Answering the High-Tech Bell

Why are companies selecting Florida locations? The answer can be found in the numbers — staggering by any standard of measurement:
        • Florida, the fourth most populous state in the U.S., would rank as the world's 15th largest economy if it were a country and accounted for $71 billion in foreign trade in 2001.
        • Florida businesses created more new jobs last year than any other state in the nation and had seven of the top 20 job-creating metro areas in the U.S., with Tampa ranking No. 1.
        • Florida's work force of 7.4 million adults is growing by 850 residents a day, with a median worker age of 38.7 -- a far cry from the "retirement mecca" image the state has carried for decades.
        • Florida ranks as the nation's fifth largest cyberstate (in terms of number of high-tech jobs) and leads the entire Southeast in high-tech employment, with more than 230,000 cyber-jobs.
        • Six Florida communities rank among the nation's 50 Most Wired Cities -- and its Central Florida High-Tech Corridor recently was named one of the World Teleport Association's Top Seven Intelligent Communities of the Year (see Broadband: The Next Utility, p. 566).
        • Florida boasts two Tier-1 Network Access Points (NAPs), making it the best state in the nation for high-speed Internet access.
        • Florida has been rated as the No. 1 Most Desirable Place to Live for the past four consecutive years.
        There are other statistics, to be sure, but the number that probably means more than any other to corporate real estate decision-makers is this one: Florida has the second best climate for doing business in the nation, according to a recent Site Selection survey of active corporate real estate professionals. Only Texas was rated higher.
        Perhaps that's why Florida companies created 42,036 new jobs in 374 separate corporate expansion projects last year, accounting for $3.6 billion in capital investment and adding 22.3 million sq. ft. (2.1 million sq. m.) of new corporate space to the market.
        "Florida's economy has been consistently outperforming the Southeast, the nation, California and Virginia," says John Anderson, who just last month concluded a stellar six-year run as president of Enterprise Florida Inc. (EFI), the state's public-private partnership in charge of economic development.
        "But we are not out to land just any jobs," he says. "We want good jobs. And outside studies on EFI by Ernst & Young show that the jobs generated by EFI efforts pay 38.4 percent above the Florida average wage and 17.7 percent above the national average wage. This means that we are getting the kinds of jobs everyone wants."
        That can only happen, of course, as long as the companies doing the hiring find the kind of workers they need. In fact, economic development consultant Sharon Younger of Jackson, Tenn., says that access to highly skilled workers is the third most important site selection criterion for high-tech companies, behind only access to venture capital and proximity to university R&D programs.
        One Florida company that has found those workers in the Sunshine State is CAE USA. The Hillsborough County firm learned in April that it had been awarded a $32-million contract to build a training simulator for the AH-6 and MH-6 helicopters for the Army's 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment.
        CAE Inc., a Toronto-based company that designs and manufactures the simulators used to train MH-6 pilots, is a $1 billion-per-year company with strong roots in the Tampa Bay Area.
        "This is a significant opportunity for us with an elite customer," says John Lenyo, president and general manager of CAE USA, which employs about 500 workers at the former Reflectone plant near the Tampa International Airport.
        Another company that likes Florida's highly skilled labor pool is Jackson Hewitt, which just opened its new 27,000-sq.-ft. (2,511-sq.-m.) technolo gy headquarters off Fruitville Road west of Interstate 75 in rapidly growing Sarasota County.
        The facility opened March 1 and will employ up to 200 workers during tax-preparation season, including 120 full-time employees year-round. The technology team that works there builds and maintains Jackson Hewitt Tax Service's proprietary tax software system called ProFiler. The team also manages all technical aspects of the business and supports franchises through a variety of software services.
        Andrew Choffo, director of human resources for Jackson Hewitt, said that his company selected Sarasota because it "offered Jackson Hewitt a well-educated and trained work force to draw upon. The community is highly regarded as a place to live and work. In fact, we were able to relocate more than 20 employees from our technology center in Virginia Beach."
        Altogether from 1997 through 2001, Enterprise Florida helped create 150,602 direct jobs -- about one in seven of all net new jobs created in Florida and 1.1 percent of all net new jobs created in the nation. The average annual wage of the jobs created last year was $41,553.
        Despite the nationwide economic downturn that was exacerbated by the events of Sept. 11, 2001, Florida was one of only 14 states to post positive job growth from July to December of last year.

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