Florida Trend

Back On Call

Jacksonville-based ATS Services, run by Durham as president and Doug Anderson as CEO, recruits senior-level executives for other firms, offers consulting services and supplies temporary workers ranging from clerical workers to engineers and accountants. The year she retired, she founded a venture capital firm called Adium that provides angel investments for entrepreneurs who struggle, as she did, to land traditional financing. To survive the downturn, Osborne says, professional staffing fir...

Article of Faith

Dupont is well-known in Florida journalism circles for his work building the Charlotte Sun-Herald's internet site in the 1990s - the site was named best in the country by Editor & Publisher magazine - and for working for five years as general manager of the web department at the St. Petersburg Times.

House Rules

Trying to fortify the 12th Judicial Circuit against a torrent of foreclosure cases, Chief Judge Lee E. Haworth enacted a series of changes to the circuit's foreclosure procedures last December, including one that requires lenders, after filing a foreclosure case, to offer homeowners a chance to meet and explore options to litigation.

Banking On a Niche

The "green" elements of First Green include low-interest loans to businesses for environment-friendly projects; use of recycled paper and other green products; interest-free loans for its 30 employees if they buy a car that gets more than 30 mpg; and a $1,000 raise for employees who become LEED-accredited professionals through the U.S. Green Building Council's Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design program.

Fort Lauderdale-Broward County

The developer is U.S. Capital Holdings Group, part of industrial power China Metallurgical Group Corp. >Lauderhill: 64,635 Once, Jackie Gleason and the Inverrary Country Club were synonymous with Lauderhill, whose population was defined by Jewish retirees and snowbirds. Since the 1990s, a demographic shift has evolved:

A Direct Route to Insurance

In March, state CFO Alex Sink issued an order threatening to pull his agency license for using unlicensed people in his call center to sell insurance.

This Old Town

Recommendations include a new interpretive center across from the Castillo de San Marcos National Monument that would link the military life of the fort and the civilian life of the Spanish Quarter; restoration work on the 34 structures; public infrastructure upgrades, including pedestrian walks at car-clogged A1A; visitor information kiosks and interpretive signs; and a new educational strategy based on "layers of history," weaving religion, maritime, Native American, minority, military, Gil...

Snowball Effect

China-based Fox-Conn International Holdings opened a design center in Sunrise with plans to hire 200, many of the initial wave being laid off Motorola employees, to develop smart phones. > xG Technology, which has a low-cost, long-range way to deliver wireless broadband and voice over internet service, opened operations in Sunrise, where it employs 50 engineers. > In March, General Dynamics C4 Systems held a job fair at a Plantation hotel to hire 20 engineers and administrative people -...

Sea Legs

In October, the company landed a $700,000, five-year contract with Midwest Rescue Airboats, a Kansas company that is building 35 ice rescue boats for the U.S. Coast Guard.

Looking Ahead

Grant Recipients > Gulf Power Co.: $347,385; renewable energy skills training for 166 employees and 21 interns. > University of Florida Research and Engineering Education Facility, Shalimar: $75,532; graduate-level systems engineering training programs. > Northwest Florida State College, Fort Walton Beach: $150,695; new and expanded information technology courses. > Gulf Coast Community College, Panama City: $86,087; new IT courses. > University of West Florida, Pensacola: $302...

Course Correction

In addition to the faith-based prisons, there are also two new designated "re-entry" facilities at which inmates get education and substance abuse treatment along with life and job training before they're released. [...] Marco Rubio, House Speaker at the time, warned in a letter that "there are certain policy options that the House does not wish to explore and will not support," from any form of gain time to any extension of prison confinement to community-based programs.\n McNeil wants a tr...

Gold Rush

In the ads, excited customers - or, in recent ads, actors hired to stand in for customers - offered testimonials, while graphics proclaimed "Get TOP DOLLAR for your gold!" The crowning moment came in this year's Super Bowl broadcast, with a $3-million Cash4Gold ad starring two financially strapped pitchmen, rapper MC Hammer and former "Tonight Show" sidekick Ed McMahon. 'American lexicon' Aronson, 36, grew up in Brooklyn, earned a bachelor's in communications in 1993 from Staten Island Unive...