Phillip Gainer was frank.

“We have so many needs statewide that they outweigh our ability to stay ahead of them,” said the secretary of Florida Department of Transportation District 3, which extends from Escambia County east to Jefferson County. “We’re often in a position where we’re catching up. There is so much development and growth in the coastal areas. ”

And, Florida has 1,350 miles of coastline.

District 3’s efforts to compete for state transportation funding are complicated by the fact that while it is home to two of the 10 fastest-growing counties in the state — Walton and Santa Rosa — its population is the smallest among the state’s seven transportation districts.

Under the circumstances, the best any district can do is to apply a process for prioritizing projects and knock them off the list as funds become available.

That prioritizing work with regard to most types of transportation infrastructure, or “facilities” in DOT parlance, is accomplished by Transportation Planning Organizations. There are four in the district.

The Florida-Alabama TPO, so called because Baldwin County, Alabama, figures in its considerations, is chaired by Escambia County Commissioner Robert Bender; it comprises Escambia and Santa Rosa counties. The Bay TPO, limited to Bay County, is chaired by Callaway Mayor Pamn Henderson. Wakulla County Commissioner Quincee Messersmith chairs the Capital Region Transportation Planning Agency, which includes Gadsden, Jefferson, Leon and Wakulla counties. An Okaloosa County commissioner, Nathan Boyles, chairs the Okaloosa-Walton TPO.

“The TPOs set priorities for their areas in categories that range from traffic signals and intersections to multi-use trails and capacity projects,” Gainer explained. He added that the district, itself, makes decisions regarding resurfacing work and bridge replacements. In addition, the district assesses requests for projects made by rural cities and counties that are not represented on a TPO. In District 3, those counties are Calhoun, Franklin, Gulf, Holmes, Jackson, Liberty and Washington.

Decisions about interstate maintenance are made on a statewide basis.

Gainer mentioned, too, Strategic Intermodal System (SIS) funding as a factor in completing projects in areas where population densities are not currently high but growth is coming.

The SIS is a high-priority network of transportation facilities deemed important to the state’s economy and mobility. Created in 2003, it focuses transportation resources on facilities that are key to interregional areas and interstates. The SIS is the state’s highest priority for transportation capacity investments — typically the addition of traffic lanes — and a primary vehicle for implementing the Florida Transportation Plan (FTP), the state’s long-range transportation vision and policy plan.

“SIS is how we have been able to four-lane highways 331, 79 and 77 between U.S. 98 and I-10,” Gainer said.

He concedes that some projects may proceed while not registering as priority concerns in the minds of most motorists. The construction of a $5.6 million pedestrian underpass and related improvements at County Road 30A and U.S. 98 in Walton County falls into that category.

“We have different categories of priorities including pedestrian facilities,” Gainer said. “Walton County came to us after the underpass had been made a priority by the Okaloosa-Walton TPO. They partnered with us financially, so we didn’t pay for all of the right of way and all of the facility. By bringing funds to the table, they made it possible for us to move from a conventional pedestrian crossing to a tunnel.”

Gainer said contributions made by residents, businesses and local units of government and special legislative appropriations all may figure in covering costs for transportation projects.

“Sometimes, a local government will fund a project now for reimbursement later,” he said. “If there is a signalized intersection that needs to go in, our process takes a little bit longer, but if a county wants to put one in, like at an intersection of U.S. 98 and a county highway, we’ll allow them to put that signal in as long as it meets our design specifications.”

Gainer said construction in Bay County of a bridge over Crooked Creek and a new State Road 388 leading directly from the mega Latitude Margaritaville Watersound development to the Northwest Florida Beaches International Airport is an example of choosing an alignment that was less expensive than expanding an existing roadway.

“If you look at 388 from the airport to 79, there are a lot of homes along that stretch, and if you want to four-lane a two-lane facility, you need a lot of additional right of way,” Gainer pointed out. “Sometimes, it’s easier to get the necessary right of way in a new area so that you don’t have to buy each residential house or take people’s front yards. From a permitting standpoint, it’s easier to get pond sites away from homes.”

Travel highways including State 79, and you may see ponds surrounded by chain-link fencing. They serve as detention and retention ponds that collect stormwater runoff and allow for the settling out of pollutants.   

The six-laning of U.S. 98 in Destin and now Panama City Beach are examples of projects that may take 10 to 12 years to complete, beginning with feasibility and environmental analyses. Right-of-way acquisition may consume two years, especially if eminent domain proceedings are involved, Gainer said.

When construction proceeds, the DOT endeavors to minimize disruption of traffic flows that may be viewed by some people in a project area as protracted.

In four-laning a road, Gainer said, DOT may strive to acquire enough right of way so that when it is eventually six-laned, the expansion can take place in the middle of a corridor, thus minimizing impacts. Additionally, he said, paving work may be scheduled for nighttime hours, but doing so does present additional risks to contractors’ employees.

“If we are working in a residential area, people don’t like all the banging of the tailgates and the equipment noise when they are trying to sleep, but we ask for their patience and remind them that resurfacing occurs only once every 12 or 15 years,” Gainer said.

Maintenance of I-10 is always a District 3 priority.

“It’s the backbone of our district,” Gainer said. “It is important to the ports in the region. We’re looking at six-laning some areas around Tallahassee and in Escambia County to move the trucks through as best we can.”

At the suggestion that I-10 is better maintained than I-75, which is said many times to be in a state of “perpetual construction,” Gainer laughed. Heartily.

