Business observer 81117

AU G U S T 11 - AU G U S T 17, 2017 | TH R E E D O LL A R S

FLOR IDA’S NE WSPAPER FOR T HE C - SUI T E

Health care | Peek behind the curtain of a hospital’s strategy to stand out. PG.7 PASCO • H ILL SBOROUG H • PIN ELL AS • P OLK • M A N ATEE • SA R ASOTA • C H A R LOT TE • LEE • COLLIER

‘Out of the Shadows’ Medical cannabis is uncharted territory. How will a Sarasota firm rise above the crowd?

PAGE 12

Todd Beckwith and Michael Smullen | ALTMED, SARASOTA STRATEGIES

ENTREPRENEURS

COMMERCIAL REAL ESTATE

Bright Futures

A Fresh Cut

Major Momentum

HOSPITALITY

HEALTH CARE

COMMERCIAL REAL ESTATE

Healthy Appetite

No Quit

Across the Bow

With a regionwide labor shortage in full force, an electrical services firm looks to interns for help.

PAGE 8

For a pair of entrepreneurial Naples foodies, restaurant week lasts for an entire year.

PAGE 10

After a decade and $25 million, cancer medication firm Intezyne has yet to make a profit. Can it survive?

PAGE 14

A n e a s t M a n a t e e C ou nt y l i f e sciences development moves forward with its first three projects.

PAGE 16

Wit h a $ 65.75 million purchase, Tampa-based First Lake Capital shows how serious it is about St. Petersburg.

PAGE 18

Report: Sarasota mall value drops 70%, to $39 million. 16 Publix acquires a trio of centers in region for $68.7 million. 16 Naples developer buys rare waterfront tracts. 17

PAGE

6 Florida’s food stamps ratio remains unusually high.

224515

DON’T MISS

Liza Howard sacrificed a lot — at a young age — to launch her hair salon business. It’s beginning to pay off.

PAGE 11

REAL ESTATE

cooltoday.com

2

BUSINESS OBSERVER | AUGUST 11 – AUGUST 17, 2017

BusinessObserverFL.com

Vol. XXI, No. 30

SELL INVESTMENT PROPERTY

A Division of The Ob­serv­er Media Group

BusinessObserverFL.com

TAX FREE

Founded in 1997, the Business Observer is Southwest and Central Florida’s newspaper for business leaders.

With offices in Hillsborough, Pinellas, Polk, Pasco, Manatee, Sarasota, Charlotte, Lee and Collier counties, the Business Observer is the only weekly business newspaper that provides business leaders with a regional perspective. The Business Observer’s mission is to deliver relevant news and information on Southwest and Central Florida’s leading and growing companies, up-and-coming entrepreneurs and economic, industry and government trends affecting business. The Business Observer is also the leading publisher of public notices on the Gulf Coast of Florida.

Learn about 1031 exchanges

VISIT OUR WEBSITE > US1031.COM

Editor and Publisher / Matt Walsh, mwalsh@BusinessObserverFL.com

Jefferson F. Riddell

Executive Editor / Kat Hughes khughes@BusinessObserverFL.com Managing Editor / Mark Gordon mgordon@BusinessObserverFL.com Commercial Real Estate Editor / Kevin McQuaid kmcquaid@BusinessObserverFL.com Staff Writer/ Grier Ferguson gferguson@BusinessObserverFL.com

President Phone: (941) 366 -1300 Fax: (941) 366 - 6973 E-mail: jriddell@rlglawfirm.com

Board Certified Real Estate Attorney has been facilitating 1031 exchanges for over 30 years.

Learn how a 1031 exchange may help you defer taxes, save money and maximize your investment dollars. Visit our website or call for a FREE consultation.

Editorial Design / Nicole Thompson Copy Editor / Kelly Carson Contributors / Traci McMillan Beach, Steven Benna, Ted Carter, Beth Luberecki

Associate Publisher / Kathleen O’Hara kohara@YourObserver.com Associate Publisher / Diane Schaefer dschaefer@BusinessObserverFL.com Director of Legal Advertising / Kristen Boothroyd kboothroyd@BusinessObserverFL.com Advertising Production Manager / Kathy Payne kpayne@YourObserver.com Chief Financial Officer / Laura Keisacker lkeisacker@YourObserver.com Director of Circulation / Anne Shumate subscriptions@BusinessObserverFL.com

HOW TO REACH US Hillsborough County

204 S. Hoover Blvd., Suite #220 Tampa, FL 33609 Phone: 941/906-9386 (Legal Notices) Fax: 813/287-9403

U.S. 1031

21ST CENTURY REAL ESTATE INVESTING

Lee County

Orange County

720 S. Dillard St. Winter Garden, FL 34787 Phone: 941/906-9386 (Legal Notices) Fax: 407/654-5560

3400 South Tamiami Trail, Sarasota, Florida 34239

Why Wagner?

Pinellas County

Pasco County

3730 Cleveland Heights Blvd., Suite 5 Lakeland, FL 33803 Phone: 941/906-9386 (Legal Notices) Fax: 863/646-9491 To send Legal Notices, email to: legal@BusinessObserverFL.com. Name the county of interest in the subject line and attach notice. Deadline for legal notices is noon Wednesday.

For Display Advertising, call (941) 362-4848. Deadline for display advertising space is noon Friday.

Ross Baldwin, Double R Investments, LLC San Diego, CA

HOW TO SUBSCRIBE Subscription Price

One-Year Periodical Rate........................................................................................ $75 One-Year First-Class Mail......................................................................................$107

Don Swartz (941) 730-4695

Two-Year Periodical Rate.......................................................................................$127 Two-Year First-Class Mail.......................................................................................$180 Three-Year Periodical Rate....................................................................................$185 Three-Year First-Class Mail...................................................................................$239 Single copy price: $3 Group rates for five or more corporate subscriptions are available.

To subscribe online: www.businessobserverfl.com If you have a question about your subscription or wish to suspend your subscription temporarily, call Anne Shumate, (877) 231-8834 or contact her by email: subscriptions@BusinessObserverFL.com

djsoffice@msn.com • Successful sales and marketing career for national companies • Leased over 2oo industrial, retail and flex units • A member of Wagner’s Business Brokerage Group • Works with national and international clients

POSTAL INFORMATION The Business Observer (ISSN#1539-9184) is published weekly on Fridays by the Gulf Coast Review Inc., 1970 Main St., Sarasota, FL, 34236; 204 S. Hoover Blvd., Suite #220, Tampa, FL 33609; 14004 Roosevelt Blvd., Clearwater, FL 33762; 3030 Starkey Blvd., New Port Richey, FL 34655; 5570 Gulf of Mexico Dr., Longboat Key, FL 34228; 949 Tamiami Trail, Suite 202, Port Charlotte, FL 33953; 15050 Elderberry Lane, Suite #4-12, Fort Myers, FL 33907; The French Quarter, 501 Goodlette Road N., #D-100, Naples, FL 34102; and 3730 Cleveland Heights Blvd., Suite 5, Lakeland, FL 33803. Periodicals Postage Paid at Sarasota, FL, and at additional mailing offices. The Business Observer is circulated in Charlotte, Collier, Hillsborough, Lee, Manatee, Pasco, Pinellas, Polk and Sarasota counties.

The Wagner Commercial team is highly-trained and experienced in ALL areas of Commercial & Investment Real Estate.

POSTMASTER: Please send changes of address to the Business Observer, P.O. Box 3169, Sarasota, FL 34230.

A Division of Wagner Realty

11121 State Road 70 East Lakewood Ranch, FL 34202 www.WagnerRealty.com

3030 Starkey Blvd.

New Port Richey, FL 34655 Phone: 941/906-9386 (Legal Notices) Fax: 813/287-9403

Polk County

Don works tirelessly to keep our 12 commercial units occupied at increasing prices with well qualified tenants. We are happy to have such a conscientious person representing us to our tenants.

”

Collier County

The French Quarter, 501 Goodlette Road N., #D-100 Naples, FL 34102 Phone: 941/906-9386 (Legal Notices) Fax: 239/263-0112

14004 Roosevelt Blvd.

Clearwater, FL 33762 Phone: 941/906-9386 (Legal Notices) Fax: 727/447-3944

Because Experience Counts.

“

PO Box 3169 Sarasota, FL 34230 1970 Main St., Suite 400, Sarasota, FL 34236 Phone: 941/362-4848 Phone: 941/906-9386 (Legal Notices) Fax: 941/954-8530

Charlotte County

Address: 949 Tamiami Trail, Suite 202 Port Charlotte, FL 33953 Phone: 941/906-9386 (Legal Notices) Fax: 941/249-4901

For information on reprints, visit BusinessObserverFL.com

“The road is cleared,” said Galt. “We are going back to the world.”

He raised his hand and over the desolate earth he traced in space the sign of the dollar.

Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged 243667

243548

available on Amazon

5570 Gulf of Mexico Dr., Longboat Key, FL 34228 Phone: 941/362-4848 Phone: 941/906-9386 (Legal Notices) Fax: 941/954-8530

Sarasota County

15050 Elderberry Lane, Suite #4-12 Fort Myers, FL 33907 Phone: 239/703-7802; Fax: 239/936-1001 (Legal Notices)

EXCHANGE SERVICES, INC.

Manatee County

AUGUST 11 – AUGUST 17, 2017 | BUSINESS OBSERVER

CoffeeTalk

BusinessObserverFL.com

COMMERCIAL

REAL ESTATE

3

LEADERS

Safety dance Safety is good business.

That’s the bottom line, says Gulf Coast Signs of Sarasota Inc. President and CEO Hidayet Kutat.

Kutat and his team just celebrated a big safety milestone — 10 years without a lost-time injury, an incident resulting in an employee losing time from work.

Kutat tells Coffee Talk his work as a manager at chemical giant DuPont helped set the stage for his focus on safety at Gulf Coast Signs, which he acquired in 2003. He says safety is a high priority at DuPont, and his years working with the company, first as an engineer and then in management positions, helped embed a safety philosophy in him.

“Safety is a mindset,” Kutat says.

“You have to walk the talk, and you have to differentiate between working safely and people using safety as a crutch not to do the job.”

That includes Kutat himself, who wears safety glasses when walking around the shop at the exterior and interior sign company. “It starts at leadership,” he says. “If leadership doesn’t believe in safety, people will not do what is right.”

Kutat leads a safety and business communication meeting at Gulf Coast Signs every Monday. During the meeting, he reviews safety incidents and what his team can learn from various experiences.

The company has a specific place where people can record small injuries, such as small cuts that only need minor first aid. It’s important to manage injuries at an early stage, Kutat says. If employees don’t take care of small injuries, they can become larger problems. The company also has a display that records the total number of days employees have worked without lost-time injury.

“It takes a culture change for safety to take place,” he says. “Sometimes an injury happens because a person makes a mistake. Other times it’s the systems we have that created the problem.

Those are the ones we can correct.”

Safety performance is also considered heavily in employee performance reviews and it affects raises. “As a company we can provide a workplace in which people can do their jobs safely,” Kutat says, “but we can’t make people follow the rules unless they believe in it.”

GLOBAL RESOURCES, LOCAL EXPERTISE

ATTENTION DEVELOPERS AND BUILDERS

Back on market. Nearly 40 acres of vacant land in rapid-growth Palmetto near I-75. Across the street from Kolter’s Willow Walk community and 5 minutes from the Ellenton Outlet Mall. Currently zoned agricultural, future land use residential 3.

