Silicon Beach in Miami, also known as the Internet Coast, is fast becoming the literal and virtual gateway into Latin America for Internet companies. South Florida is home to 5,800 high-tech companies employing over 75,000 people and generating $29 billion in annual revenues. 1,300 workers will occupy Lucent Technologies' headquarters in Mirimar. Motorola and Nortel also have operations in the area.
     The brightest light on Miami's horizon might be its coming status as one of only a handful of major Network Access Point (NAP) in the United States. Terremark Worldwide will build the Technology Center of the Americas as home for the NAP of the Americas. Both the present and the promise of the future are attracting projects from an array of companies. Developer Michael Swerdlow has moved to the high-tech world from the retail sector, building three different high-tech office projects in the area: LightSpeed Miami Center, LightSpeed Center at Beacon TradePort, and LightSpeed Broward Center in Fort Lauderdale. The developer plans up to 20 million sq. ft. (1.8 million sq. m.) of "telecom hotels" around Florida in five years.
     The Research Triangle Park of Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill in North Carolina continues to thrive, recently attracting the U.S. headquarters of German biopharmaceutical firm Schwarz Biosciences, a subsidiary of Schwarz Pharma AG. The park itself now claims 144 tenants, which employ 44,000 full-time workers. The ancillary development in the area has been substantial enough to warrant a major airport expansion at Raleigh-Durham Airport, just completed last year. In the past eight years, employment in the park increased by 10,000, over 800 acres (324 ha.) of land sold for over $36 million, and RTP companies have been issued over 1,200 patents.
     The North Carolina Biotechnology Center has just acted as the catalyst for the newly formed North Carolina Genomics and Bioinformatics Consortium. According to Rod Atkins, general manager of IBM Webservers, gen-omics and bioinformatics will be a $40 billion industry by 2003. In nearby Durham, a $25 million center for advanced photonics will be funded by a gift from high-tech entrepreneur Michael J. Fitzpatrick and his wife Patty, who donated the same amount to fund a similar center at Stanford University. And to top off the area's bubbling success, the Triangle metro area was named "Best Place to Live in the South" by Money magazine in November 2000.