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Phillip Gainer presides as secretary over Florida Department of Transportation District 3, which extends from Escambia County east to Jefferson County. The predominantly rural district is large in terms of square miles but is the smallest transportation district in the state in population. In the statewide competition for funding, District 3 has to compete with more populous and often more politically powerful districts. Interstate 10 runs the length of District 3 and is a perennial maintenance priority.

Assume that a heat dome has parked itself over Tallahassee and surrounding areas. High temperatures have exceeded 100 degrees for a week. The demand for power has become so great that outages are becoming a problem. Hospitals are overflowing with cases of heat stroke and heat exhaustion. Hallways are being staged as makeshift emergency rooms. People without shelter are dying on the streets.

How would you address that crisis?

The scenario was run by Tina Vidal-Duart and Carlos Duart, Miami-born entrepreneurs who moved to Tallahassee as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Together, they oversee the CDR Companies.

Notably, Vidal-Duart is the CEO at CDR/Health, a health care services contractor whose strengths include meeting community needs during crises or following natural disasters.

CDR/Health emerged as a go-to player during the pandemic in several states. Vidal-Duart served as the CEO of Florida’s COVID-19 Infectious Disease Field Hospital System. After the hospitals were demobilized, she was instrumental in helping CDR/Health’s COVID-19 test site logistics team deploy a call center; develop software that facilitated the patient experience from registration through result delivery; and launch a proprietary vaccination data management system.

Carlos Duart is the president/CEO at CDR/Maguire Engineering, a heavy infrastructure firm whose work is confined to large state and federal projects such as interstate highway construction and reconstruction. He also advises the management team at CDR/Emergency Management, a disaster-response company that has helped communities recover from hurricanes, tornadoes, floods and fires. Like CDR/Health, it was involved with several states in combating COVID-19.

If a community were overtaken by locusts, CDR/EM likely could develop an action plan. But what of the Tallahassee heat-dome scenario?

Vidal-Duart and Duart fielded the question immediately and with specifics.

“I would take all those empty Kroger buildings in SouthWood and bring in the one thousand hospital beds that we have in warehouses in various parts of the state and open an alternative care site to relieve the pressure on hospitals,” Vidal-Duart said.

“We would probably deploy a couple of hundred staff just like we did after Hurricane Ian,” she continued. “We would bring in supplies for treating heat stroke and heat exhaustion — ice, blankets and IV bags to hydrate people. We would devote one of the buildings to a shelter for homeless people or people without power. During Hurricane Ian, we built a shelter in an old Publix in Fort Myers where the AC units had been stolen from the roof. We brought in generators and very large portable AC units.”

“On the emergency management side, it’s basically the same idea,” Duart said. “We would set up cooling centers in tents or buildings. We would need chairs, beds, generators, food, staff, possibly IVs. It’s all about supply chains and logistics and the ability to move people and supplies quicker than anybody else.”

Both Duart and Vidal-Duart earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Florida International University. In February, they contributed $1.2 million to the school to establish endowed scholarships in the FIU Honors College. Vidal-Duart’s advanced degree (2004) is in international business; Duart’s is in taxation (1999). He is also a CPA. The couple began dating after they were introduced to one another by mutual friends at an FIU football game. They quickly discovered they had something in common: Both were going through divorces.

Early in her career, Vidal-Duart specialized in acquiring and turning around financially distressed rural hospitals for a business she helped create at age 22. All of the hospitals, located in Kentucky, Louisiana and Georgia, were in bankruptcy or had announced plans to close when Vidal-Duart got involved. Most were owned by a hospital service district and governed by calcified bureaucracies.

“In small communities, you have people who have been working at the same place for a really long time,” Vidal-Duart said. “Unfortunately, that is not always the best way to run a hospital. Some hospitals hadn’t updated their chargemasters (a schedule of services and fees) for years. They weren’t setting expectations for patient lengths of stay and admissions from the ER department. They may have failed to negotiate supply contracts. Or, the reputation of a hospital in the community may have been poor.”

Vidal-Duart, then, worked to make the hospitals more efficient and profitable, at times adding services and bringing in additional doctors.

“At hospitals owned by service districts, profit is sometimes looked at as a bad thing,” she said. “What people fail to realize is that profit enables facilities to stay open, it allows for reinvestment and makes raises and bonuses possible. It takes time to change that mentality — to the benefit of the employees and the community.”

As a CPA, Duart worked for Price-Waterhouse for three years and later became the controller at an engineering firm owned by his then father-in-law.

“I have always had a business mindset,” he said. “I started reading the Wall Street Journal when I was 11. Numbers are my thing. If you can competently and efficiently run a business and motivate its employees, you can do amazing things, and it’s not all about money.”

Duart is the son of Cuban immigrants. Vidal-Duart’s father emigrated to the United States from Cuba at age 3. Her mother was born in California to a Mexican-American father and an American mother.

They grew up in modest households and learned the value of hard work while very young. As a girl, Vidal-Duart contributed to the household income by mowing lawns and cleaning houses.

At age 4, Duart began picking Surinam cherries with members of his family. Three gallons were good for five bucks. At age 15, he was introduced to engineering. Standing at intersections with clipboard in hand, he counted cars. (Having misheard Duart when he told her about that experience, Vidal-Duart believed for years that he got his start counting cards.)

At the engineering firm, Duart the controller aspired to a bigger role in the business. The owner scoffed at the idea.

“He told me that I was an accountant and that I would never be able to manage things,” Duart recalled. “He said I wasn’t even capable of managing the office. But I became president and CEO of the company. When people tell me I can’t do something, it lights me up.”