ASKING $1,650,000 Call Elliot Rose 941.812.5057

NEW PRICE $1,000,000 1301 S. MCCALL ROAD, ENGLEWOOD, FL

Price Reduction of $721,000.

3.3 AC. Opportunity for development. AADT 29,500

Call Ron Struthers, CCIM 941.769.3316 Call Justin Huxstep 941.815.7177

Call a winner *NEW LISTING SALE - $1,100,000 LEASE - $8.00 SF/YR + $2.16 SF/YR CAM 3616 TAMIAMI TRAIL, PORT CHARLOTTE, FL

9,636 SF. Built out to 3 units, but can be converted into one for single tenant. Additional parking available across access road.

Call Ron Struthers, CCIM 941-769-3316 Call Justin Huxstep 941.815.7177

100% LEASED INVESTMENT - INDUSTRIAL 1544 MARKET CIR.-BLDG. 9 PORT CHARLOTTE, FL

Located in the Murdock Industrial area. 10% CASH on CASH w/ 7.84% CAP. Great mix of business types for tenant base.

COURTESY

SARA ROSE BYTNAR in 2015. Both women have been runners-up in the past at the global event.

Rose Bytnar focuses on luxury home, commercial property and golf course real estate auctions in Ohio, Michigan and Florida for her family’s business, Beth Rose Real Estate and Auctions. A third-generation auctioneer, Rose Bytnar has three aunts who are also in the business.

See COFFEE TALK page 5

BRIGHT YOUNG THINGS The Business Observer is on a mission to find the region’s top up-andcoming young professionals.

These are people who light up the room when they enter. That person everyone should know when they are new to town. That entrepreneur who risked money, reputation — many times both — for a vision, and succeeded despite the obstacles.

If this is you, or someone you know, then apply for the Business Observer’s annual “40 under 40” issue. The issue is open to entrepreneurs, executives and professionals

in any field or industry from Polk through Collier counties. The nominee must be under 40 up until the day the issue is published, Oct. 13.

Rules are simple. Just follow the link here: Businessobserverfl. com/40under40. You will need the name, age, city of residence, contact information and a short biography of the nominee. You may nominate yourself. Questions? Send a note to Business Observer managing editor Mark Gordon at mgordon@businessobserverfl.com.

The deadline is Thursday, Aug. 17.

$1,040,000 Call Ron Struthers, CCIM 941-769-3316 Call Justin Huxstep 941.815.7177

400 S. INDIANA AVE., ENGLEWOOD, FL 34223

Great signage and visibility for these 853 and 1758 SF office suites. The suites can be leased individually or take all 2,611 SF for your business. High visibility and plenty of parking.

FOR LEASE $12 SF Modified Gross Call Janet K. Robinson, CCIM 941.993.0895

WELCOMING JUSTIN HUXSTEP TO COLDWELL BANKER COMMERCIAL NRT

Born and raised in Charlotte County, Justin comes to us with extensive knowledge of the county and its surrounding areas. As a graduate from FGCU with a Bachelor of Science degree in Economics and a Minor in Real Estate, Justin is positioned to help our clients gain a deeper understanding of the relationship between the economy and commercial real estate investment.

Call Justin Huxstep 941.815.7177

Office | Industrial | Retail | Multi-Family | Vacant Land Site Selection | Investment and Corporate Advisory Services NEW ADDRESS! 100 N. Tamiami Trail, Sarasota, FL 34236 (directly across from the Ritz Carlton) | 941.925.8586 | CBCWorldwide.com Operated by a subsidiary of NRT LLC. 7789FL_1/14

229273

The trophies keep piling up for mother-daughter auctioneer duo Beth Rose and Sara Rose Bytnar.

The latest: Naples resident Rose Bytnar recently won the Women’s National Auctioneers Association 30th Annual International Auctioneer Championship, held in Columbus, Ohio. Last year’s winner, of the same event, was Beth Rose, who edged her daughter by one-tenth of point.

This year’s championship started with 20 people. There was a preliminary bid-calling round, an interview round and a final round of bid-calling that included seven women. Rose Bytnar, 31, received a $5,000 cash award, trophy and championship ring. As part of her responsibilities as auction champion, Rose Bytnar will travel to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis later this year to conduct the annual NAA Toy Auction for patients and their siblings.

“I am honored to have won the auctioneer championship and be recognized by the world’s largest association dedicated to auction professionals,” Rose Bytnar says in a statement. “My involvement with the NAA has provided an opportunity to network with the best auction professionals in the business and the educational opportunities to keep me at the top of my field.”

Mom and daughter have played catch with auction industry championship trophies before: Rose Bytnar won the Florida auctioneer championship in 2014 and Rose took the same crown

4 topstories from BusinessObserverFL.com

BUSINESS OBSERVER | AUGUST 11 – AUGUST 17, 2017

BusinessObserverFL.com

TAMPA BAY

Firm makes another acquisition Benefits administrator Zenith American Solutions Inc. acquired Connecticut-based Insurance Programmers Inc. It’s the third acquisition Tampa-based Zenith has made in the past 18 months. Insurance Programmers specializes in health, welfare and retirement administration services to union trust organizations on the East Coast. The acquisition expands Zenith’s presence in New England and extends its client base, which includes Taft-Hartley trust funds, trade associations, government entities and corporate employers, according to a statement.

Zenith has 46 offices nationwide.

Tech company names executive Clearwater-based IT services firm Vology named Scott Caschette chief information security officer.

Caschette was promoted from senior technology strategist, according to a press release. In his new role, he will lead Vology’s managed security practice,

quote of theweek I can teach you how to cut hair, but I can’t teach you to have a servant’s heart.

Liza Howard | LG Howard & Co. SEE PAGE 11

what do you think?

protecting customers and employees against cybersecurity threats. Prior to joining Vology, Caschette was chief information officer at Albertelli Law. Vology monitors, manages and maintains 260,000 devices at more than 32,000 locations. It had $171 million in revenue last year.

CHARLOTTE-LEE-COLLIER

Company wins Super Bowl work Fort Myers-based AD Systems Inc. signed a contract to create a high-resolution video board for Tampa’s Raymond James Stadium in preparation for Super Bowl LV in 2021.

AD Systems Inc. will install a 126-foot LED display in the stadium, home to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. The display will be in the stadium’s new 60,000-square-foot club level lounge in the West Stadium Club, according to a press release. The board is expected to be made of nearly 4 million diodes and consist of 281 trillion colors. The display is part of $150 million in renovations to the stadium. AD Systems has produced and installed digital displays for the stadium since 1998.

Housing director pleads guilty Former Fort Myers housing director Twaski Jackson pleaded guilty to stealing and embezzling thousands of dollars from the city of Fort Myers Housing Authority and the Lee County Housing Authority.

Jackson served as director of client services for both housing authorities from 2012 to 2016. In his position, he approved credit card disbursements and checks written on behalf of the agencies, according to a statement from the U.S. Attorney’s office. Jackson instead approved expenditures benefiting himself and friends, authorities say, including payments of Jackson’s own college tuition and personal trips.

Jackson, 38, faces a maximum penalty of 10 years in federal prison for each count.

SARASOTA-MANATEE

Citizens appoints new board member Former Florida Senate President John McKay has been appointed to the board of governors of Citizens Property Insurance Corp.

The board appointment was

Should CEOs give preference to minorities to enhance diversity in the workplace?

Vote at BusinessObserverFL.com

announced by the office of state CFO Jimmy Patronis. McKay succeeds former board member Juan Cocuy, according to a release, and has a three-year term that ends July 31, 2020. McKay served in the Florida Senate from 1990-2002, and was senate president from 2000-2002.

McKay also has more than 35 years of real estate and property management experience.

Sarasota hires Manatee official Sarasota County named longtime procurement executive Melissa Wendel its new procurement official.

Wendel, with more than 20 years of experience in procurement, had been the purchasing official in Manatee County since 2011, according to a statement. Wendel replaces Ted Coyman, who left Sarasota County last year to take a position as director of procurement services with Collier County.

Wendel helped lead Manatee County to its first national recognition of excellence in public procurement, earning the National Procurement Institute’s (NPI) Achievement of Excellence award four times in a row, the release adds.

Last week’s question:

Should federal regulators do more to curtail exorbitant CEO salaries?

51.5% Yes 48.5% No

CLASS A FULL-SERVICE BUILDING IN THE HEART OF DOWNTOWN SARASOTA CITY CENTER 1819 MAIN STREET, SARASOTA

Contemporary remodeling plans for the building include: • Upgrades to the lobby, hallways, bathrooms, fitness center, elevators and courtyard • Addition of a conference facility and tenant social lounge On-site property management provided by: The Dilweg Companies, LLC (941) 365-1819

For leasing, contact: Lori Hellstrom CCIM | (727) 450-6964 | lori.hellstrom@colliers.com

248888

AUGUST 11 – AUGUST 17, 2017 | BUSINESS OBSERVER

BusinessObserverFL.com

CoffeeTalk

5

SUCCESS STORIES

EMPOWERING SMALL BUSINESSES FOR SUCCESS

FROM PAGE 3

A Good Education career education, introducing students to employment opportunities and workplace skills. But, she says, the school’s teaching and administrative staff of 10 needed assistance with support tasks, from insurance to fundraising.

Goodwill has helped with the school’s fundraising and marketing in the past, Genter says, but in more of a consultant role. The nonprofit now provides more formal support and management services for the school. Employees in various departments at Goodwill Manasota’s corporate office in Bradenton will assist with business operations.

School Director Sister Gilchrist Cottrill will continue in her role at the school.

Goodwill Manasota is one of largest Goodwills in the region, and some of its programs have been a model used on a national basis. Genter says Goodwill used to run a charter school more than a decade ago. During that time, she says the organization did well with the employment aspect of the school, but less so the educational piece. The McKay Academy partnership allows them to “combine forces and have the waterfront covered,” she says.

To date, 70 students are enrolled for the upcoming school year. The school can accommodate about 100 students.

Offices in: CLEARWATER | TAMPA | MIAMI | JACKSONVILLE

Pies in July In the hyper-competitive business of commercial printing, graphic design and direct mail, Linda Manci has a unique edge: apple pies.

Customers who surpassed a certain threshold of orders last month at the Tampa Allegra marketing, print and mail shop Manci runs with her husband, Sam Manci, got a free, handdelivered, fresh apple pie. It’s part of the Pie in July campaign, created by the Allegra franchise network.

The pies are made by a local bakery.

Manci and her team delivered about 80 pies last month, a slight drop from July 2016. But every pie delivered was warmly received. “Our customers really look forward to this,” says Manci, whose Allegra franchise unit is on Falkenburg Road, near Interstate 75 and the Florida State Fairgrounds.

Manci says the pies are a small token

e State f Sunshin o ject lp e h e rsburg pro out th h te e it P w t. t a S small r new to say th EDCO), ou elps locally owned on our geration (S g a n x o e ti n ra a o h n rp ly “It’s not again soo pment Co anization that tru m lo e e v th e h D it rking w Economic ist. This is an org ard to wo x rw e t fo tures o k n o ld lo wou tical Ven . We r d e e V e c r, c e u s s n, Partn businesse g facility” Thureso l a H in – b m next cli

that goes a long way toward having a personal connection with customers in a transaction-based industry. “It takes a lot to keep customers engaged today,” Manci tells Coffee Talk. “This is something that’s really easy to do, but is high-touch, high-reward.

There’s an internal benefit, too. The team of 10 graphic designers and production people at the Allegra facility, says Manci, rarely get to meet face-toface with the end users of their work.

