Place, arriving on foot or by bicycle.

But some people cross town to obtain assistance with food stamp applications, and two men arrived in November from Mississippi, having heard about His Place — and that was before a marketing campaign developed by the idgroup branding agency in Pensacola had kicked in.

Each year, via its Brand On Us initiative, idgroup selects a nonprofit organization to receive services and media valued at $150,000. This year, it was Bright Bridge’s turn. Indeed, it was

idgroup that suggested “Bright Bridge” as an alternative to a name that could not be remembered. It redid the ministry’s website, enhanced its social media presence and developed a public-service advertising campaign.

Media partners working with idgroup donate time and space. A Vista volunteer is taking charge of social media.

Noble said the campaign is designed primarily to promote awareness of activities and programs available at the ministry.

But, she said, it also may lead to partnerships with other nonprofit organizations, churches and even restaurants.

“And, we are already seeing an uptick in donations,” Noble said just days after the ministry’s new website went live.

Brand On Us represents a shining example of a business lending its expertise to a nonprofit organization so that it might better serve the community. Kudos, I say.

The new logo is made up of a deep blue bar that suggests water and, above it, two semicircles that suggest bridge spans.

One span is light blue, the other orange.

For Nobles, the logo represents a progression to brightness. And, the campaign “reflects great optimism, which is what we are all about.”

Pretty cool.

Go brightly,

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

PHOTO BY SAIGE ROBERTS

The congregation at Richards Memorial United Methodist Church in Pensacola’s historic Brownsville neighborhood once shrunk to the point

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