In 2009, Duart purchased the Maguire Group, a 70-year-old, Rhode Island-based engineering firm with 200 employees.

“That was a big move for me as there was no safety net; the deal was funded by me,” Duart said. “And not everything was smooth sailing. In 2012, we went through a Chapter 11 restructuring due to significant liabilities that were undisclosed when I bought the business. But we survived, paid all our vendors 100 cents on the dollar, and even won two national awards related to the restructuring.”

Meanwhile, Duart had hired his future wife as a consultant who would rework the business’s approach to project management.

When COVID-19 took hold in Florida, the state reached out to CDR, given Duart’s and Vidal-Duart’s experience in emergency management.

“Once we understood what the needs were, I started calling all my contacts, and Carlos started calling people he knew in health care and we were able to secure additional lab capacity and medical supplies that the state was having a hard time getting,” Vidal-Duart said.

CDR’s COVID work expanded as the pandemic worsened. Vidal-Duart, as a former hospital CEO, helped educate state Department of Health employees on how to establish and run field hospitals. Finally, the state asked her if she could open them.

“We did, and then we opened hundreds of mass testing sites for the state,” Vidal-Duart said. “That led to vaccinations. We were the first to provide monoclonal antibodies on a mass scale, and we’re still the largest provider in the country.”

For Duart and Vidal-Duart, COVID-19 would become personal. Duart contracted the virus during Father’s Day weekend in 2020 and was admitted to Baptist Hospital in Miami. The antiviral medication remdesivir was administered, but it didn’t help. Duart said he had been scheduled to receive a ventilator when he started to improve in response to convalescent plasma.

“Carlos almost died, and I sat there thinking, ‘I am going to be a single mom,’” Vidal-Duart said.

So it was that she was greatly moved by a woman who had been tested for COVID and desperately needed her test results. Her husband had COVID, and doctors have given him 24 hours to live. She would not be permitted to see him unless she presented a negative test result.

“Carlos was sick at the time, and I remember thinking that this could be me in a couple of days,” Vidal-Duart said. “I called the lab and said I needed to have the woman’s results within eight hours. They told me they had thousands of tests to go through to find them, and I told them I didn’t care. They did it, and she was able to see her husband before he died.”

Duart and Vidal-Duart said they worked 20-hour days in Tallahassee during the pandemic and managed to see their two small children in Miami for only a couple of hours on Sundays. Eventually, they decided to make Tallahassee their new home.

They developed a building off Mahan Road that houses offices along with a medical spa, a primary care clinic and a testing lab, all part of their family of companies.    

“We lead by example,” Vidal-Duart said of her and her husband’s management style. “There is nothing that we call on others to do that we would not do ourselves, even if that means responding to patient emails and giving them test results at 3 in the morning.

“We are willing to work side by side with our team. We feel like a family. There is a camaraderie and bonds that have been built that only come about when you come through a disaster or an emergency.”

Duart said of the company culture at CDR/Maguire Engineering that “we are engaged in a team effort, everyone has a role to play and we don’t pass the buck. If something needs to be done, we’re gonna get it done.”

That approach can differ from that of government. Asked if he could markedly streamline a state or federal agency if given 90 days to do so, Duart had another ready answer.

“A hundred percent.”

When Hurricane Sally slammed into the Gulf Coast on Sept. 16, 2020, as a strong Category 2 hurricane with maximum sustained winds of 105 miles per hour, most storm veterans in the affected area assumed the blow would be relatively manageable.

It was sure to be less devastating than Hurricane Michael, which had roared ashore at Mexico Beach two years earlier as a Category 5 event. But for many property owners in Sally’s impact area, the storm would prove to be more consequential than they anticipated.

Sally was blamed for three deaths. First its outer bands and then prolonged hurricane conditions with powerful wind gusts damaged roofs, destroyed docks, left yachts and other vessels stranded on shore and felled trees. A major bridge was out.

By the time Sally blew out of town, water and power were off for residents in Pensacola Beach. Many roads were closed. Flooded properties included the Portofino Island Resort. Its parking area was underwater, and its five condominium towers looked strangely like vertical islands.

The property owners in the best position to deal with Sally’s effects were those who had planned for such an eventuality.

For more than 34 years, attorney Ed Fleming, the founding partner in the Pensacola law firm, McDonald Fleming, has witnessed hurricanes and their effects. He helps people partner with contractors and deal with insurance companies. And he consistently recommends that people establish a disaster-recovery team before a storm hits.

That team, he said, should include vetted general contractors, insurance agents, an experienced construction and first-party insurance attorney, and a homeowners association manager.

Fleming was part of the team that aided Portofino Island Resort’s recovery following Sally, a process that involved water mitigation, building restoration and the filing of insurance claims. Fleming helped unit owners get back in their homes, secured a contract with a commercial contractor and won a big appraisal award for Portofino Island Resort from its insurance company for damages exceeding $180 million.

Phoenix Coatings in Pensacola was the contractor that oversaw emergency dry-out work and the restoration of water-damaged interiors at 765 units — work that was accomplished in three months.

George and Louise Atchison, owners of Phoenix Coatings, lead the company’s structural restoration efforts.

“We had 250 people on Portofino, including subcontractors,” George Atchison said. “It is important for people to deal with businesses they know. Don’t deal with the storm chasers who are in Texas this week, Florida the next, people who do not have a commitment to your community. We do; locals do. If a hurricane hits South Carolina, storm chasers are going to head there. Locals are not going to leave. Deal local.”