The employees are usually in the back doing the work. But going out in the field to deliver a tasty treat is a good way to bond with customers. A few years ago Manci set up a wall of fame of sorts in the Allegra office, which is filled with pictures of the actual pie deliveries. “At heart we are really just a bunch of introverts,” Manci says, “but this is a really good way to get us out of the office.”

800.850.2504 14141 46th Street North, Suite 1206 Clearwater, FL 33762 www.SunshineEDC.com

211548

Many people know Goodwill as a place to donate items they no longer want or somewhere to hunt for bargains.

While the nonprofit does use the sale of donated goods to help people with disabilities and employment barriers by providing job skills training and employment opportunities, Goodwill Manasota is also entering another sphere: running a school’s business operations.

That school is The McKay Academy, previously known as Ave Maria Preparatory School. It’s a private school that serves students from Sarasota, Manatee, DeSoto and Hardee counties. The school is tailored to students ages 6 to 22 with learning challenges such as autism, attention deficit disorder and Asperger’s syndrome. The school’s name change honors former Florida Senate President John McKay, a McKay Academy board member. (A Bradenton real estate executive, McKay was recently appointed to the board of Citizens Property Insurance Corp.)

Margie Genter, vice president of mission services for Goodwill Manasota, tells Coffee Talk the team at The McKay Academy excels at helping students learn differently by teaching to students’ individual needs. It also provides

Correction A July 30 story on the MacFarlane Group had an incorrect date for the projected completion of Campo Felice, a high-rise senior living community in Fort Myers. The project will be

opening in phases later this year. The decade Bob MacFarlane took interest in a waterfront restoration project in Hartford, Conn., was also incorrect.

The correct decade is the 2000s.

rtunit y!!!

Fantastic investment OppO

Charting A New Course Before beginning any new adventure, it’s important to have a plan. Icard Merrill can help guide you through the complexities of today’s world. From business matters to civil disputes to family concerns, our lawyers have the specific skills and experience to advise you in a wide range of legal fields. We offer a comprehensive approach to the practice of law, with the well-being of our clients always a top concern. No matter the obstacles of your particular journey, we will do our best to ensure smooth navigation along the way.

convenience StoRe - existing & Active intersection

 Existing NNN lease with 2 1 more options option

  CG CG Zoning Zoning ++ additional additional OPI OPI Zoning Zoning  Total Total Parcel Parcel -- 36,114 36,114 SF/ SF/ .83 .83 Acre Acre

941.308.7175 • icardmerrill.com

6104 S. tamiami tr., Sarasota, FL 34231 One Block North of Stickney Point Rd.

Sarasota, Manatee, Charlotte & Lee Counties 248873

Ron Stahl 941.374.1671 Ron Stahl Realty rstahlrlty@aol.com Serving the Sarasota Area for Over 45 years

242828

 Traffic Light

6

BUSINESS OBSERVER | AUGUST 11 – AUGUST 17, 2017

BusinessObserverFL.com

DataSnapshot 75

Snap into place

Percent of population receiving SNAP benefits 20% 20%

PASCO 18%

*FLORIDA, 18%

4

HILLSBOROUGH 15%

14% 14%

POLK 13% 13%

PINELLAS

95

10% MANATEE 7%

75 70

COLLIER

SARASOTA

CHARLOTTE

MANATEE

PINELLAS

PASCO

8%

LEE

5%

HILLSBOROUGH

10

POLK

Millions of Floridians remain enrolled in the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program — food stamps — even while the state’s unemployment rate has declined significantly in recent years.

Many households that receive benefits have at least one working person in the home, if not two or more, according to a Business Observer analysis of federal data. But while job totals have increased, the number of households living below the poverty line has remained more stagnant.

In February 2001, an estimated 838,546 Floridians received SNAP benefits, data shows. Since then, the number has more than quadrupled, to more than 3.6 million, or roughly 18% of the state’s population.

According to Jalil Isa, spokesman for the USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service, SNAP enrollment has ballooned because Florida’s poverty rate has failed to recede — despite the recent drop in the unemployment rate.

“Historically, there has been a lag of as much as two years between changes in the unemployment rate and changes in SNAP participation,” Isa says.

Florida’s poverty rate peaked in 2012 at 17.2%, the U.S. Census Bureau says.

In 2015, the latest year for which an estimate is available, the rate fell to 15.8%. That remains several percentage points above pre-recession levels.

As of July 2016, nearly 800,000 Floridians in the Business Observer’s nine-county coverage area alone received SNAP benefits. In seven of the nine counties, the percent of the

SARASOTA CHARLOTTE

*Florida estimate if from 2014

LEE

population utilizing the program was below the state rate.

Collier and Sarasota counties have the lowest rates of SNAP enrollment, at 7% and 8%, respectively. Hillsborough’s rate is essentially even with the state, while Polk’s rate is slightly higher (20%).

State lawmakers are considering changes to the state’s SNAP eligibility requirements that would reduce the number of people who could receive benefits. Legislators have discussed lowering the income eligibility limit from 200% of the federal poverty level to 130%, or about $2,600 a month for a family of four. But that legislation is currently on hold, awaiting a federal budget.

75

COLLIER

41

SOURCE: U.S. CENSUS BUREAU

Invested For more than 33 years, The Bank of Tampa has worked continuously to develop relationships that are personal and accessible, and deliver an experience that is like no other. With more than $1.5 billion in assets, $1 billion in loans, and offices in Hillsborough, Pinellas, and Sarasota counties, we are uniquely positioned to be the community bank serving the greater Tampa Bay area.

Our clients are local. Our presence is local. Our decisions are made locally.

COMMERCIAL BANKING

TheBankofTampa.com

PERSONAL BANKING

WEALTH MANAGEMENT

TRUST SERVICES MEMBER FDIC 248971

(813) 872-1200

AUGUST 11 – AUGUST 17, 2017 | BUSINESS OBSERVER

infocus | health care |

BusinessObserverFL.com

BY LES NEUHAUS | CONTRIBUTING WRITER

Power to the Patient MARK WEMPLE

DIA NICHOLS was named CEO of Northside Hospital in St. Petersburg in 2013.

Competition among hospitals in the region is hot. One facility hopes a push for more privacy will drive patient satisfaction, and in turn, growth.

W

hen Dia Nichols left his position as head of a Virginia hospital in May 2013 for Florida to assume the top role at Northside Hospital, he knew he’d come to the right place: a medical facility on the rise servicing tens of thousands of residents per year.

Since taking the helm, the hospital, located off a bustling section of St. Petersburg’s 49th Street, has charged forward under his leadership.

A heav y emphasis has been placed on both technology assistance and quality of trained personnel.

“In the four years that I’ve been here we’ve evolved to be a destination hospital for some of your higher-end services like cardiac surgeries,” says Nichols, CEO at the hospital. “The neuro-sciences are another area in which we have been able to greatly expand, brain and spine surgeries.”

Serving area residents since 1976, Northside has 288 beds and has been known to many locals as a premier cardiac hub because of its Tampa Bay Heart Institute, where more than 300 heart surgeries were performed in 2016 alone. In the same year emergency visits totaled 39,232 people and admissions were 10,341, while a total of 52,353 patients were treated across the gamut of Northside’s services.

Now the hospital is mov-

ing toward an industry-wide trend t hat’s been building since around the turn of the century – private rooms for patients. That’s now considered standard in hospital construction projects, as opposed to decades ago, when there were two to four beds per room.

Nowhere is the luxury of private patient rooms more evident at Northside than in its new orthopedic wing, where Hospital Corporation of America (HCA), the hospital’s Nashville-based parent company, recently funded a $20 million renovation. The orthopedic wing now houses 16 beds and is equipped with cutting-edge medical technology for the department’s six surgeons. (Another surgeon is joining the staff soon.)

The orthopedic renovations were completed in April and comprise the first of a twophase operation, with another $10 million yet to be spent.

Nichols says there are plans to eventually make all the hospital’s rooms private.

He also notes that partially because the orthopedic surgeons — known in medical circles informally as orthopods — played a key role in the design of the renovation, feedback has been positive. “As I call it we kind of ‘mac daddy’ them out with flat-screen TVs, private showers and that kind

of thing,” Nichols says. “And we’ve just gotten rave reviews from these patients that are coming here so far.”

But private rooms for patients aren’t just for privacy’s sake or luxury.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, around 2 million hospitalderived infections kill roughly 100,000 Americans every year.

So the push toward private rooms isn’t just about an upcharge to the patient’s hospital stay, it’s about preventing the spread of contagions. Other compelling reasons for the move from shared to private rooms include better sleep, which helps patients recover more quickly; happiness between the patient and their families; and psychological balance.

“I’ve been an orthopedic surgeon at Northside Hospital for several years … (and) these improvements allow for a better environment for my patients,” says Dr. Ahmad Nematbakhsh, director of or t hopedics at Northside.

In addition to the construction project, running Northside is an expensive proposition.

Salaries, wages and benefits for staff totaled $89.15 million in 2016, hospital officials say, while the facility paid $6.37 million in taxes. The cost to treat patients without insurance — a pain point for nearly

We kind of ‘mac daddy’ them out with flat-screen TVs (and) private showers. We’ve just gotten rave reviews from these patients that are coming here so far. Dia Nichols | CEO, Northside Hospital every hospital — was $19.9 million. HCA doesn’t break out revenue for individual hospitals in the chain.

Nichols says with private rooms being the standard of today and the future, patient satisfaction is more often affected by t heir experience during a recovery stay. “Look, people want their own rooms — family members are coming to visit, they want to be comfortable — that’s a norm now,” Nichols says. “This has done exactly what we thought it was going to do: Patients love it.”

7

8 infocus | strategies |

BUSINESS OBSERVER | AUGUST 11 – AUGUST 17, 2017

BusinessObserverFL.com

BY BETH LUBERECKI | CONTRIBUTING WRITER

Bright Days

LORI SAX

STEVE PANAGIOTAKIS, vice president of operations for Bright Future Electric in Sarasota, led efforts to hire people at the company.

The labor shortage, particularly in trades, continues to confound companies.

One company’s latest salvo: paid interns, hired in bunches.

S

teve Panagiotakis definitely saw the need for the Construction Rodeo the Gulf Coast Builders Exchange held this past May. Like many other GCBX members — and contractors in general across the region — the vice president of operations for Bright Future Electric in Sarasota has found it a constant challenge to hire the employees he needs. So he was happy to be one of more than 50 member participants at the recent GCBX event aimed to teach local students about opportunities in construction and the trades.

Another goal of the event is to introduce students to local companies with jobs to fill.

Bright Future Electric did more than inform the 350-plus students who attended the rodeo. It actually ended up hiring 18 as paid interns — a one-day hiring boon. “We had a handful of students we knew we wanted to make offers to,” says Panagiotakis, “but we didn’t realize it would be so many.”

Hiring younger workers is vital to the future of the company, where the average age of employees keeps creeping up.

As staff gets older, the need to replace them down the road intensifies, and there aren’t a lot of 20-something employees currently rising up the ranks.

“That middle generation is

missing,” says Joe Dunn, senior project manager for Bright Future Electric.

Getting students interested in careers in electricity as early as possible is one key to finding younger people, say company officials. Catching them before their junior year of high school, for example, allows them to begin interning over summer vacations and enroll in a technical program at somewhere like Suncoast or Manatee Technical College. The apprenticeship period lasts four years, or 8,000 training hours, so the sooner students start, the sooner they can take their licensing exam to become a journeyman electrician — and be ready to replace retiring employees.

