Face it: No matter what ill winds may blow, Florida's sunshine is still its leading product, attracting tourists in a steady stream. But some of the industrial expansions connected to the leisure and tourism sector may surprise you.
      First, you have to have a pool. You might find one from Composite Pool Corp., a West Virginia company that is investing $4 million in a 100-job expansion in Pasco County. The project will go up on an 11-acre (4.5-hectare) site in Zephyrhills, helping to relieve demand on another facility in Jane Lew, W. Va.

Tervis Tumbler's $7.5-million new headquarters and manufacturing complex in Venice will more than double the space of the insulated drinkware company's former facility in Osprey, which will be renovated into a purely retail space.

      You can't very well have a pool party without a grill. Helping fuel the economic fire in Tavares, near Orlando, is a $4.7-million expansion from Blue Rhino, the company that dominates the propane grill cylinder business. The slight move from a facility just down the road in Zellwood will create 60 jobs at the two-building tank refurbishment complex. The company is a division of Overland Park, Kan.-based Ferrellgas, following the companies' 2004 merger.
      "We have built that model of a plant in other areas of the country," says David Slone, vice president for technical operations for Ferrellgas and Blue Rhino. "In a two-year period we built four new ones in Chicago, Denver, Florida and California, and we had plants already in North Carolina and Washington."
      One of the two buildings will be devoted to inspection, clean-up and refurbishment work, while refilling, weighing, labelling and leak inspections will take place in the second building. The tanks are then palleted and sent out either by local truck or over-the-road to a satellite distribution point, depending on how current demand fits into the company's "overlapping umbrella" network of self-run and independent distributors, which number around two dozen. Slone says the typical plant turns around 4,000-5,000 cylinders per shift, and this facility may work two shifts next year. Among the new facility's new amenities is the ability to ship in bulk propane by rail.
      Finally, you can't withstand that Florida heat without a nearly unbreakable double-walled insulated virgin polycarbonate cup. Coming to the aid of thirst-slaked Sarasota County is homegrown Florida firm Tervis Tumblers, which is building a $7.5-million, 60,570-sq.-ft. (5,627-sq.-m.) manufacturing facility and corporate headquarters as the anchor for the Triple Diamond Commerce Plaza in Venice, not far down the coast from its original 25,000-sq.-ft. (2,323-sq.-m.) complex in Osprey.
      Development on the 7-acre (3-hectare) site was helped along by an industrial development bond facilitated by Sarasota County Economic Development Corp. The project will also benefit from the county's SMART rapid permitting program and its impact fee mitigation program. Tervis CFO Laura Spencer says the new facility will be built for further growth. The company grew by 31 personnel in 2004 as it implemented a second shift of its own.
      After a October 2005 move-in, the company plans to eventually employ 200 in the state, helping a nation to cool its heels one tumbler at a time.