“We know there are going to be hurricanes in Florida,” Fleming said. “Get your legal and construction team on board before the storm hits.”

He said the conduct of insurance companies has changed since Michael.

“The adjustors once showed up en masse to assess damage and write checks. They are not doing that now. I think it’s more profitable for insurance companies to instead say, ‘No, no, no.’”

Fleming recommends that owners of single-family homes establish a relationship with a general contractor and a roofer.

“It is critical to have a roofer on board,” he said. “If a roof fails, you need to stop the water damage fast.”

“Pick a local attorney and contractor who have availability,” Atchison said. “Have a relationship with those you can count on to be there. Under no circumstances use a public adjuster. They cannot litigate; an attorney can do more. The insurance company is going to deny, deny, deny.”

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Past Projects

Storm recovery work completed by Phoenix Coatings has addressed both building exteriors and interiors.

Eden Condominiums 16281 Perdido Key Drive, Pensacola

Work Completed:
Exterior restoration and dry-out following Hurricane Sally

Moonspinner Condominiums
4425 Thomas Drive, Panama City Beach

Work Completed:
Exterior restoration and wall reconstruction following Hurricane Michael

Tristan Towers
1200 Fort Pickens Road, Pensacola Beach

Work Completed:
Exterior restoration and wall reconstruction following Hurricane Sally

In 2009 amid what is now known as the Great Recession, Blanchard Benson’s thoughts were instead focused on founding a company that would grow. From this idea, Southern Design Landscaping (SDL) planted roots in North Georgia and steadily matured to become Southern Design Companies (SDC), an industry leader in turnkey landscaping, concrete foundations and helical piers.

In its early years, the company primarily worked with regional and national homebuilders. The business quickly earned a reputation for Integrity, Quality and Service (IQS). As the housing market gradually recovered, positive talk about SDL’s exceptional service spread throughout the industry generating steady local growth.

In 2014, to fulfill an increasing demand for plant material, the company became vertically integrated when Southern Design Nursery was founded.

In 2016, Southern Design Concrete, headed up by Karla Burel, was started and added turnkey concrete foundations and flatwork to the brand.

Deven Bradford joined the SDC team in early 2018 and in 2019, with innovation being top of mind, established Southern Design Piers to facilitate operational efficiencies for customers experiencing soil compaction issues. Today, service offerings under the Southern Design Companies umbrella provide a unique client experience.

With a fast-growing company and a big vision for the future, SDC made the decision in 2021 to partner with private equity. In 2022, the portfolio was further strengthened through the acquisition of Metro Contracting, extending services to commercial and multifamily general contractors.

Soon the company expanded from Georgia into the Florida Panhandle where Area Manager Andrew Grogan shares, “I feel very fortunate having the opportunity to work with such a respected business and look forward to being part of growing the Florida market.”

Benson, Burel, Bradford and Grogan are united in their dedication to the guiding principles which define the SDC brand. The acronym “IQS” represents the organization’s value system of Integrity, Quality and Service, a culture which is carefully preserved and has largely contributed to SDC’s exponential growth.

Production is booming along Florida’s Gulf Coast as the company is partnering with big name players including Kolter Homes, D.R. Horton, Samuel Taylor Homes, and Minto Communities in the Latitude Margaritaville Watersound development.

“Our plan is to establish a business presence in the Gulf Coast by building on the reputation and value system of the company,” Burel said. “As area residents, we wish to contribute to the growth and beauty of our community while also filling a service void in the local construction industry.”

SDC sets itself apart through strong relationships with major industry suppliers and by providing shortened lead times compared to the competition. “As the business has grown, buying power has played a big role in scalability, allowing us to better meet the needs of our customers. Additionally, the in-house plant nursery, self-performance of helical piers and sizeable workforce all help to shorten cycle times. Together these factors deliver enhanced value to customers,” Bradford states.

The SDC team is dependable, efficient, safety-focused and customer centric, remaining dedicated to the guiding principles which have always defined the SDC brand.   

“Our hands-on leadership team is the perfect balance of training and experience combined with progressive ideas. Processes are continually improved, enabling rapid growth of the organization,” Benson said. “We have built an exceptional team of professionals who care about the company and our customers. We’re excited about bringing SDC’s expertise to the Gulf Coast area.”   

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Southern Design Companies

SoDesignCo.com  |  (678) 707-2805

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The Florida Panhandle’s Emerald Coast is, well, a gem. With impossibly clear, blue-green waters, white sugary beaches and glorious sunsets, this area is a treasure, and people are rushing to claim their little piece of it.

Much like the Gold Rush in the mid-ı800s, people are coming from all over to this stretch of coastline, seeking to enrich their lives — not just monetarily, but with less commuting, less taxes, more beauty, more peace and, especially following the pandemic, more freedom.

New homes in the northwest part of the Florida Panhandle are as sought after as gold 200 years ago and can be almost as hard to find.

“20ı9 was our biggest year ever with $5.9 billion in residential sales,” said Keith Dean, CEO of the Emerald Coast Association of Realtors (ECAR), which covers Okaloosa, Walton and parts of Escambia, Santa Rosa and Bay counties. “Even with the pandemic and everything shut down for the whole month of April, we still did $8.4 billion in 2020.”

He said by mid-May 202ı they were already at $4.5 billion and on track for a
$9 billion year.

“Everything is happening so fast,” he said. “It’s unbelievable to see.”

