AmIReal

The new baseball stadium is far from a "done deal". Though I think it would be a great deal for the area and in that location would benefit from Disney. As far as development activity, the maps indicate Orlando has more going on, but I did not drill down to look at the numbers associated with each project. https://www.bizjournals.com/orlando/maps/crane-watch https://www.bizjournals.com/tampabay/maps/crane-watch

spenser1058, while thinking about your redesign of the area take into account the Beachside Redevelopment Board and their specific ideas for that intersection: NEEDS: Landscape Hardscape Medians Lighting Crosswalks Updated Signals Underground Utilities POLICY: Enhance Code Enforcement Provide for Façade Grants Enhance Policing Incentives for Residential Redevelopment Quarterly Meetings with Neighborhood Groups They have allocated $750,000 for design and estimate $23,200,000 for total budget. Plans are also indicated for all of the other beachside gateways. https://www.volusia.org/core/fileparse.php/6081/urlt/BRC_Recommendations_Draft_03-19-18.pdf

The link from JFW657 was to the segment related to our film industry and was very informative. Also, if you have 25 minutes to kill go to the Metro Center Outlook page and scroll down to the segment titled "Economic Development". It has some pertinent info. Direct links to specific segments don't seem to work well, so here is the main page... http://video.wucftv.org/show/metro-center-outlook/

Just to clear something up... Universal jobs have a $13.34/hr AVERAGE wage, per the Sentinel. That includes the local middle-level managers, engineers, creative experts and executives. I can’t speak to the Universal pay scale, but this same number, $13.34, is typically used in articles about Disney. According to the Service Trades Council Union that number is only applicable to the nearly 38,000 employees in one of the six unions they represent. Those “employees represented hold diverse positions within Disney including bus drivers, hotel housekeeping, lifeguards, and custodians”. The $13.34 number does not apply to non-covered entities which includes all salaried employees, which is made up of managers and professionals.

My apologies, I did weigh in on the attorney numbers. Again, it was a Brookings study that simply stated we outperformed expectations when weighted against national numbers. I stand behind that comment.

No, I was not involved in the discussion regarding the attorney market. I did not attack the Praxis study. In fact, I commended it. I didn't say I did not see their methodology, I said no one has as it is proprietary. I did refer to a study that has opened their data up for review. I said I used the Zip data because it is current. Both the Praxis and Brookings reports are based on 2015 data. I have read many of the articles you cited regarding tourism and I agree with you and them on the issue.

I Am Reality, if you mean me, when you say “we”, then no I don’t have a problem differentiating employment numbers from growth rates. They are two distinct metrics, both useful in analyzing and both of which I’m very familiar with. And, no, year over year numbers are not “notoriously imprecise” at all- the number is the number. Maybe what you meant to say is they don’t tell the whole story… Ok, agreed. That is why I included a starting reference point and numerous other stats to try to tell a more complete story. Bhutan… really. It’s an absurd analogy. I’m sure you already knew that, as any sophomore student in a logic class would learn, so it’s not worth discussing. No, Forbes is not “probably the most authoritative source” of reference. In fact, they are not a source of reference at all. They are a reporting entity that is referencing a study conducted by someone else and turning it into an article. If you were writing your masters thesis you would have just failed. However, the study source that they are referencing is Praxis Strategy Group and they are a well-regarded consultant group that I am familiar with and have no reason to question. My only qualm is their source data is propriety and no one else has reviewed it. If you want to review studies I’d refer you back to the Brookings Institute study I mentioned earlier (the source data is public). In that study they note that yes, Orlando is a top 50 tech employer (based on 2015 data), which is what my previous post said. For newer data, according to ZipRecruiter, yes, Orlando had one of the top ten job growths year over year 2016-2017. Do I consider ZipRecruiter a top source of info and would I professionally reference them? No. However, stats less than 2 years old that have been audited are impossible to find and I figured a company that not only list and fills job postings but actually shows their methodology was worth mentioning, albeit with caveats. The “authoritative” Forbes article, btw, was focused on STEM jobs- whereas I am discussing tech jobs which is a much more general term. The BLS, which you have previously referenced so I’m sure you’re very familiar with, has 2 distinct clusters- Information Technologies and STEM. STEM is the much smaller sub-category of the general “tech industry”. On the other hand, the Brookings study refers to “Advanced Technology Industries”, still a very limiting category as it only includes about 20 NAICS based around R&D. You can see why various studies develop different answers, nobody can even define the question. And, no, Universal’s announcement does not “overnight” produce “3,000 new jobs (a certain % of which will be high-wage)…” Those jobs are projected over multiple years and, yes, over those multiple years the MSA will offset them (and more) by higher paying jobs. All personal jabs aside, I agree that Orlando has WAY TOO MANY low paying jobs and they are focused in the broadly defined tourism industry. However, I could- and likely will- write a treatise on the economic benefits of tourism jobs… Between 2013 and 2021 nationwide the “hospitality and tourism” industry will produce 7.5 million jobs. Since we are often called the tourism capital of the nation (Washington, DC wants a word with us) we can expect to add a lions share of those. On the other hand, nationwide job openings, during that time period, of the very broadly defined “tech” community are only about 2 million - 62 to 68% of which are projected to go to the 8 top cluster cities with some trickle effect to secondary cities. So, for the next 3 years, approximately 350,000 highly sought after jobs will go to… ?

