Florida Trend

Sky's the Limit

A decade ago, a change in consumer tastes put Rangel Fernandez and his Hialeah acrylic home furnishings factory in a difficult situation.

Icon: Nathaniel Pryor Reed

People had learned to use pesticides and do evil things in the middle of the night to get rid of mangroves. * The water management districts have digressed over the past eight years because of the Bush appointments. * At the time of their creations in 1971, John DeGrove and I argued that the water management district boards should be appointed. [...] voting on issues that impact the financial aspects of U.S. Sugar is beyond belief. * Graham appointing me to the water management district boar...

Berth Mark

[...] all the construction has launched a wave of speculation about cruise line yields, the impact on profits and whether, in the Genesis Project, the public will accept a ship that has more than 10 times the tonnage and more than eight times the passenger capacity of the Princess ship used 30 years ago in "The Love Boat," the show that popularized cruising.

Sweet Nothings

When state Rep. Juan C. Zapata introduced a bill last year aimed at banning high-fructose corn syrup from Florida public schools. he called it the crack of sweeteners?' The bill never made it out of committee, but the Republican from Miami is not giving up.

Opening the Gate

Aboard the Lambdarail

FLR can enable defense and technology businesses to test products and exchange data and gives educational institutions the ability to conduct research and instruction in multiple remote sites.

Good Call

Liberal Arts

With so many high-end collectors and institutional buyers in town, the event has morphed into a kind of international economic summit for the art world, attracting throngs of art lovers, business honchos like financier Henry R. Kravis and celebrities like Yoko Ono and baseball's Alex Rodriguez. Skyrocketing art prices, strong investor interest, the emergence of art fairs as the leading marketplace for modern and contemporary art, and the international media's fascination with Miami.

Building a Downtown

Mayor Doug Kinson and city leaders are looking toward promoting Maitland as a healthy city, eventually adding smart cars and electric trolleys to connect with the commuter rail line.

Gray Matters

Williams - and Osgood - work at the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Center for Elephant Conservation, a 200-acre spread southwest of Orlando that's home to 30 elephants, the largest herd of Asian elephants in the hemisphere and the most diverse gene pool. Ringling's efforts are well-regarded by zoos, says Mike Keele, deputy director of the Oregon Zoo and head of the animal's species survival plan for the American Association of Zoos and Aquariums. Under the 1975 Convention on Interna...

Finally, Room at the Inn

A 24-story, 301-suite Trump International Hotel & Tower, built in the style of an Art Deco ocean liner, plans to open in 2009.

Turning to Their Peers

Online P2P sites - others include Prosper Marketplace and Zopa - let entrepreneurs borrow $500 to $25,000 from individual lenders who want to earn more than the interest rate paid by bank savings or CDs but don't want to invest in the stock market.

No Mercy?

Mercy CEO John Matuska says, "The project that was developed was the least intrusive on the community in terms of density and impact," adding that the hospital could have used the land to build a medical office building, an assisted living facility or other healthcare offices that would have generated four to five times the traffic of the proposed project.

A New Mindset

After learning of the state's desire to privatize the south Florida hospital, Wackenhut purchased an 87-bed, private psychiatric hospital in Fort Lauderdale for $6 million and spun off a company, Atlantic Shores Healthcare, to provide mental health services. The company, meanwhile, now doing business as GEO Care, has been able to leverage its success at the south Florida hospital into additional contracts in Florida and New Mexico - and possible contracts in other states like Nevada, Georgia...

Knitting a Social Fabric

Community foundations have emerged as one of the fastest-growing philanthropic sectors in both Florida and the U.S. The foundations, which are steered by boards of local citizens, solicit gifts from individual and corporate donors and distribute the money to a variety of charitable organizations within the community. Shack notes that some companies and law firms now give to community foundations instead of directly to non-profit groups, in part because the foundation can more carefully asses...

Kiss and Sell

Klick's academic paper, packed with historical context and data, contends that the charitable trust that controls the company cost stockholders $2.7 billion when it failed to sell Hershey to Wrigley when it had the chance in 2002. A series of events there, from the planned resignation of Hershey's CEO, who opposed the 2002 offer, and a board shake-up to disappointing earnings reports, has the town heading toward another raucous debate about the company's future.

Upwardly Mobile

Loder notes that institutional investors with long-term perspectives such as hedge funds and pension funds are eager to buy mobile home parks, even in today's slower marketplace.

Department of Redundancy Department

A huge reorganization of government with a new state constitution in 1968 was a joint product of newly elected liberal Democratic legislators and a newly elected establishment-busting Republican governor, Claude R. Kirk. The constitutionally created Tax and Budget Reform Commission (now meeting on its 20-year cycle), the constitutionally created Government Efficiency Task Force, and the legislatively created Council on Efficient Government (both added in 1996), the "sunset" review created la...

Still Mr. Big?

Also this year: * Kuhn reneged on an agreement with Orange County to buy the former FAMU law school on Orange Avenue for $6.5 million, walking away from a $200,000 deposit. * Kuhn was six months late in paying $180,000 to Orlando for traffic improvements near The Plaza. * The Plaza's general contractor, Brasfield & Gorrie of Birmingham, Ala., slapped a $5.4-million lien on the project for non-payment. Dollard had a successful restaurant in Church Street, Absinthe Bistro & Bar, before...