The neighboring Realtors association is seeing equal activity. According to the Central Panhandle Association of Realtors (CPAR), which is the multiple listing service for five counties in the Florida Panhandle — Bay, Calhoun, Holmes, Jackson and Washington — the residential sales volume as of June 7 was $ı.99 billion. Sales for June were already up 60.8 percent over last year with three weeks left in the month.

Figures for March showed closed sales of residential property in just Bay County were $255 million, an increase of ı00.8 percent over March 2020, which was up nearly 5 percent from the year before.

Residential listings are on the market an average of only 2ı days. Many of the homes are sold as soon as they are listed.

CPAR President Amanda Corbin said, “People are putting the offers in before they come to town because by the time they can drive here or fly here, the property’s gone. So, I recommend to all my people to put the offer in and then come because, if they don’t do that, they’ve lost it before they could ever even get in the car.”

She said a buyer put in an offer more than $5,000 over the asking price on a home as soon as it came on the market. By the time the Realtor got the offer written up and submitted to the seller, they had already sold the property for way above the asking price. That Realtor’s buyer wasn’t even in the running.

Dean said this buying frenzy is different than those during past real estate bubbles.

“Before buyers were very speculative — buying property, hoping they would flip it for a nice profit in a matter of months,” he said. “But what we’re seeing now is people buying primary residences. They’re selling their other home and moving here. Homes are selling for well above asking price within 24 hours.”

CPAR CEO Debbie Ashbrook said this strong demand is due to several factors.

Interest rates are very low and will remain low. And, even though prices in the Panhandle are going up, homes are still priced at a good price point compared to a lot of other beach areas.

Panhandle residents devastated by Hurricane Michael a few years ago are just now receiving their insurance money and are looking for new, larger homes.

Also, because of Hurricane Michael, Tyndall AFB is rebuilding and growing, which increases demand for new homes even more.

The Florida Panhandle is rated the top location for vacation investment by several rating groups. Ashbrook said the area’s ability to attract tourists draws real estate investment dollars in addition to tourism dollars.

She said with the pandemic, people realized they can work remotely and are coming from across the country to live and work at the beach.

Ashbrook said the pandemic also created a demand for smaller towns and rural areas.

“Because they can work remotely, we get a lot of people moving here from states like New York and California. I’m not meaning to bring politics into it, but I think because we have a governor who’s opened our state back up, I guess you could say, they’re coming here because of his leadership in the state,” she said.

Driving up prices even further is a lack of inventory. In Bay County, there are only 630 homes on the market. That’s down 7ı.ı percent from the year before.

Dean said the only reason ECAR may not hit $9 million in sales this year is inventory. He added not only was the inventory very low, but affordable housing was even more scarce. He said he believed there were only three houses in South Walton that were under a half-million dollars.

Builders are trying to keep up with demand but are being slowed by a lack of building materials. The increased costs of those supplies are also driving up costs.

Dean said, “Builders are just as busy as our Realtors are. Our issues are inventory; their issue is labor and materials. The only thing slowing down building in this area is the availability of labor and materials.”

The Realtors said low inventory has played a large role in the inflated prices but believe once there is more inventory and more competition, it should level off.

But Dean does not expect demand to drop much at all.

“They’re peeling out of the big cities. We’ve got people from New York, tons of people from Atlanta, Birmingham, Nashville, all over everywhere — all are moving to this area because, you know, it’s taxes, it’s a beautiful beach and the prices even though they’re much higher than they’ve ever been, they’re still relatively low compared to some areas,” he said.

“People can live where they want to live, and they want to live here.”

During the COVID-19 Pandemic, Blake H. Dowling and his Tallahassee-based company, Aegis Business Technologies spent most of the Spring of 2020 helping transition clients to a rapidly changing virtual working world. For Dowling, who also writes weekly columns on the intersection of business and technology for Florida Politics and the Tallahassee Democrat, it was a critical time in his career. Not only did he and his team help keep their client’s businesses up and running, but he also managed to continue publishing his weekly columns which created a meaningful record of the pandemic. Now, over a year since the onset of the pandemic, those columns are the foundation of Dowling’s debut book, Professionally Distanced.

In the 140-page paperback book, published by Rowland Publishing, Inc., Dowling shares a hand selected collection of his columns from the height of the pandemic along with additional reflections on how he and his team handled a year they will surely never forget. Dowling calls the book an “all-access” look into how his business and many others were operating at the time.

“The pandemic brought challenges to every business, but no matter what line of work you are in, technology likely played a major role in your ability to keep at it,” Dowling says. “Our company was on call helping clients find those solutions every day and many of those stories are in this collection.”

Dowling, like many other business leaders, had to bring a creative leadership approach to managing his team during the pandemic. Adapting to the rapid shift toward remote working was no easy task. In many of Dowling’s columns from 2020, he wrote about the ways in which he tried to keep morale and employee performance up even while his team was physically separated. Dowling says, “It was a serious time, but we still had to find ways to make work fun. That’s something I care deeply about. Despite the difficulties, I think the pandemic made us a stronger company and in hindsight, I’m so glad I wrote about those experiences as they were happening.”

Professionally Distanced is more than just a book about business though. Dowling also dives into the how the fabrics of the Tallahassee community became separated during lockdowns and what local companies and other organizations were doing to keep things held together. Dowling adds, “Everything about our lives was impacted during the pandemic. The most amazing thing happened though — people came together to get through it. I saw it both on our team at Aegis and across the community we call home. Those were my favorite stories to tell.”