Regarding our burgeoning foodie scene. A few others I would have added, but fairly representative of the area. http://www.chicagotribune.com/lifestyles/travel/ct-trav-best-food-orlando-0429-story.html

My typical lengthy screed... Orlando is the 2nd fastest growing metro in the nation and the fastest growing job market in the top 50 metros. Orlando added 42,000 jobs in 2017 and currently produces over 1000 jobs per week and the unemployment rate remains at nearly 3% (the lowest in the State). Orlando is the state’s 3rd largest employer of tech workers and is 6th in the nation in year over year (yoy) tech job growth. All 4 major markets in Florida (Miami, Tampa, Jax, Orlando) rank in top 50 tech job markets. Orlando is number 1 in average wage amongst the 4 ($78,500) and growing at over 12% over the past 5 years. Florida’s professional and tech industry is growing at a booming 4.5% and Orlando’s is at 6% (well over booming). The percentage of Florida job growth in professional and business services are greater than leisure and hospitality and only surpassed by construction Orange county has one of the lowest median ages in the state (34.9), which is driven by our huge university (go UCF) and disproportionate number of students. Also, our region has one of the largest populations of seniors in the country (go Lake County). Both of these unique groups play into calculating, and typically reduce, our median household income and is a good reason why that number is not the best metric to use for evaluation purposes. Some may contend developers are passing us by, yet institutional investors drove investment sales volume over 4.2 million square feet in 2017 and investors sales increased by 5.5% yoy. On the terrible tourist front, 2017 saw nearly 70 million visitors to Central Florida pumping over $60 billion into the local economy. Orlando’s convention center is top 3 in the nation. This is revenue most communities would kill to get. If you doubt it tune into Travel network and watch the commercials for California, Michigan, North Carolina, Texas, Vegas, etc. MCO is the number 1 airport in the state (Sanford in #5), number 13 in the country and one of the fastest growing hubs for international travelers (though current political tensions have placed a damper on this). Furthermore, MCO is number 1 in customer satisfaction for mega-airports. The Orlando economy is far from perfect- our largest employment sector is primarily low paying, but that is not as bad as often portrayed in the press. T&L employees in Orlando average $505/ week, 21st of all metro areas. However, when cost of living adjusted we rank higher than the 20 above us except Gainesville, GA, Las Vegas and Nashville. The Orlando economy is far from broken and is evolving at a breakneck pace. When you realize local leaders didn’t significantly push for economic diversification until late 90’s you get a better picture of just how far we have come. When the current economic bubble bursts- and it will- Orlando is better suited to survive it then it has been in previous years. We have a long ways to go, but the trend is positive.

spenser1058, I'm surprised you have not yet mentioned Publix being named best grocery store by Southern Living. https://www.southernliving.com/souths-best/grocery-stores https://www.southernliving.com/souths-best/publix-grocery-store

Regarding the Amazon incentive package, you can see what Orlando presented to Amazon here http://blog.orlandoedc.com/blog/orlando-amazon-hq2-proposal It is a 5 part download and the “Economics” section of the “regional” component is redacted. That section would have included the State incentives. You can see the City/ County specific incentives though. They totaled nearly $500,000,000 in land, credits, exemptions, rebates, etc. The State has not yet released any details- they say it is due to Miami still being in the running. However, if you look at the incentives the State has to offer https://www.flgov.com/financial-incentives/ and you do the math based on the numbers Amazon provided in the RFP then you could conclude a total incentive package well over $1billion. That is not bad when you consider that a little over a year ago the State Legislature was trying to eliminate all incentives. If you have interests in the State’s past performance on incentives, go here- http://www.floridajobs.org/docs/default-source/reports-and-legislation/2017-annual-incentives-report.pdf?sfvrsn=4 Scroll down to page 23 if you just want the bottom line numbers. And if you want to see the type of incentives other states can offer in general, look here http://www.blsstrategies.com/florida-incentives I am Reality, I think you’ll like this WaPo article regarding the 20 cities in the running. https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2018/business/amazon-hq2-tech-cities/?utm_term=.80867d295118 And I dig this map and data of the remaining 20 http://mediamaps.esri.com/AmazonHQ2_USFinalists/index.html

That, aent, was brilliant. I could expound, but could not improve.