Becoming involved in the industry at a young age through internships also allows students to determine if the electrical field is the right fit and to learn in what areas they might excel. “By starting to do work for us, it helps them identify if this is something they truly want to do,” says Panagiotakis.

A few student hires haven’t worked out for the company over the years. But many others are on track for eventual employment at Bright Future Electric, which has had an office in Sarasota since 2009.

(The company started with locations in the Orlando area and

Birmingham, Ala., then added branches in Sarasota, Destin and Fort Myers. Its headquarters is in Birmingham.)

The firm concentrates on commercial and industrial clients, doing electrical work at the new-construction phase for condos, hotels, schools and assisted-living facilities, among other projects. Current local projects include the Sarasota Modern Hotel, in Sarasota’s Rosemary District, and a new USDA facility in southern Manatee County.

Revenues at the Sarasota office have grown 72% from 2012 to 2016, but Panagiotakis admits labor challenges impact the company’s growth rate.

“We don’t take jobs first and then find employees,” he says.

In general, the firm grows its supervisor ranks from within, helping its employees move up into supervisory and managerial roles. Bright Electric has about 300 employees company wide, and 125 in Sarasota and Fort Myers. “It’s a long-term commitment to our guys; that’s how we grow,” says Panagiotakis.

That upward mobilit y, of course, then creates the need for new entry-level employees like the ones hired at the construction rodeo.

Those students have now gotten a taste of what an electrical

We don’t need laborers. I don’t want people shoveling; I want people working with us and learning the trade.

Joe Dunn | Bright Future Electric

career is like through an internship that provides handson instruction.

“We don’t need laborers,” says Dunn. “I don’t want people shoveling; I want people working with us and learning the trade.”

Panagiotakis hopes more loca l compa nies a nd hig h schools participate in next yea r’s const r uct ion rodeo.

Like many of his peers, he also hopes not all students keep getting pushed toward a four-year college, a path that’s not right for everyone. “This isn’t just a job,” Panagiotakis says. “This is a career.”

AUGUST 11 – AUGUST 17, 2017 | BUSINESS OBSERVER

9

BusinessObserverFL.com

THE TOP 500 COMPANIES ON THE GULF COAST • Top 5 Industries for Revenue • Fastest Growing Companies • Largest Employers

• Company Profiles

• Top 500 Companies Ranked by Revenue on the Gulf Coast

F L U GCOA ST S IN

E ID

4 es enu rev r y 44 by t s d u e d k ran y in y 56 ll db ies pan s liste betica om a ie h C n a lp 0 65 p a 0 m 5 o ies line 4 Top 00 C pan ers 6 dec 6 5 om y es t 6 t a s Top 00 C mplo gre panie 5 te ith Top om ges ies w gc L ar pan rowin 50 m o g C t 50 tes Fas 50

SPECIAL SECTION

0 0

5

POLK PASCO PINELLAS HILLSBOROUGH MANATEE SARASOTA CHARLOTTE LEE COLLIER

6 1 0

2

Read It > September 1 KNOW MORE

249038

To advertise call 941.362.4848 or email advertise@businessobserverfl.com

BUSINESSOBSERVERFL.COM

10 infocus | hospitality |

BUSINESS OBSERVER | AUGUST 11 – AUGUST 17, 2017

BusinessObserverFL.com

BY ALICIA CECCARELLI | CONTRIBUTING WRITER

Food Dudes

STEFANIA PIFFERI

GUY CLARKE and RAFAEL FELICIANO founded a restaurant marketing business to promote area restaurants, Naples Restaurant Week, last September.

Restaurant weeks nationwide promote discounted dining during slow periods, but they’re not a guaranteed success. Here’s how two Naples foodies make a year out of a week.

F

ood-enthusiast friends Guy Clarke and Rafael Feliciano swear their appetite-inducing social media feeds are only a bite-sized part of the big picture.

“Everyone sees the food end, the photos, and they’re like ‘Oh, I want your job,’” says Feliciano, but those meals are earned with 16-hour days, seven days a week. “Eating is the last aspect of what we’re doing.”

Instead, what the duo has done is turn Naples Restaurant Week into a hot ticket event for area residents — and their own growing marketing business.

Many areas and towns have restaurant weeks, designed to draw patrons during slow months. Examples include Savor Sarasota and one in Tampa run by entertainment publishing firm Creative Loafing. But the Clarke and Feliciano model is rare for the region in that it keeps the two-man operation busy year-round building partnerships, co-creating menus with chefs, marketing and researching Restaurant Weeks nationwide. That includes forming relationships with people behind Taste of D.C., Miami Spice and

Restaurant Week NYC, where the concept made its debut.

Feliciano’s background is in commercial real estate and corporate restaurant training.

Clarke was formerly an advertising manager for the Naples Herald, and started the paper’s food section. Together they have worked on local foodie events such as Bacon Fest, where Clarke was director of operations.

Their aim with Naples Restaurant Week is to elevate the culinary scene in Southwest Flor ida whi le establishing their credibility as restaurant consultants. “Restaurant week has allowed us to prove to the restaurants, directly to their pocketbooks, that our marketing works,” says Clarke.

Restaurants pay a flat fee of $1,250 to Naples Restaurant Week — although Clarke says the company will “work (on pricing) with smaller restaurants based on size.” Part of those funds provide marketing in print, radio, billboards and social media. Naples Restaurant Week also promotes its chefs in a weekly morning news segment on WINK News.

“What sets Naples Restaurant

Week apart from other foodie events or businesses in general is that we’ve fully embraced, both-arms-bear-hugged, the social media aspect of our marketing,” says Clarke.

Naples Restaurant Week takes place twice a year, in December and June, and actually lasts two weeks each time. The concept, says Feliciano, is to have “really great restaurants that don’t normally offer these prices” offer a three-course menu that’s discounted during the two weeks.

Clarke and Feliciano recruit restaurants to Naples Restaurant Week that possess what they call the three P’s: prestige, presence and price-points. A key point: regular menu prices need to be high enough to make a $25 or $35 per person pre-fixe menu an attractive value to diners.

Not only do the restaurants benefit from the additional tabs and new faces during their slowest times in the year, but staff, nearby hotels, food purveyors and farmers also reap extra business, says Clarke. This impact has prompted sponsorships from organizations such as the Naples, Marco Island, Everglades Convention & Visitors

Bureau and the Florida Restaurant & Logging Association.

From December to June, participation in Naples Restaurant Week grew from 26 to 49 restaurants and from 11,800 patrons who purchased restaura nt week items to 30,136. Feliciano says all the restaurant week participants saw a minimum 25% increase in sales over their previous year, with their top client serving 3,600 restaurant week diners. “That’s a February week,” Feliciano says, comparing the volume to high season.

Another win: Clarke and Feliciano secured Mercedes-Benz of Bonita Springs as Naples Restaurant Week’s title sponsor.

Next up, the pair plans to expand the concept to Southwest Florida Restaurant Week, and include “Sanibel to Marco and everything tasty in between,” says Clarke. Other cities statewide have approached Clarke and Feliciano, such as Tallahassee, for assistance in kick-starting its restaurant week.

“Let’s build up all of the Restaurant Weeks in Florida.” Says Clarke. “New York may have started this, but let Florida run it.”

Restaurant week has allowed us to prove to the restaurants — directly to their pocketbooks, that our marketing works. Guy Clarke | Naples Restaurant Week

AUGUST 11 – AUGUST 17, 2017 | BUSINESS OBSERVER

infocus | entrepreneurs |

BusinessObserverFL.com

11

BY GRIER FERGUSON | STAFF WRITER

LORI SAX

LIZA HOWARD opened her Sarasota salon, LG Howard & Co., in October 2015.

Clear-Cut Vision Liza Howard was 25 when she opened her Sarasota salon. Less than two years out, the first-time business owner has a clear vision for success.

L

i z a Howa rd wa s getting ready to backpack through Italy when she found the perfect place.

For years, she’d dreamed of opening her own salon, and now she’d located the ideal spot. She even had a letter of intent for the rental location, but then the owners changed their minds. They decided they didn’t want to lease to a firsttime business owner such as Howard.

It was a setback, but Howard, then 25, didn’t give up.

She found another location and on Oct. 24, 2015, opened the doors of LG Howard & Co. The boutique Aveda salon, Howard hopes, is the beginning of something big in a hypercompetitive industry, where customers, and employees, have a lot of choices.

Some of her competitors and peers have also been doing this work for decades, a fact Howard won’t let get in her way.

“I have an eighth-grade education, a GED and a cosmetology license,” she says. “I have to make this work. I don’t want to be mediocre — I’ll do whatever

it takes to be successful.”

Howa rd says she a lways wanted to own her own business. W hen she was 16, she went to cosmetology school at the Douglas J Aveda Institute in Ann Arbor, Mich. After that, she worked at salons in various cities before moving to Sarasota, where her parents live.

In Sa rasota, she sta r ted working at another salon. But once she found a location for her salon, she began working on the 2,800-square-foot storefront off South Tamiami Trail in earnest. “I had been planning it for a decade,” she says.

Howard, along with her uncle, friends and parents, whom she considers her top business mentors, did the physical labor to get the space up to par — sometimes in the wee hours of the morning. A lease restriction meant they couldn’t do construction during business hours, and with a restaurant in the building that spelled some midnight to 4 a.m. construction sessions.

“We were in here for three months renovating,” Howard says. “Lots of Monster Energy

drinks were involved.”

When the salon opened, it was just Howard and one other hairstylist. But since then the company has steadily grown to include four hairstylists on staff, two massage therapists who work by appoint ment and a guest services employee. Although Howard declines to disclose revenue, she says sales have increased this year compared to the same months last year. For two months, the salon doubled its sales from the same period last year, she says.

Despite that growth, Howard is conservative. “I save money like nobody’s business,” she says, “so if something happens, I don’t have to stress. I know it will work out.”

The 27-year-old doesn’t like asking for things, she says.

“You’re always going to have to work for what you want. Nothing worth it really comes that easy.”

Now Howard is working on hiring two more hairstylists.

That’s one of her biggest challenges, she says — finding the right people. “I’m really picky

about who I hire,” Howard says.

“I can teach you how to cut hair, but I can’t teach you to have a servant’s heart.”

That heart is important to one of the key elements of her business strateg y: customer service. “It’s all about the people in the chair,” she says.

“Our goal is to make the guest feel welcomed and appreciated and taken care of. Guests could have passed 10 salons to come and see us. We want to make sure they’re appreciated. It’s not just about the haircut. It’s really about the experience.”

Five years from now, Howard wants to be working on a second LG Howard & Co. location. Ultimately, she’d like to have locations beyond that, too, and for people to know the standard of service they can expect at each one.

And about that trip to Italy: Howard never did backpack through the country, but it’s still in the plans. When she feels comfortable leaving the salon, she’ll go. Right now, her focus lies stateside — building up the salon into a solid business.

I can teach you how to cut hair, but I can’t teach you to have a servant’s heart. Liza Howard | LG Howard & Co.

12

BUSINESS OBSERVER | AUGUST 11 – AUGUST 17, 2017

BusinessObserverFL.com

HEALTH CARE

BY MARK GORDON | MANAGING EDITOR

MARK WEMPLE

MICHAEL SMULLEN, right, co-founded Sarasota-based AltMed in 2014. TODD BECKWITH, a onetime marketing executive with Merck, joined AltMed in 2015.