Dowling is debuting the book as part of the Greater Tallahassee Chamber of Commerce’s Annual Conference held August 13-15 in Amelia Island, Florida. Each attendee will receive a copy in their “swag” bag upon arrival.

Readers can purchase a copy of the book at Amazon ($15) and in person at Midtown Reader in Tallahassee, where Dowling will be special guest at his book launch party on August 19 at 7 p.m.

Conservation Florida has named Beck Partners CEO Justin Beck to serve as the chairman of its newly established Northwest Advisory Council.

Conservation Florida is a state-wide accredited land conservancy dedicated to saving Florida’s natural and agricultural landscapes for future generations. Its conservation projects support Florida’s native plants and wildlife, fresh water, conservation corridors, family farms and ranches, the economy and nature-based recreation.

Founded in 1999, Conservation Florida has led the way in strategic and evidence-based land protection and has saved over 25,000 acres of critical habitat through acquisition, facilitation and incubation of conservation projects.

It has done so by developing conservation strategies, exploring funding sources and purchasing or accepting donations of land and conservation easements. Its other services include providing expertise to guide landowners through the land protection process, serving as a community partner in support of statewide land conservation and promoting land conservation through effective education and advocacy.

The Northwest Advisory Council will serve as a community champion of Conservation Florida and its work in the area and provide in-depth, firsthand knowledge of the region that can be used by the organization to develop its holistic statewide strategy.

“Protecting what makes Northwest Florida special for future generations is something I believe in dearly,” Beck said. “And having the opportunity to work with Conservation Florida is a chance to really make a difference and preserve the special places and way of life that we enjoy here.”

Beck Partners is a full-service commercial real estate, insurance and property management firm with offices in Pensacola, Tallahassee and Mobile, Alabama.

Beck began working at Beck Partners in 2005, where he started as a sales associate. He has a deep understanding of real estate investment, ground-up development, and value-add investment strategies. Over the past decade, he has completed nearly 1,500 transactions totaling more than $500 million.

Photography by John Harrington

The genius of the Sandestin Golf and Beach Resort, as a place to live or to visit, is its completeness. There is so much by way of recreational activity, eateries, shopping and other conveniences on or in close proximity to the property that a guest may feel little need to depart the resort in the course of a stay.

That concept is no less appealing than it was when Peter Bos undertook the creation of Sandestin in ı979. To the contrary, it is surely even more desirable given the intensity and the density of visitation and development and the resulting traffic congestion along the Emerald Coast today.

The region can feel good about some of the reasons for its popularity.

“Our area of Florida in particular has gotten a lot of good publicity because it is generally a friendly area,” Bos said. “It’s a God-fearing, churchgoing and welcoming place versus other parts of the country.”

COVID-ı9 notwithstanding, Bos’ opinions about the region’s growth potential and anticipated trajectory have not changed.

“I have been working here since ı972 and I anticipated the area’s growth, but I will tell you that it has accelerated at an amazing rate, outstripping the available labor resource,” Bos said. “The cost of supplies is going up everywhere, but here labor, especially, is in extremely short supply. The results of that include price increases and long lines. The labor supply may catch up, but right now we are experiencing extremely rapid growth.”

More working people would move to the Emerald Coast, Bos said, but there are few affordable places for them to live.   

Bos, who made time for an interview while driving to his next appointment, took note of the license plate in front of him in traffic.

“I’m looking at a Massachusetts car,” he said. “A lot of people who have never been here before are literally driving the coast of Florida looking for a place to live. If they are interested in the northern Gulf coast, they may start in Pensacola and head east to Panama City or beyond.”

Bos resides in Destin and is satisfied that, for him, there could be no better place to be. But he recognizes that it has “several unique problems” along with its spectacular natural assets, the Gulf of Mexico chief among them.

“It’s an isthmus, a very narrow one between the Choctawhatchee Bay and the Gulf,” Bos said. “Most communities can grow with a series of parallel roads. We can’t. We have one road — Highway 98. The highway has been improved and it is under construction, but traffic over the bridge in Fort Walton reached capacity in ı986 and it is basically carrying twice what it should be carrying. And, so, we are facing massive traffic jams.”

Development has accelerated, too, in the interior of the Florida Panhandle.

“Crestview is the second-fastest-growing city in the state, and it is growing despite the fact that to get there, people have to fight their way through an hourglass of an exchange with I-ı0,” Bos said. “Every morning, it takes an hour-plus just to get through that intersection.”

State Road 85 is the only highway running north from the coast to Crestview.

“That’s because the entire area south of Crestview is Eglin Air Force Base, and the reservation cannot be chopped up into pieces with roads because that would destroy their mission,” Bos noted. “Eglin caused the interstate to be located way far north from the coast and limits possibilities for north-south connectors.”

But, said Bos, Crestview nonetheless serves as a bedroom community with relatively affordable housing. And it is located in a portion of Okaloosa County that is home to 95% of the remaining developable — and not previously developed — land in the county.

Once northern Okaloosa County is more fully made ready, Bos said, he expects that it will become home to employers offering high-tech, high-wage jobs in fields including aircraft repair and maintenance, even auto manufacturing.

“Everybody loves to live here, and there is a huge pool of highly trained military personnel who are retiring and want to stay here or to move here and start their second careers,” Bos said. “But right now, the county is trapped until it can arrive at another north-south road over or under I-ı0.”

Circumstances in Walton County are markedly different.

“It is not bifurcated by an Air Force base,” Bos said. “They have four-laned U.S. Highway 33ı and they receive a lot of attention because, 40 years ago, they switched to limited-height development and a New Urbanism concept,” which characterizes South Walton county, an area known more familiarly as “30A.”