I generally avoid convenience stores except to rarely buy a lotto and get called sweetie by Bonnie.

From a distance, if you hold your head just right and squint, the square cutout on the Modera could remind one of La Defense in Paris.

aent, don’t sell Florida short on our tech industry. Florida has the 4th (some surveys say 3rd) highest number of science and technology workers in the country. It makes sense because we are the 3rd most populous state. Regardless, we have a lot of tech workers in this state and Orlando, as you would expect has the 3rd highest number of them (behind Miami and Tampa). The problem, as many people see it, is we have a disproportionate number of what is termed as Leisure and Hospitality employees. There are actually several positives with this, but I promised previously to not drone on… so I won’t. Just to reiterate Florida has a huge (or Yuge) base of tech workers and is growing rapidly. HankStrong, you’re right, I’m not funny. Now that I think about it I should have chosen that as my user name. I do however enjoy the funny people on this forum- except the 7-11 jokes. I don’t enjoy the back and forth bickering and hope to not participate… better to be in the mud than of the mud. I again apologize for the wordiness of my previous post. It was the bourbon talking.

I'm not certain, but spenser1058 may have been alluding to this Brookings study which indicates the Orlando area legal field out performed expectations by 1.7% You have to select the MSA and the time frame from the drop down menu. The newest data is 2015. https://www.brookings.edu/interactives/metro-monitor-2017-dashboard/

Thanks for the positive comments, I Am Reality. After reading your post I was going to leave it at that as I didn’t want to get into a petty back and forth. But then I saw you comment in a different topic about your line for line rebuttal of my post… To everyone else on the forum, please feel free to stop reading now and I promise none of my future post will be this long. I’ll begin with I don’t disagree with your assertion that there are some underlying deficiencies in the local economy. This has been noted by many other community builders and believe it or not a lot has gone on to address said issues. Also, I have no idea what profession you are in or your history, but I know my past experience was executive level in technology throughout the US and I was involved in several relocation and expansion projects. I later consulted with local governments and economic development entities on development of technology clusters. A major takeaway that I’d pass along to you and anybody who follows economic news is don’t read too much into the press release quotes, such as the ones you cited from the Statesman. This is even more important if the story involves incentive deals. Typically, though not always, whoever is being quoted is trying to convince their constituency how great a project is and that the amount of incentive is pennies to the millions it will return. Their constituencies, particularly in certain states and communities, view all incentive packages as welfare to corporations and boondoggles. A better place to look is in the tax filings, RFPs issued to municipalities and details of incentive packages. I agree I was not clear about the two entities missions aligning, but I assure you I did not base my comment on the stated mission of the hospital. I view those in the same category as press releases. I based it on the incentive request package from Merck which btw refers to the innovation hub as an IT hub- that is an important distinction. When Merck first began this process with Austin, the very first class of the Dell Med school was still in their first year. They didn’t choose Austin for the med school. They made Austin their choice because of the critical mass of technology talent Austin has combined with Dell’s technology around digital health. They said so in the package they submitted. I know the various spokespeople said the search involved 50 other cities, and I’m sure that is possible though improbable. My discussions with friends in the industry only turned up five other cities. Although they kicked the tires on Boston and VA it did not go far, likely due to the proximity to their other IT hub in NJ. Chicago, SF and LA were all discussed, but I think the readily available building and the final incentive package pushed the choice to Austin- that is conjecture on my part. I concede there were likely other contenders cities involved, but they appear to have been cursory looks. So, when I say they were destined to that location, I do not mean they had pre-chosen it. I mean several unique qualifiers led them to Austin- geography, talent pool, Dell, incentives, taxes, real estate, etc. When you say something is wrong with Orlando it doesn’t seem to acknowledge the fact that every other MSA also does not have the unique qualifiers for this particular project. While I do not have any insight into the Merck situation other than what I read and discussions with colleagues, I do have a more insight into Advanced Airfoil. You might be aware of this, but this arrangement is not a new business to go out and sell product to other companies. This is a newly created company in which in which one partner, Chromeally will manufacture and sell exclusively to the other partner Siemens. Also, just because they each have locations scattered around the world doesn’t mean they would consider all of them. To begin with, they stated they wanted to limit the search to the south. And since Chromeally’s plant in Tampa already operates a casting foundry and produces cores and parts comparable to what will be needed for this project it made sense to not rebuild the wheel elsewhere. If the costs issue was equal then doing this project anywhere else would have been a bad idea. The only hold up was if the State would come through with incentives, which they did. Here is good article from the site selection guy… https://www.businessobserverfl.com/article/hitting-gas Synnex is a wholesaler of technology components (although they did get into designing, building, installing and consulting). The Memphis location is a distribution hub. One of the stated goals is expedited delivery of product. This office is located 20 minutes from FedEx. Again, I call that destined… I may be using the wrong term. As I said before, the reason I created an account after a few years of lurking was to provide some insight to site selection for relocation and expansion and to dispel the notion that if every new job opportunity did not locate in Orlando it was due to some latent defect in the community. I hope this has been somewhat helpful. I Am Reality, you seem to have a genuine interest in job growth and enhancement of the local economy. I recommend you look into the Orlando Economic Partnership https://orlandoedc.com/home.aspx They are the face forward organization for attracting relocating and expanding businesses. The other side of the equation is developing growth within out entrepreneurial community. The best source for that is certainly UCF and in particular the incubator programs https://incubator.ucf.edu/ If you are not currently involved/ invested in one of the above or something like it, I suggest you consider it. Halftime is over- I’m going back to the game.

