Plugging In

Four power plant projects totaling 3,750 megawatts of new coal-fired capacity are currently in the works in Florida, and all could be active within eight years.    A $1.4-billion, 800-mw coal plant is being planned by Tallahassee Electric Utility, Florida Municipal Power Agency, Reedy Creek Improvement District and Jacksonville utility JEA. Sites under consideration are located in Hamilton, Madison and Taylor counties. The operational target year is 2012, which is also the target for a 750-mw coal plant from Seminole Electric Cooperative, which hopes to locate it at its existing 1,300-mw Seminole Generating Station.    Florida Power & Light is planning a new coal-fired plant in St. Lucie Co., comprising two 850-mw units. The first would come online in 2012, followed by the second a year later.    Atlanta-based Southern Company's Southern Power subsidiary is teaming with Orlando Utilities Commission to construct a clean-coal, 285-mw plant at the commission's Stanton Energy Center. While that project would be operational in 2010, a 220-mw plant from Gainesville Regional Utilities would come online in 2011.

Those new programs are funded by the residual financial boon wrought by the state's surging economy. Part of that surge is financial in nature, and driven once again by demographics.
      In June, just before announcing that it was relocating its corporate headquarters from Charlotte, N.C., to Lancaster County, S.C., HSBC North America announced it would expand its Tampa Bay mortgage services division by up to 250 new jobs in 2005, and as many as 500 by 2007. That adds to the 1,400 HSBC staff already in Tampa. State and local officials said the state won the project over competing locations in Delaware and South Dakota.
      Over in Jacksonville, Citigroup's Citi Cards division just opened its new campus, which will welcome 400 new personnel. And a recently relocated firm — Fidelity National Financial, which moved from Santa Barbara in 2003 following its acquisition of Alltel — is in the midst of a several-building plan that will culminate in its largest edifice being completed in early 2006, housing 1,600-1,800 employees. In Clearwater, Mercury Insurance Group is establishing a $25-million, 500-employee headquarters. Longwood is welcoming a $14-million expansion from Insurance Office of America, and Lake Mary is seeing twin $13-million expansions from Hartford Insurance and Universal American Financial.