Bos is amused and slightly amazed that one of the toniest communities in North Florida is named after a county road.

He is substantially amazed that prices in South Walton have reached $4,000 a square foot for homes, many of them second homes, on or near the Gulf beach.

“It’s staggering,” Bos said of home prices. “We have seen a 35% price increase in the last ı2 months.”

As an aside, he noted that lots of those second homes are becoming primary residences as more people are coming to have the option of working remotely and living anywhere in the country.

“We are going to become far less seasonal, far more year-round and that is good for business,” Bos said. “We used to have two, three months a year when we lost money. It’s hard to build a community when people have to give up their jobs for multiple months a year.”

The property tax revenue associated with the real estate boom is enabling Walton County to stay ahead of the need for schools and public services.

“But what they don’t have is enough roads,” Bos said. “They have no mass transit, no delivery system to the beach. You are limited to your own two feet or a bicycle and a basket. Still, it has a national reputation, and it is continuing to move.”

So, where does the Emerald Coast go from here?

“We’re going to have more traffic jams,” Bos said with certainty. “That’s unavoidable.” For a place like well-appointed Sandestin that goes from bay to beach, that won’t necessarily be a problem, but “properties that have no amenities of their own and you have to get in your car to do everything, that is going to be frustrating for people.”

As a result, Bos predicts, smaller properties will be consolidated and there will be more “fully contained” resorts, “and they will fare best over the long haul.”

Eggs in various baskets

“We’re in the hotel business, the shopping center business, marinas and boating,” Bos ran down an incomplete list of his enterprises that also includes consulting, homebuilding and senior living. “Boating and marinas are probably the two best industries you can be in. And RVs, they are doing well.”

Bos is up to 79 boat dealerships in ı4 states carrying 72 brands of boats. His Legendary Marine merged with Singleton Marine six years ago to become a billion-dollar company, OneWater Marine.

Building upon the success of the Legendary Marina and dry boat storage in Destin, Bos is underway building four more such facilities in Gulf Shores, Alabama; Stuart, Florida; and two in the Bahamas.

The islands, Bos said, will benefit as more people move to Florida and buy big boats capable of easily making trips there.

“The only place you can be with your grandchildren, your children and your children’s friends and have a chance to get to know them all is in a boat,” Bos said in accounting for the exploding popularity of boating. “Because nobody can leave. There is nothing more family oriented than boating — and to look at the water is one thing, but to get on the water is much better.”

There is plenty of room aboard Bos’ pride and joy, a ı20-foot North Coast yacht that he keeps docked in Jupiter so he can run back and forth to the Bahamas easily. 

But what of that fully contained resort concept that Bos helped pioneer in the ı970s? Might he take a second run at it?

“I have another destination concept in mind,” Bos said. “It will be a major attraction for the Destin area.”

He will not be content to see the area become a retirement community.

“Look at what happened to Fort Lauderdale. And Clearwater. What keeps our area vibrant is its tourism,” Bos said. “And you have to keep moving forward and upgrading. We are going to bring a new residential environment and tourist attraction that will be very, very well received by everybody.”

Bos is 74 and feeling fine.

“I look my age, but I don’t think I act it,” he said. “I’ve got more going on now than I have had in my entire life. I feel like a whirling dervish.” 

As a Panama City-based managing director of an investment fund that seeks to enhance entrepreneurial ecosystems by providing startups with capital, Steve Millaway is also a talent scout.

He maintains close ties with Gulf Coast State College and serves as a member of the school’s district board of trustees.

As a product of that relationship, Millaway met a student, Landon McCoy, a fast-talking, quick-thinking student with a bright idea. He has come to regard McCoy, now an engineering student at Florida State University Panama City, as the “best graduate I have seen come out of Gulf Coast in ı0 years.”

Said Millaway: “He impresses me as someone who could be the next Elon Musk.”

McCoy is the founder of Chaos Audio, one of the first three businesses in which TechFarms Capital, an outgrowth of a business incubator that Millaway began six years ago, chose to invest.

Chaos Audio’s product, called Stratus, is a customizable pedal, suited to electronic instruments, to which multiple effects — such as reverb, phaser or auto-wah — may be downloaded via a proprietary app. As of this writing, Chaos has completed prototype development and is gearing up to enter production.

Millaway views the Stratus as a significant “disrupter,” which, for him is a term of endearment. Gone soon will be the days in which players had to have a separate pedal for each effect they chose to use.

McCoy and his team built their prototype at the TechFarms incubator, strategically located near the Navy base in Panama City Beach. Millaway explained that the device was cut from aluminum using 3D modeling software and a computer numerical control (CNC) machine that was available to Chaos at TechFarms.

He added that four musicians who test-drove the Stratus all expressed a desire to invest in the company.

“Landon was up against lots of other prospects from the fund perspective,” said Kelly Reeser, a managing director, along with Millaway, of the investment fund. Reeser, who is located in Pensacola, emphasized that the decision by TechFarms to invest in Chaos followed months of due diligence.

Pedal manufacture will take place in a new ı3,000-square-foot building erected by Millaway behind the original TechFarms location. As people who know Millaway would assume, the structure is built with leading- edge materials, including structural insulated panels (SIPs), which are made of stainless steel, front and back, with four inches of foam in the middle. The building will include a kitchen and apartments in addition to manufacturing space, and will house the latest prototyping equipment.