In early March the News Journal did a very good in-depth look at the beach side, specifically focused on the blighted west side of A1A. They walked the ten mile stretch to count vacant properties and found at least 213. The 2nd part pointed out many positives that are occurring. The article highlights many of the same improvements jrs2 has mentioned. http://gatehousenews.com/a1a/home/site/news-journalonline.com#holes http://gatehousenews.com/a1a/home/site/news-journalonline.com#successes and the final recommendations of the beachside redevelopment committee were published yesterday. https://www.volusia.org/core/fileparse.php/6081/urlt/BRC_Recommendations_Draft_03-19-18.pdf All of the above content is long, but if you have an interest in Volusia/ DB they are worthwhile reads.

Not a troll. New member that has followed the forum for several years. I thought I could provide some insight into the question that was posed as to "why Orlando was passed over". New job generation is not an open free for all for every region to woo. These particular jobs were destined to the location they chose primarily because they were already located there. It wasn't an Orlando loss as much as it was a DNP-CD (did not play- coaches decision).

Why is Orlando getting passed over? Austin- Merck! Heck yeah, that is a great get. I'd love to have them here. This deal was announced over a year ago and the main reason Austin was chosen was the Dell Medical School program and their ties to Merck’s mission. The $7 million from the State and City didn’t hurt. Memphis- SYNNEX is a CA based company and has had a MS facility for over a decade. This is a "relocation" of their present location about 30 minutes up the road. The old building is being converted to manufacturing. The TVA, MDA, both cities involved, the county, the state and Entargy are providing financial assistance for the expansion. Tampa- Airfoil. Chromeallay (a Sequa company, owned by The Carlyle Group) is out of West Palm and this project was definitely going to be in the I-4 corridor (out of state locations weren't really considered even if the Gov said otherwise). Chromally already had 2 plants operating in the Tampa area so locating this joint venture there made sense. Tampa Hillsborough EDC, the county, Florida Dept of Economic Opportunity, Enterprise Florida and the FHTCC put together the tax assistance package and it didn't hurt that a military base (primary customer) was in the neighborhood. BTW, Siemens has locations throughout the I-4 corridor from Space Coast to Bay Area including half a dozen (nearly 4000 employees) here in Orlando. Denver- Xactly is CA based, but already had a sizable location in Denver. Xactly was acquired last year by Vista Equity Partners who happens to be located in... wait for it... Denver (that would be R. Smith of Vista EP, who drove this expansion and has done the same with several of his other holdings). Xactly gets an $11 million package from the city to make the expansion and stroke the new investors ego. Bingo...!!! Las Vegas- Scientific Games is a gambling company. I think Vegas was a good strategic decision on their part. Las Vegas- Cascade FinTech’s only location, to the best of my knowledge, is in Vegas. It makes sense to hire new employees there.