‘Long Haul’ Companies that seek an edge in Florida’s budding medical marijuana industry need fortitude, and lots of financing — for starters. Will AltMed rise to the top?

M

ichael Smullen isn’t a pot guy. The 30-year pharmacy industry veteran and son of a pharmaceutical sales rep just isn’t into it.

“I’m pretty conservative,” says Smullen. “I’ve never been around it or used it.”

But medical marijuana, says Smullen, is different.

At least if it’s grown and delivered to patients in a responsible way. Says Smullen: “There is an opportunity to build a medical cannabis company using the same rigorous testing and science used for biopharmaceutical companies.”

With that in mind, Smullen, through Alternative Medical Enterprises, or AltMed, is at the forefront of the burgeoning medical marijuana movement in Florida. He co-founded Sarasota-based AltMed in 2014.

AltMed, in a partnership with fourth-generation agricultural business Plants of Ruskin, recently formed AltMed Florida.

Plants of Ruskin will handle the grow side of the venture from a 150,000-square-foot facility in Hillsborough County, where it already has zoning approval and permitting. AltMed will handle medical cannabis products, testing, marketing and sales from its Sarasota office, where it has about 10 employees.

The venture is the ninth in Florida to receive a Medical

Marijuana Treatment Center license. The license was awarded under new state regulations that stem from the passage of Amendment 2 in 2016.

AltMed also operates a stateof-the-art, $10 million plant in Arizona. AltMed marketing director and spokesman Todd Beckwith says sales, through distributing to dispensaries, have surpassed 50% in market share in Arizona. In addition to Arizona, the company sells medical cannabis products in Colorado, with an eye on adding at least 12 states and five countries in the next few years.

Executives decline to disclose specific sale figures or projections, including in Florida.

“We are trying to bring a biotechnology and pharmaceutical approach to this nascent industry,” says Beckwith. “We want to bring cannabis out of the shadows.”

Yet A lt Med a l most w a s knocked off before it really got going.

PASSION PLAY The concept for the company came to Smullen in the late 2000s, while thinking about his daughter and brother. His daughter suffered from epilepsy; she had her first grand mal seizure when she was 2. She struggled to find pain relief and medications for years, until recently, when she was medically cleared as a teenager. Smullen’s brother, meanwhile, died

from bladder cancer. His sibling also struggled to overcome addictions to opioids designed to ease his pain while sick. “Both of those things were in the back of my mind,” says Smullen, who studied medical cannabis companies, reports and journals everywhere from Canada to Israel.

Smullen had the passion, and the time, for the project.

Smullen’s last pharmacy startup, MedImmune, created and brought a drug to market that prevents and treats respiratory tract infections. The company drew attention from industry giants in the mid-2000s, after that drug surpassed $1.5 billion in sales. In 2007, one of those leaders, AstraZeneca, bought MedImmune for $15.8 million.

Smu llen was sudden ly a 51-year-old retiree. He and his family moved from Maryland to the Lakewood Ranch area of east Manatee County.

Smullen moved quickly on AltMed after he spent time in research. He hired a team of scientists and retired pharmaceutical executives, signed partnerships with area doctors and bought a 20-acre property in rural east Sarasota County to house the operations. He invested at least $5 million in the company, including $1.8 million for the land and pre-construction.

Then the first push for medical marijuana in Florida, Amendment 2 in 2014, failed. Smullen and AltMed officials nearly gave up. The company never built the

facility, but kept an office. “After the Amendment 2 failure,” says Beckwith, “we needed to decide if we were going to fold our tent or stay in it.”

The company decided to stay in it. It focused on Arizona, which already approved medical cannabis, and it built a facility in Phoenix. Arizona and Florida, which covers 20% of the total medical cannabis market nationwide, says Beckwith, citing data from Arcview Market Research, are the top long-term states the firm targets for business. That makes sense, considering both states have populations that skew older, and that comes with more long-term pain issues.

Florida’s potential patient pool could reach 300,000 people by 2020, according to a June report from Marijuana Business Daily. Also, a late 2016 report from New Frontier Data and Arcview, which specializes in medical cannabis data and consulting, projects Florida’s market will grow to $1.6 billion by 2020, with a compound annual growth rate of 140%. That would surpass the projected $1.5 billion medical marijuana market for Colorado, the report adds.

(It has a long way to go to catch California, projected to reach $2.6 billion by 2020.)

DO IT RIGHT The heart of the AltMed mission, to bring medical cannabis from the shadows to mainstream, be-

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Company. AltMed Industry. Medical cannabis, health care Key. Firm is navigating multiple industry challenges.

AUGUST 11 – AUGUST 17, 2017 | BUSINESS OBSERVER

gins in its Phoenix facility.

Run by an affiliated business, AltMed Arizona, the lab recently obtained ISO 9001:2015 Certification, a high-barrier designation usually given to manufacturing entities that have been operating several years. In a July statement, AltMed Arizona Lab Manager Ashley Vogel says the designation, “is significant because it holds our organization accountable for the quality of our cannabis and products on an international level.”

The 33,818-square-foot facility includes two air showers, manufacturing suites and fully instrumented grow rooms. A large portion of the space is devoted to a greenhouse, where, through April, it was home to more than 6,000 plants and 32 strains of medical cannabis.

All the products are tested using methods from the American Herbal Pharmacopeia, say company officials. The facility has about 50 employees.

“We could’ve done things a lot quicker and a lot cheaper,” says Beckwith, “but we are in this for the long haul.”

The Phoenix facility has been great for lab work, and also product development, adds Beckwith. With the recent AltMed Florida and Plants of Ruskin partnership, that gives the company a competitive head start in Florida. “Shifting to Arizona was a blessing in disguise,” Beckwith says, “because it allowed us to refine our business model.”

That vertically integrated model, says Beckwith, is to combine top-shelf medical cannabis

strains with a wide assortment of ways to get the medication inside patients. “We have a solution for every patient,” says Beckwith. “We have delivery methods that no one else has.”

AltMed created the brand MuV to sell its line of medical cannabis products. One of the AltMed/MuV exclusive products is a smoke-free and inhalation free patch that delivers slowrelease, dosage controlled cannabis. Another one is a metereddose cannabis inhaler, which provides a faster and more discreet dose. Other MuV products, expected to be available in the Sunshine State in 2018 through AltMed Florida, include cannabis oil, hydrating lotion, painrelief cream and sports gel.

All MuV products, say AltMed officials, stem from research refined in the Arizona lab and includes the company’s awardwinning, proprietary ethanol extraction process. The company, says Beckwith, also goes beyond standard with labeling on its products.

BANK ON IT The road to viable and mainstream medical cannabis has been marred by multiple roadblocks and obstacles — aside from the first voter-induced delay in Florida.

For one, the business is capital-intensive. On that end, AltMed partners with CannaRoyalty, an Ottawa, Canada-based publicly traded investment firm that specializes in cannabis and medical cannabis companies.

CannaRoyalty holds an 8.2%

13

BusinessObserverFL.com

equity stake in AltMed and a 3.5% revenue royalty agreement through 2025 on MuV products.

AltMed executives declined to disclose the dollar value of CannaRoyalty’s investment.

Another challenge, says Beckwith, a onetime marketing executive with pharmaceutical giant Merck, is there are regulatory limitations. That goes for each state AltMed does or seeks to do business in and on a federal basis, where medical marijuana remains illegal to move across state lines. Also, a lack of industry standardization means every state does things a little bit differently. Florida, for example, allows a high amount of dispensaries, 425, relative to some other states. “Very little of this is cookie-cutter,” says Beckwith.

One final challenge is financing, given banks have separate federal regulations to follow.

AltMed has talked to officials with credit unions and smaller banks, but bigger banks, for the most part, steer clear of the industry. “You will have to jump through a lot of hoops to take on a medical cannabis client,” says Beckwith.

All of those challenges, say Beckwith and Smullen, are part of being a bold-thinking leader in a new industry. The partnership with Plants of Ruskin, announced Aug. 2, was the latest of some big wins in 2017.

“Even in my wildest dreams, I never would have expected we would’ve been as successful as we are this fast,” says Beckwith.

The executives’ biggest upat-night worry: Will they have

NUMBERS GAME Medical marijuana exists in Florida because voters statewide approved Amendment 2 in November. But the wording of the law that allows it to actually happen was bogged down in a contentious Tallahassee battle.

The final law, a compromise bill passed after a special legislative session in May, allows for a total of 17 medical marijuana dispensers statewide.

Those 17 entities, licensed by the Florida Department of Health, are known as treatment centers — cultivation/grow facilities and dispensaries.

A notable part of the bill is the amount of total dispensaries (425) allowed versus the 17 licensees the state will award to run them. That total is lopsided, compared with some other states that recently enacted medical marijuana legislation.

The 17 licensed medical marijuana dispensers are allowed so sell some dispensary slots.

450

425

Number of dispenseries allowed Number of businesses allowed to operate dispenseries

350

SOURCE: MARIJUANA BUISNESS DAILY, A DIVISION OF ANNE HOLLAND VENTURES INC.

250

150

50

17 Florida

20

5 New York

16

8

Hawaii

8

2 Minnesota

enough product to meet what they believe will be a surge in demand?

Smullen doesn’t think that will slow down AltMed much, either. “It’s been a long journey,” says Smullen, “but I’m excited about where we are now.”

CONSTRU CTION

While you build the skyline, we build trust.

At Henderson Franklin, we help foster our region’s growth by representing property owners, developers, community planners, design professionals, businesses and others involved in construction. We counsel clients on construction contracts, liens, defect claims, design and environmental regulations, building codes, permitting, zoning, financing and many other related endeavors. Let us advocate your interests, as we’ve done for clients for more than 90 years.

229253

Helping Communities, Businesses and Individuals Since 1924. henlaw.com • 239.344.1100 © Henderson Franklin Starnes & Holt, P.A.

HEND 20428 BusObsHalf_ConstructionHardHat.indd 1

Fort Myers • Bonita Springs • Sanibel • Naples*

by appointment only

*

10/28/15 4:20 PM

14

BUSINESS OBSERVER | AUGUST 11 – AUGUST 17, 2017

BusinessObserverFL.com

HEALTH CARE

BY JOHN HAUGHEY | CONTRIBUTING WRITER

Another Shot An ambitious Tampa biopharmaceutical firm, after spending more than a decade and $25 million, believes it’s on the cusp of a major breakthrough.

A

foursome of young biotechnology entrepreneurs and Ph.Ds, backed by $3 million in private funds, got together in 2004 to form Intezyne. The goal then remains the same today: Use polymers to protect medication until it can reach cancer cells.

The company is still around 13 years later. That itself is a major feat in the biopharmaceutical industry, which is long on promise, short on ubersuccessful gazelles. After more than $25 million in research and development investment, Intezyne has not generated a dime in profit on any of its products and won’t do so until 2022, at the earliest, say executives.

But Intezyne, after multiple almost-theres, could really be on to something this time.

T h e Ta m p a c o m p a n y achieved a significant — and potentially lucrative — regulatory milestone in June when it received an Orphan Drug Designation from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for IT-139: a therapy designed to enhance the effectiveness of other anti-cancer therapies in treating pancreatic cancer.

The FDA’s ODD designation, intended to encourage development of treatments for “rare” diseases that are poorly addressed by existing therapies, grants Intezyne up to seven years of “postapproval market exclusivity,” assistance in protocol design and an exemption from Prescription Drug User Fee Act (PDUFA) fees — key affirmations in the company’s quest to develop “firstin-class” products designed to improve the effectiveness of cancer-fighting drugs.

