Making It In Paradise

It's pretty much a foregone conclusion: there will be no smoke-spouting stacks silhouetted against Southwest Florida's sunrise. There will be no massive rail yards downtown, or freight terminals out near the Interstate. There will be no shot-and-a-beer bars clustered around factory gates. That's for Youngstown, Detroit and St. Louis.

Here, we can have this foregone conclusion because the rust-ridden, blighted industrial belt is what we left behind -- even those of us who worked in and profited from those very industries.

But the thing is, we don't need any of the rust or the blight to have a healthy manufacturing environment. As a matter of fact, it may be unhealthy -- for jobs, for economic stability, for people -- if Southwest Florida were not to nurture light manufacturing for all its worth.

Tell Me What You Want

Referring to the government's Standard Industrial Classifications for Lee County , Brad Rothenberg says "There are two dozen manufacturing companies that have 100 or more employees."

Rothenberg works with these daily as the Project Manager for Business Expansion in the Lee County Economic Development Office. His job is to diversify the area's economy away from some of the more traditional structures such as agriculture, tourism and retail. "If we can diversify, it will make us stronger when going through the ups and downs of the economy."

Even some environmentalists agree, in a qualified manner. Dr. John Fitch, associate professor of Environmental Studies at Florida Gulf Coast University and director of the FGCU Green Building Project, says that "This gets us out of some of the stagnation we see with an economy that may be overly dependent on service."

Many manufacturers that are here are happy about it. Steve Spencer's company, Pall Aeropower, has been here 21 years. It serves the health care, industrial and aerospace markets as the world leader in filtration and separation technologies. According to Rothenberg, all of the Bagel Bites consumed in North America are manufactured in Southwest Florida, and another manufacturer, Simms, supplies a national market with anesthesia masks and respirator bottles.

There are a tremendous number of local support services for manufacturing-based businesses, too. Audrey Wallace is the regional accounts manager and a manufacturing specialist with the Florida Manufacturing Technology Center located at FGCU's Center for Leadership and Innovation. "We go into a company, sit and talk about the business," she understates. In fact, her services include a front-to-back assessment of all phases of manufacturing. Her team of engineers are funded by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, by the public/private partnership Enterprise Florida and by the cost-recovery fees charged to businesses with whom she consults. "We can help them become more competitive and more profitable," she promises.

Add the truly extraordinary incentives -- free space, shared administrative staff, signature loans, fast-track permitting and tax exemptions -- offered in Immokalee, where the regional airport is being transformed into an industrial and technology park. Mireya Louviere, Executive Director of Immokalee's Chamber of Commerce, says, "We are very enthusiastic about locating new business here."

And then there's The Second Circle of FGCU's College of Business and the Southwest Florida Regional Economic Development Coalition. Associate Dean and Director of The Center for Leadership and Innovation Dr. Gary Bonvillian reports that his boss, Dr. Richard Pegnetter, Dean of The College of Business, is actively seeking -- and getting -- broad trade partnerships with regions all over the world. Agreements are already in place with Magdaberg, Germany, and Compeche, Mexico. Near completion is a similar agreement with Stuttgart, Germany. "I feel strongly about the power of this thing," Bonvillian says.

So everything is rosy, right? Not quite. There are still two problems: one real, and one perceived. First, who's going to make your product? And second, how are you going to get supplies into and the end product out of here?

Good Help Is Hard To Find

"The work force is the number one issue," says Wallace, "especially now with unemployment at 2 percent. But we are addressing that." She reports that the Collier County Economic Development Council's technology task force hopes to have courses at the Lorenzo Walker Technical School to train basic and advanced machinists and other types of skills.

Pall Aerospace's Spencer has an optimistic view. His competitive benefits package and the guarantee of year-round work both mean that when there's people around to hire, he can hire them. "We don't have a lot of competition," he says.

Qualified people are another matter, though. "Because there's not a lot of manufacturing in the area," Spencer says, "frequently the people we hire have never worked in a factory, and they need indoctrination. All the manufacturing in Florida would benefit from general math skills, testing procedures, all the way up to skilled machinist training."

Lee's business expansionist Rothenberg rationalizes the challenge. "Workforce challenges are a national challenge," he says. "I think we are very competitive."

Spencer is stoic. "We typically go through periods when we run [the business] short of staff." He has not frequently looked outside the area for new people, but an unusual source of employees has evolved. "Since the area is a vacation site, people will come to visit," Spencer has learned, "and they'll stop by to fill in application when they are visiting their parents."

Wallace has found the same phenomenon, but with a sometimes different result. "People come down on vacation, look for a job but then get culture shock because they don't get the pay they get up north." She's quick to point out, though, that "it doesn't cost as much to live here as it does up North."

Even so, she is not experiencing trouble finding certain types of employees. Wallace is looking now for a project for a client company, for a director of sales and a director of operations. "I have plenty of good resumes," she grins.

Spencer concedes it's no problem to hire managerial staff. "The same things that attract people to Southwest Florida are the same things that make recruiting professionals easier -- engineers, accountants -- than Indianapolis. For example."

And the competition from other employers in the area is slight. "Given there's not a lot of light manufacturing in the area, the companies have a pretty good selection of people to choose from," Spencer says.

Truckin'

Once you've made something, what can you do with it? You're on a coast 150 miles away from the nearest deep water ports, on a peninsula with little rail service, where the only Interstate takes a day to lead out of the state. You're not at a transportation hub. In many ways, So