To the Desert

Millaway always wanted a career in technology and, after high school, got a job as an engineering aide at Naval Support Activity Panama City. He was a cooperative education student there while a student at the University of Florida.

Upon earning a degree in electrical engineering, Millaway “didn’t want to have to move to the Arizona desert — my friends and family and the beaches were here — but there was no opportunity here in the private sector.” He went to work in Tucson designing integrated circuits and chips.

In ı994, Millaway founded Gain Technology Corp., an integrated circuit design center that developed semiconductor chips for Maxim Integrated Products, Raytheon, Intel and others. The company designed the first USB 2.0 chip, which it later licensed to Intel. That chip ultimately became the basis for the USB 2.0 ports found today in more than a billion PCs, laptops and other devices.

In 2007, Millaway returned to Panama City to help care for his ailing father.

“Instead of retiring, I got involved in the community to try to find out why we still didn’t have any high-paying tech jobs. I went to lunch with Dr. Jim Kerley, who was the president of Gulf Coast State College at the time and he said, ‘Oh, you might be interested in this, we’re thinking about building an advanced technology center.’ ”

For six years, Kerley would help design the center and felt strongly that a business incubator should be made part of it.

“At the very end, when they got ready to break ground on the ATC, they took the incubator out and put in a culinary institute,” Millaway recalled. He understood the decision, given the many restaurants along Bay County’s 27 miles of beaches, but still he was disenchanted.

“I felt like we had missed out on a great opportunity,” he said during a December interview.

Others encouraged Millaway to start an incubator and eventually he told himself that “if I am really going to make a difference, that’s what we need.” He committed to founding TechFarms.

Along the way, he met Reeser, who was running a co-op lab in Pensacola for the FloridaWest Economic Development Alliance.

“We started comparing notes, and the biggest problem we both saw was a lack of capital,” Millaway said. “There is no angel network in Northwest Florida, and most of the angel investors here don’t know what they are doing. They pick favorites and invest in one or two companies not understanding that nine out of ı0 startups fail.”

Reeser joined TechFarms Capital shortly after Millaway launched it.

Millaway worked for 40 years in tech and was responsible for “ı0 or ıı” startups.

“We are very good at judging whether someone knows the market, knows his product and can be a leader, hire a team and keep it together,” Millaway said. “The initial great idea is just one one-thousandth of what you do in starting a business. Years of work are required to execute that idea. We spend a lot of time on due diligence. We have gone overboard looking at every company we have invested in.”

Reeser believes TechFarms Capital has a role to play in diversifying and fortifying the regional economy.

“The Pensacola and Panama City economies are very similar,” she said. “They rely on tourism, the military and a smattering of other things. Tech companies can help weatherproof and pandemic-proof the economy.”

Reeser said a friend of hers operating in the remote education space has gained ı5 years worth of adoptions in three months because of the pandemic.

In Millaway’s view, homegrown companies often have the most value to a community — and to an investor.

“One of the most successful companies in the entire Southeast is Eastern Shipbuilding in Panama City,” Millaway said. “Several people have asked me how we lured Eastern to Panama City, a company with a $20 billion contract to build cutters for the U.S. Coast Guard. I have to tell them that Eastern was started here.”

Beats Fishing

“I could be retired and fishing and relaxing, but I would rather do this,” Millaway said about his work. “We have companies coming in, one or two a week, every single week, and we get to see what they’re doing and they are mind boggling.”

Millaway gets excited and the pace and tenor of his speech amplifies as he talks about another of the companies in which TechFarms Capital has invested, Perceptive Sensor Technologies.

A friend in Arizona made Millaway aware of PST, and representatives of the startup flew in and visited TechFarms. Prior to their arrival, they asked Millaway to purchase six empty paint cans, fill them up with different liquids — 87 octane gasoline, 92 octane, oil of a given viscosity, water and a couple of others. Millaway was to then seal the cans.

The PST team told Millaway that they would identify the contents of the cans without unsealing them. To do so, Millaway was to find out, PST uses ultrasound technology.

“They attach a transducer, basically, that pings a container like a sonar and hits the other side of the can and comes back,” Millaway said, his enthusiasm building. “The acoustic wave is altered by the liquid, and every liquid has an acoustic fingerprint. Once they characterize the signature for 87 octane gasoline, for example, they know what it looks like.”

“Fingerprints” are stored in a lookup table.

“They have the basic underlying patents for this, and it works,” Millaway said. “We studied them for a year and made an investment in the company.”

Millaway listed several applications for the technology, commenting, “We’re excited about the number of verticals this thing has.” 

Pipelines may be used to transport both gasoline and jet fuel. When one fuel is replaced in a line with the other, mixing occurs over a portion of the pipeline. The resulting “transmix” must be discarded. PST technology can be used to eliminate the guesswork otherwise involved in locating the mixing zone.

Tank farms can use the technology to prevent overfilling that can result in spills that necessitate costly environmental cleanup work.

Bars and restaurants that purchase expensive wines and bourbons will be able to detect counterfeit product.

And, PST technology will make it possible for chemical companies to ensure that expensive substances transported across open seas are not replaced with saltwater, a not infrequent occurrence. Millaway said such piracy costs the industry an estimated $ı00 billion a year.

Millaway has been invited to join PST’s technical advisory team and the company, he said, is likely to open an office in Bay County.

Reeser and Millaway combined to describe the appeal of investing in TechFarms.

“You’re in a position to get to know the companies you are invested in. We are assembling a portfolio of companies large enough to distribute risk, but still you’ll be able to tell stories at the cocktail party about the local kid who invented the foot pedal.”