“This is a very exciting time for the company,” Intezyne CEO and co-founder Kevin Sill says. “It has taken a lot of dollars and manpower for us to advance to where we are.”

MARK WEMPLE

‘A SHARED PASSION’ Sill was part of the four founders of the company in 2004, when they all were fresh out of grad school. They started the business in a 3,000-square-foot laboratory in the Tampa Bay Technology Incubator at the University of South Florida’s Research Park in north Tampa. Intezyne was the TBTI’s first tenant and remains based there.

The company has evolved over the years as it changed from a research-oriented operation to clinical testing, at one time employing 19 people full-time, 12 of them research scientists.

Intezyne currently employs nine people. “It was necessary

KEVIN SILL is one of four co-founders of Tampa-based Intezyne, a biopharmaceutical firm that researches cancer therapies and medications. to downsize the company as it transitioned from a research-focused company into a development-focused company in order to reduce overhead,” Sill says.

Intezyne’s CFO, E. Russell McA llister, who joined Intezyne last November after advising public and private biopharmaceutical companies in New York, San Francisco and, most recently, Vancouver, says he was drawn to the company because of its “extreme innovation and the resulting potential of its products.”

Passion for what they do is another key element that has helped Intezyne and its employees persist, McAllister says.

“Everyone at Intezyne shares a passion for helping cancer patients,” he says. “Cancer touches everyone. It is encouraging to know that if your company is successful, there are people out there, perhaps even your own family members, who will be living longer and healthier lives as a result. There are not a lot of industries where you can say that.”

Sill agrees, noting, “Technol-

ogy is really the driver, with remarkable potential to impact and extend patients’ lives. That was the key driver even through the most challenging times.”

The company’s IT-139 could prove particularly useful in treating pancreatic cancer, the fourth most common cancer in the U.S., with approximately 54,000 new diagnoses annually. It is notoriously difficult to treat, with one-year survival rates of only 20% and five-year survival rates of 8%.

Other biopharma companies

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Company. Intezyne Industry. Biotechnology, pharmaceuticals Key. Company hopeful that latest tests will lead to big success.

AUGUST 11 – AUGUST 17, 2017 | BUSINESS OBSERVER

attempting to develop therapies for pancreatic cancer have failed. But Intezyne thinks it has a viable shot at improving these numbers.

PROFOUND IMPACT Although IT-139 is Intezyne’s most advanced product, it’s not its only innovation. The company recently initiated a Phase 1 study of its second product, IT141, at the Mary Crowley Cancer Research Center in Dallas. This trial, which focused primarily on safety and a related expansion trial that will also focus on patient outcomes, are expected to be completed by March 2019.

While IT-139 is a small-molecule drug that uses the rare metal ruthenium to inhibit GRP78, a critical cell survival pathway, IT-141 uses Intezyne’s proprietary nanoparticle delivery platform to deliver an existing drug – in this case, irinotecan – directly to tumors, increasing treatment efficacy while reducing negative side effects.

“Importantly, Intezyne is not inventing new drugs, but instead improving existing drugs with our technology,” McAllister says.

Sill further explains the science: “Intezyne uses a special polymer, or plastic, to form ‘nanocapsules’ inv isible to the naked eye that are then wrapped around the medication, shielding it until it gets to where it is needed, at which time the capsules disintegrate.”

I ntez y ne’s na nopa r t icle platform delivery technology is “ingenious in its simplicity; profound in its impact,” McAl-

BusinessObserverFL.com

lister says.

“In conventional treatment, relatively little of the cancer drugs that are administered go where they’re supposed to go because they are distributed systemically, or everywhere,” McAllister says.

It’s this incidental dissemination that creates many of the unpleasant or even life-threatening side effects commonly associated with chemotherapy. If Intezyne is successful, McAllister notes, cancer patients will get “more drug where you want it, and less drug where you don’t.”

CHALLENGES AHEAD According to the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), on average, it takes at least 10 years and costs $2.6 billion for a new medicine to progress from discovery to marketplace. Clinical trials often take seven years.

Even then, PhRMA documents, the “overall probability of clinical success — the likelihood that a drug entering clinical testing will eventually be approved — is estimated to be less than 12%.”

This high-risk, high-reward environment is why costs for cutting-edge drugs are so high and why so few biopharma companies survive to see their products com mercia l i zed, McAllister explains.

“The resources required to get there are so expansive that only the big multinational biopharma corporations — Pfizer, Merck, AstraZeneca, Roche — can afford to do the necessary research,” he says. “It takes an

extremely long time and an investment of hundreds of millions of dollars to successfully develop a cancer drug.”

In essence, Intezyne’s goal is to go out of “business.” “With rare exception, the goal of small biopharma companies like us is to either license our products to one of these companies or be acquired by them – and that’s certainly our plan,” McAllister says. “Instead, our products would be sold by a ‘big pharma’ company like GlaxoSmithKline, Pfizer, or AstraZeneca.”

But before it can license products or be acquired, Intezyne first has to successfully demonstrate its products work. And that’s a daunting challenge. To generate the necessary data, Intezyne will need to invest another “$10 to $15 million over the next two years and then go public to provide adequate funding for the next set of trials, which could cost upwards of $50 million,“ McAllister says. “We’re currently on an IPO trajectory for late 2018 or early 2019.”

Until then, Intezyne must continue to solicit qualified investors at industry events such as June’s 2017 BIO International Convention in San Diego, where, according to articles in trade and medical journals, IT139 and IT-141 attracted significant attention from both prospective backers and potential strategic partners.

McA llister says Intez y ne recently secured a $10 million-plus invest ment f rom “an institutional investor, a hea lth care-focused fund,”

15

he declined to identify. The company has otherwise been financed by “accredited, highnet-worth individual investors and family offices,” he adds.

Ultimately, Sill says, “The limiting factor in advancing our products is funding, and raising capital (in the Tampa Bay area) is quite difficult. There are no established institutional life science funds in the area, and, as a result, we will likely have to look outside the Southeast to find suitable investors for our Series B round.”

The irony, Sill adds, is Intezyne could never have gotten to where it is if it had not been for its 12-year tenancy at the USF technology incubator, as well as assistance from Hillsborough County and the city of Tampa. “It is extremely costeffective lab space compared to similar facilities in Boston or San Francisco,” he says. “It’s been a big asset.”

McAllister agrees: Intezyne’s labs are substantially better equipped and cost a mere fraction of competitors’ space in ‘traditional’ biopharma hubs.

However, as Intezyne grows, its ability to stay in Tampa becomes a growing challenge.

“We would love to stay and become Tampa’s first homegrown biopharma success story, which would encourage other biopharma companies to follow suit, but it’s getting harder and harder to do so,” Sill says. “We would prefer to stay in the area but circumstances may dictate we go elsewhere. We’ll address that when the time comes.”

AN ALTERNATIVE TO MONEY MARKET FUNDS July is behind us and the amazing stock market rally has continued into early August. All three major indices reached record highs in July and the Dow Jones Industrial Average burst through the 22,000 level in early August. The July Nonfarm Payroll Report was very strong as 209,000 jobs were created, well above the estimate of 180,000. The unemployment rate ticked lower to 4.3% while the Labor Participation Rate improved to 62.9%.

The Federal Reserve chose to stand pat at its July meeting as inflation remains below the 2% level which the Federal Reserve believes is key. The Fed will next meet September 19-20. The US Dollar has dipped against the world’s major currencies. Both the British Pound and the Euro have rallied more than 10% off of their 52 week low making US exports more affordable abroad.

239706

There have been some significant developments in Mergers & Acquisitions. Dow Chemical and DuPont announced on August 4 that all regulatory approvals have been received. Their merger of equals will be completed on August 31. Then on September 1, the combined company will trade under the new ticker DWDP on the New York Stock Exchange.

WWW . ATILUS . COM

It appears there will be significant Merger & Acquisition activity over the next year. Several Private Equity firms have raised enormous sums of money for funds targeted for buyouts. Back in March, KKR raised $13.9 billion for its latest North American buyout fund. KKR announced in July it would acquire WebMD for $2.8 billion in cash.

Last month, Carlyle announced it is seeking to raise $15 billion for its next US buyout fund and hopes to raise $100 billion by 2019 for funds focused on buyouts around the globe. Meanwhile, Apollo Global Management raised $24.6 billion in July, creating the largest buyout fund ever.

The previous record was held by Blackstone which raised nearly $22 billion in 2007. Apollo purchased golf course operator ClubCorp for $1.1 billion in July. In Europe, a record sum of 16 billion Euros was raised by CVC Partners in June.

Since President Donald Trump took office in January, there have been delays in the confirmation process of Trump’s nominees for key roles in various Cabinet posts and regulatory agencies. As a result, Private Equity firms see an opportunity to make acquisitions which they can close quickly. Private Equity firms typically do not face much regulatory scrutiny when making acquisitions as compared with corporate buyers. Quite often, a corporate buyer will face extensive antitrust and regulatory reviews as was seen in the soon to be completed Dow Chemical DuPont merger.

If you are unhappy with the returns now offered by money market funds feel free to contact us.

info@amescapmgmt.com | amescapmgmt.com

248419

229290

4419 Samoset Drive Sarasota, FL 34241 | 941-378-5000

commercial real estate

16

BUSINESS OBSERVER | AUGUST 11 – AUGUST 17, 2017

BusinessObserverFL.com

Morningstar lowers Sarasota mall rating A major credit rating firm has significantly lowered the estimated value of Westfield Corp.’s SarasoK.L. ta Square Mall MCQUAID in Sarasota County, a move that follows the departure of two key anchors and several inline tenants over the past two years.

Morningstar Credit Ratings says the nearly 1 million-square-foot mall’s value has fallen by roughly 70%, to $39 million, in the wake of the loss of anchor Macy’s and the pending exit this fall by Sears.

The mall’s current anchors include Costco Wholesale Corp. and J.C. Penney.

Morningstar notes the 8201 S. Tamiami Trail mall’s value had been $128.4 million in 2013, at the time of a commercial mortgagebacked security (CMBS) issuance.

With the estimated drop in value, Westfield’s loanto-value ratio has climbed to 97.4%. Typically, loan-tovalue ratios on commercial properties range from 65% to 80%.

Westfield officials declined to comment.

Morningstar says it does not believe the mall is in danger of imminently defaulting on its debt, but “we believe there is a long-term maturity risk, especially as the loss of two anchors makes it unlikely that a lender will provide a takeout loan by the loan’s 2023 maturity date,” according to a recently issued CMBS report.

“Even though the yearend 2016 cash flow suggests a debt yield above 10%, further deterioration will make refinancing the property questionable as lenders shy away from the risk of smaller, less dynamic malls, especially if additional stores close,” Morningstar noted.

Westfield acquired Sarasota Square in October 2003 for $77 million, records show. The mall was fully renovated in 2009 at a cost of $50 million, when a 12-screen AMC Theater was installed together with 25,000 square feet of new retail space.

Publix snags trio of centers Publix Super Markets Inc., following a flurry of purchases of shopping centers it anchors in the waning days of the last economic recession, may be at it again.

The Lakeland-based grocery chain has acquired a trio of shopping centers See COLUMN page 17

COURTESY RENDERINGS

Lakewood Ranch Commercial Realty’s Collaboration Opportunities for Research and Exploration park, a 265-acre project targeting health care and biosciences users, has landed its first medical-related projects. The planned two-story HealthPark at Lakewood Ranch building is expected to house a surgery center, specialty physician practices and an imaging center when completed in late 2018.

at the

CORE

Lakewood Ranch life sciences park is gelling with a trio of new projects.

L

ess than two years after its launch, Lakewood Ranch Commercial Realty’s planned 265acre health care- and life sciencesthemed business park has landed its first medical-related projects.

Health care equipment supplier Mercedes Medical expects to break ground within 60 days on a new headquarters of 55,000 square feet, a building that will consolidate three Manatee County facilities.

Alex Miller, the company’s CEO, says Mercedes Medical spent more than a year evaluating potential sites before deciding on a $10 million building in CORE, or Collaboration Opportunities for Research and Exploration.

“We really liked the idea of being a part of the new park, and we want to develop something beautiful and something that’s also symbolic, in terms of growth, of where we’re going as a company,” Miller says.

The company’s building, which is being built to accommodate as many as 120 employees — Mercedes Medical currently employs 65 — is slated for completion in the third quarter of 2018, Miller says.

Mercedes Medical’s headquarters will be joined by a two-story medical office building being planned by developer Optimal Outcomes LLC — the first direct medical tenant planned for CORE. The St. Petersburg firm expects to begin construction on its 42,000-square-foot project by the end of this year.

In all, a trio of new developments — including an Earth Fare-anchored retail center — will bring nearly 250,000 square feet to CORE by the end of 2018.

HealthPark at Lakewood Ranch, the planned medical office building, also will be the first medical offices to be built in the 31,000-acre master-

planned community since 2005, when the Lakewood Ranch Medical Center was completed.

Like Mercedes Medical’s building, Optimal Outcomes expects to complete HealthPark by the end of next year.

“We think this building will fit in well,” says Ken Hughes, president of CNK Realty, a Lakewood Ranch commercial real estate brokerage specializing in medical office properties that is leasing HealthPark.

“Lakewood Ranch meets a lot of needs, for infrastructure and housing and amenities, and it’s growing by leaps and bounds,” Hughes says.

The building’s 10,000-square-foot surgery center also will be the first multispecialty operating facility within the community.

Hughes says the HealthPark space is being marketed for roughly $25 per square foot on a triple-net basis, with operating costs of about $8.50 per square foot.

W hile that rate is higher than

typical office space in Sarasota and Manatee counties, which Lakewood Ranch straddles, medical office space often is specialized and requires higher finishes and a higher level of interior build-out.

HealthPark also will have a covered drop off area for patients, a design that also is typical for medical offices.

To compensate for the elevated rent rate, Optimal Outcomes is providing tenants an average of $55 per square foot of tenant improvements, money that is invested in a tenants’ space at the outset of occupancy and amortized throughout the course of a lease. Tenant improvements for office space are often less than half that amount.

So-called “T/I allowances” for the surgery center space could go as high as $200 to $300 per square foot, Hughes says, depending on the type of use.

See CORE page 17

Artists’ depiction of what the planned CORE at Lakewood Ranch life sciences campus could look like. The development could take two decades to reach full build out.

AUGUST 11 – AUGUST 17, 2017 | BUSINESS OBSERVER

BusinessObserverFL.com

CORE from page 16

We want to develop something beautiful and something that’s also symbolic, in terms of growth, of where we’re going as a company.

Alex Miller | Mercedes Medical

DEEDS/MORTGAGES The following real estate transactions more than $1 million were filed in Charlotte, Collier, Hillsborough, Lee, Manatee, Pasco, Pinellas, Polk and Sarasota county courthouses. The information lists the seller, buyer, amount of sale, previous price and date, mortgage and lender, if available, address and book and page of the document.

CHARLOTTE NONE COLLIER Buyer: LA-Vault LLC Seller: Regions Bank Address: 1697 Pine Ridge Road, Naples Property Type: Financial institutions Price: $1,357,500

COLUMN from page 16

“The shell and the common areas of HealthPark will be constructed to a much higher finish than a typical office building,” Hughes says. “And that’s because medical buildings usually have more traffic than a normal office and so you need to build them to withstand more people coming in and out.”

Hea lt hPa rk at La kewood Ra nch marks the latest in a series of Optimal Outcomes’ medical projects. In all, the company has developed in excess of 1 million square feet.

Prev ious developments have included a 50,000-square-foot building for Florida Cancer Specialists & Research Institute, in Fort Myers; Tradition HealthPark One and Two in Port St. Lucie, totaling 102,000 square feet; a 39,000-square-foot building in Brandon; and a pair of projects in Tampa, according to the company’s website.

HealthPark at Lakewood Ranch and Mercedes Medical’s project follow a third development, a 150,000-squarefoot retail center being developed by Orlando-based Tavistock Development Co. In addition to organic grocer Earth Fare, the project will be occupied by LA Fitness and a series of health-related merchants and restaurants.

Tavistock, which spent $8 million in May to acquire 42 acres within CORE, also plans to develop a 294-unit apartment complex there.

“To attract users to CORE, Lakewood Ranch Commercial determined there had to be adequate amenities in place,” Hughes says. “The whole concept is to develop a very walkable project with open space and in which restaurants and other retail meshes well.”

In all, Flad Architects of Wisconsin is designing CORE to contain as much as 4.5 million square feet, which will be developed over two decades.

Ultimately, Lakewood Ranch Commercial hopes to cluster enough life sciences uses and businesses to attract a university or research hospital to CORE. “We’re very happy with the activity that we’ve seen at CORE to date,” says Kirk Boylston, Lakewood Ranch Commercial’s president. “And we have a number of other exciting projects there we’re working on.

“But medical projects take a long time, and we knew going in that this was going to be a long-term project that would take years possibly to really see the fruits there.”

– K.L. McQuaid

transactions |

17

in Hillsborough, Pinellas and Polk counties for $68.7 million, property records from the three counties show.

Brian West, a Publix spokesman, says that the acquisitions do not represent the kick-off to another round of intentional buying.

“There’s no rhyme or reason to why we’ve purchased these particular centers at this particular time, it was just a good opportunity,” West says.

“When the real estate markets collapsed a few years back, we were fortunate to have cash on hand and not be burdened with any long-term debt, so we were able to make some good investments with our money. Now, while the market has come back, there are still some good opportunities out there.”

In 2014 and 2015, the company budgeted roughly $3 billion to both acquire existing locations and open new stores, documents show.

Publix, which operates more than 1,150 stores in seven states and is among the Top 10 largest grocers by volume in the U.S. with $34 billion in sales last year, bought its three most recent centers from Ellis & Co. LLLP, of Tarpon Springs, and Armstrong Development Properties Inc., of Butler, Pa. The properties are located at 525 S. Belcher Road, in Clearwater; 2616 W. Hillsborough Ave., in Tampa; and 8006 Osceola Polk Line Road, in Davenport.

Ellis had owned its pair of centers for more than two decades, while Armstrong bought its Polk County property for $14.3 million in January 2006 before selling it to Publix for $23.35 million.

Stock buys site for condo tower One of Collier County’s largest real estate development firms has purchased one of Naples’ few remaining waterfront tracts for a 300-unit, luxury

The high-end luxury market in Naples remains strong, and this assemblage of property offered a prime waterfront location.

Jim Garinger | Colliers International senior managing director

condominium tower.

Stock Development LLC bought the 3.55-acre site, at 9136 Gulf Shore Drive, for $19.7 million, according to commercial real estate brokerage Colliers International Southwest Florida.

The property, which contains a marina, residences, commercial space and vacant land, is scheduled to be redeveloped as an 18-story condo tower known as One Naples. It is also adjacent to the RitzCarlton Hotel in Naples.

“The high-end luxury market in Naples remains strong, and this assemblage of property offered a prime waterfront location,” says Jim Garinger, a Colliers International senior managing director, who together with Fred Kolb and Andrew Green of the firm brokered the transaction on behalf of the seller, an affiliate of the Cafesjian Family Foundation, of Minnesota.

Stock Development officials declined to discuss One Naples or plans for the property, citing “numerous items to work through.”

BY STEVEN BENNA | STAFF WRITER

Address: 3701 10th Ave., Tampa Property Type: Office building Price: $1,940,000 Previous Price: $840,000, October 2016 Buyer: Vista Gardens Apartments LLC Seller: WC Assets LLC Address: 3809 W. Iowa Ave., Tampa Property Type: Apartment units Price: $1,650,000 Previous Price: $1,045,000, August 2016 LEE Buyer: Resort at Tranquility Lake LLC Seller: Edward Stern Address: 4100 Burnt Store Road N., Cape Coral Property Type: Agricultural land Price: $3,580,000

HILLSBOROUGH Buyer: Sun City SDC LLC Seller: ML CFC 2006 3 Marketplace LLC Address: 717 Cortaro Drive, Ruskin Property Type: Shopping center Price: $5,000,100

Buyer: Watersong Realty Series II LLC Seller: Orange 2315 Associates LLC Address: 2275 Central Ave., Fort Myers Property Type: Multifamily units Price: $3,040,000 Previous Price: $3,010,000, November 2015

Buyer: Store Master Funding CIII LLC Seller: Three Diamond Capital Tampa LLC

MANATEE Buyer: 64 & Upper Manatee LLC

Seller: Warner Crossing LLC Address: 1450 Upper Manatee River Road, Bradenton Property Type: Agricultural land Price: $1,500,000 Buyer: DR Horton Inc. Seller: OK Willow Walk LLC Address: Palmetto Property Type: Vacant land Price: $1,286,500 Buyer: Esprix Technologies LP Seller: Sander Properties LP Address: 7675 Matoaka Road, Sarasota Property Type: Warehouse Price: $1,150,000 PASCO NONE PINELLAS Buyer: FL Enclave LLC Seller: Pinellas – East Bay Associates LLC Address: 3660 East Bay Drive, Largo Property Type: Apartment units Price: $20,300,000 Previous Price: $11,450,000, April 2005 Buyer: IC Industrial REIT

Seller: Evergreen Propco VI LLC Address: 2007 Gandy Blvd. N., St. Petersburg Property Type: Warehouse Price: $20,040,000 Previous Price: $33,500,000, July 2015 Buyer: IC Industrial REIT Seller: Evergreen Propco VI LLC Address: 2003 Gandy Blvd. N., St. Petersburg Property Type: Warehouse Price: $16,030,000 Previous Price: $33,500,000, July 2015 POLK Buyer: MEI Properties LLC Seller: Penn Pro Properties LLC Address: 4000 State Road 60 E., Mulberry Property Type: Office building Price: $1,150,000 Previous Price: $800,000, July 2004 SARASOTA Buyer: Ringling Sarasota Apartments LLC Seller: Louis Doyle, Diana Doyle, Padick Partners Address: 2260 Ringling Blvd., Sarasota Property Type: Shopping center Price: $7,598,000

St. Pete Smitten Third Lake Capital is heavy invested in St. Petersburg, and it likes it that way.

T

hird Lake Capital could invest in a lot of places — and has — but the company has a special affinity for St. Petersburg, the city across Tampa Bay from its home base in downtown Tampa.

In June, the 4-year-old investment firm acquired St. Petersburg’s tallest building, Priatek Plaza, for $65.75 million, with plans to spend considerably more to renovate and improve the 28-story tower.

That deal followed its financial backing of what will be the city’s tallest structure, a 41-story, mixed-use skyscraper known as One St. Petersburg, when it is completed next year.

“It’s incredible to us what St. Petersburg has become, and we think the city still has a lot of runway in terms of growth and potential,” says Ken Jones, Third Lake’s president and CEO. “The city leadership and the community have done a very good job of cultivating an atmosphere of a vibrant place that somehow has managed to go undiscovered for quite some time.

We’re big believers.”

At Priatek Plaza, Third Lake — an investment firm controlled by the Wanek family, owners of the Ashley Furniture chain — is planning a series of improvements to the 305,370-square-foot building that will result in upgrades to the lobby, tenant amenities and finishes that will cost millions of dollars.

“It’s truly one of the best buildings in all of St. Petersburg or Tampa, in our opinion,” Jones says. “The building has great bones, and the reproduction cost today would be incredibly expensive, with all the high-end finishes, the stone and the copper especially, that’s in there.

“Typically, we seek out high-quality assets to buy, and we want to own buildings that are best in their market, and we feel we have that in Priatek,” Jones adds. “We’re hoping to improve what’s already a really good asset.”

The 27-year-old tower, formerly known as One Progress Plaza, was completed in 1990 by Florida Power

RICHARDSON KLEIBER WALTER FOR

BUSINESS OBSERVER | AUGUST 11 – AUGUST 17, 2017

BusinessObserverFL.com

E EAS RL O E SAL

& Light. Today the building is roughly 76% occupied by investment firms Raymond James Financial and Merrill Lynch, the Bank of Tampa, iQor, law firm Trenam, and others.

Jones says Third Lake is currently evaluating potential plans for a roughly one-acre tract adjacent to the 200 Central Ave. building, but that no determination has been made as to the future of the site.

Former owner Kucera Properties floated the idea of developing as many as 300 apartments, an 80-room boutique hotel and hundreds of additional parking spaces on the land.

“We didn’t undertake the investment opportunity at Priatek as anything other than an office building,” Jones says. “So right now, we have no plans for that surface lot.”

Nearby, at 100 First Ave. N., plans are set and construction well underway on One St. Petersburg, a $300 million project for which Third Lake has provided equity funding.

When completed next year, the Kolter Group-developed skyscraper will contain 253 upscale condominiums, 17,000 square feet of groundfloor retail and restaurant space. An adjacent 13-story building, containing a 174-room Hyatt Place hotel, is slated to open in early autumn.

“They’ve been a fantastic partner,” says Bobby Julien, Kolter Group’s CEO, of Third Lake. “And clearly they have a much bigger presence in St. Petersburg than they did three years ago.

“We think, and they agree, that One St. Petersburg will be a great asset for that market. The deal there has gone really well, we’re very pleased with the condo sales and the reception the hotel has gotten so far, and that’s helped, but beyond that, Third Lake has been a great partner to work with.”

Relations between the two have gone so well that Third Lake has provided funding for another Kolter project, a 19-story, luxury condo development being built on Singer Island, at 5000 N. Ocean Drive.

“We consider Kolter to be a great organization all around,” says Jones.

KLEIBER BUTTON INC. Lic Real Estate Broker KLEIBER BUTTON MANAGEMENT INC. Lic Real Estate Broker

SE LEA FOR

COURTESY PHOTO

Third Lake Capital spent $65.75 million to acquire the 28-story Priatek Plaza in downtown St. Petersburg in early June. The company is now evaluating making a series of improvements to the city’s tallest building.

To the extent that other opportunities in St. Petersburg present themselves, we’ll probably be in line bidding for them.

Ken Jones | Third Lake Capital

Jeff Button | 941-313-1193

Jeff@SarasotaWarehouses.com | www.SarasotaWarehouses.com

Industrial & Office Properties For Sale or Lease SE LEA FOR

I-75 / Fruitville Area

12,500 SF Office/Warehouse

30,354 SF Free-Standing Manufacturing Warehouse 740 Apex Road Very Nicely Finished Offices, Double Loading Dock, 600 Amp 3 Phase Power

I-75 / Fruitville Rd Area 3 Phase Power, Multiple 14’ Tall Roll-Up Doors

Manufacturing or Warehousing 21,875 SF to 43,750 SF with 24’ Eave, 3 Phase Power, Multiple Doors, Natural Gas and Loading Dock Access Available

CALL FOR PRICING

CALL FOR PRICING

CALL FOR PRICING

6202-6218 Clarity Ct

“They are truly best in class. And in St. Petersburg, they saw a lot of what we saw in terms of the potential. They’re building an iconic tower, and just as importantly, offering a lifestyle.”

And while others might elect to invest elsewhere after buying in to two of a city’s top developments, Third Lake remains open to future endeavors in St. Petersburg.

“To the extent that other opportunities present themselves, we’ll probably be in line bidding on them,” Jones says. “We put our money where our mouth is. All options are on the table.

“We’re fairly thoughtful, though, and we’re not wedded to any one particular asset class or classes. Each individual deal has to make sense before we commit.”

– K.L. McQuaid

2047 58th Ave Cir East

E SAL FOR

1,820 SF Beautifully Finished Office/Warehouse

4545 Mariotti Ct, Unit E 2 Private Offices, Restroom w Shower, Large open A/C Workspace with FULL KITCHEN, Small Warehouse w Roll-up Door

FOR SALE $214,000

ING IST L NEW

2242 Whitfield Park Loop 4,250 SF Free-Standing Industrial Facility, 2 Private Offices, A/C Work Areas, 3 Phase Power

FOR SALE $429,000

Richardson Kleiber Walter, a family-owned business celebrating 30+ Years of Excellence in Commercial and Industrial Real Estate

229321

commercial real estate

18

19 calendar

AUGUST 11 – AUGUST 17, 2017 | BUSINESS OBSERVER

corporatereport | SARASOTA-MANATE

Builder with focus on semi-custom luxury homes posts sales increase Semi-custom luxury homebuilder Neal Signature Homes, affiliated with Neal Communities, sold eight homes in June, a nearly 26% increase over June 2016.

The sales brought 2017 sales to 43 for the year, including 13 over the past six weeks, according to a statement from the Lakewood Ranch-based residential builder.

Randy Turkovics, president of Neal Signature Homes, says sales have been boosted by buyers’ desire for ease and convenience. “Many homebuyers are looking for move-in-ready homes with the high level of fit-to-finish features that our brand delivers,” Turkovics says in the statement, Neal Signature Homes specializes in homes priced from $600,000 to just under $2 million.

Audio Video Partners buys Sarasota Home Theater Audio Video Partners, in a move company officials say will give it an edge over competitors, acquired Sarasota Home Theater, another provider of audiovisual design and installation services for the local residential market.

Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed.

“Sarasota Home Theater developed a solid reputation in the community over 13 years, and this acquisition gives AVP one more leg up on the competition,” says Luke Anderson, owner of Audio Video Partners, in a statement.

Ken Sheaffer, Sarasota Home Theater’s previous owner, will have a management

BusinessObserverFL.com

BY TED CARTER | CONTRIBUTOR

of

role in the business. “In my new role, I can focus on the administrative side of the business and let AVP’s team of technicians manage all of the installation work,” Sheaffer says in the statement.

Sheaffer founded Sarasota Home Theater in 2003. Audio Video Partners is a full-service electronic integration company specializing in the design and installation of low-voltage and multimedia systems for residential and commercial clients.

TAMPA BAY

Medical group promotes physician to executive position Tampa General Medical Group, an affiliate of Tampa General Hospital, named Dr. Lucila Ramiro vice president.

Ramiro has been an internal medicine physician at TGH Family Care Center Kennedy since 1995 and has served as TGMG’s primary care program director since 2012, according to a statement.

She’s also played a key role in the expansion of TGMG’s primary care offices throughout Tampa Bay, the release adds.

In her new role Ramiro oversees TGMG’s two specialty offices, 14 primary care locations and 101 primary care providers, specialists and advanced practice providers. TGMG physicians provide care at locations in Hillsborough and Pasco counties. “Our plan is to maximize the capacity of the existing clinics and to open more locations in southern Hillsborough County,” says Ramiro in the statement.

Adds Ramiro: “What I’m proud of is we keep growing and adding providers.

We’re taking more patients, and yet we’re maintaining the quality of care ...”

Bank adds new member to board of directors

events

AUG. 15

LIKE A BOSS: A panel of four Tampa area women business leaders is scheduled to speak at the Greater Tampa Chamber of Commerce’s Women’s Series August Luncheon. The topic is Act Like a Lady, Work Like a Boss: What Women Need to Become Strong FERENC Leaders. Speakers include Robin DeLaVergne with the Tampa General Hospital Foundation; Maryann Ferenc with Mise En Place; Colette GloverHannah with Hannah’s Shoebox; and Yvette Segura with USAA. The lunch is from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. at the Embassy Suites Tampa Downtown Convention Center, 513 S. Florida Ave., Tampa. Tickets are $50 for chamber members; $60 for nonmembers. For more information call 813-228-7777.

First National Bank of Pasco appointed Pasco County native and area insurance executive Chris Black to its board of directors. Black joins eight other members on the board of the Dade City-based bank.

The 35-year-old Black, who founded Chris Black Insurance in 2008, becomes the youngest board member ever at First National Bank of Pasco, according to a statement. The bank was founded in 1986. “I’ve worked with other banks in the past, but have never had commercial loans go as smoothly as they do when working with First National,” Black says in the statement. “Their decision-making process impressed me, and I’m very proud to be sitting on their board.”

First National Bank of Pasco had $153.4 million in assets through March 31, according to Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. data.

LEE-COLLIER

Gates Construction names senior superintendent

AUG. 23

CUSTOMER DELIGHT: The Greater Fort Myers Chamber of Commerce presents its 4th annual Business Building Symposium. The symposium, presented by HBKS Wealth Advisors and HBK CPAs & Consultants, is under the theme “serving customer delight.” It features 10 workshops and 15 speakers. The event is from 7:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the Sanibel Harbour Marriott Resort & Spa, 17260 Harbour Pointe Drive, Fort Myers. The cost/tuition for is $149. Online registration is open at fortmyers.org. Call 239-332-3624 for more information.

Commercial construction specialist Brad Bowers has joined Bonita Springsbased Gates Construction as a senior superintendent.

Bowers will oversee quality control, safety, security, project closeout and transition planning at Gates, one of the largest builders in Southwest Florida.

Bowers has more than 20 years of construction experience, with a variety of project types and particular expertise in educational, retail, religious and commercial construction. Bowers will be based out of the company’s Bonita Springs headquarters.

infocus | construction In this industry, timing is everything.

Learn more about how industry leaders are capitalizing.

Read It: September 1 Advertising: August 24

For advertising information contact JoMarie Pagano at 941.366.3468 x344 jpagano@yourobserver.com

HILLSBOROUGH

POLK

PINELLAS

MANATEE

SARASOTA

CHARLOTTE

LEE

COLLIER 227990

PASCO

BusinessObserverFL.com

BUSINESS OBSERVER | AUGUST 11 – AUGUST 17, 2017

“ Difference We Make a

“One of the attractions for me to join Observer Media Group’s advertising sales team … in a word … was opportunity.

“I feel like an entrepreneur, because I control my own destiny.

“I get a lot of great support from the leadership team to help me grow.

“But it’s up to me to determine how successful I want to be. I am in charge of building my own business, of creating relationships with my customers and taking care of them, helping them grow their business and building a relationship of trust.

“It’s up to me to make a difference.

I like that challenge. It’s exciting.”

Richeal Parisi Multimedia Advertising Executive

Be a part of our success. Join the Observer’s multimedia advertising team.

Please send resume and cover letter to: Penny DiGregorio 1970 Main St., 3rd Floor Sarasota, FL 34236 or jobs@yourobserver.com

248528

20