Small Town, Farflung Connections
by Janan Talafer

DO YOU FEEL LUCKY? That may be the classic Clint Eastwood line from the movies, but in Plant City, Florida, it has an altogether different meaning. The city with the reputation as the winter strawberry capital of the world is also a major manufacturing site for scratch-off lottery tickets. •Tickets purchased by the next millionaire-to-be in Connecticut or New Hampshire, even possibly Cyprus or Poland, roll off the presses each day at Creative Games International. The company, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Canadian Bank Note Company Limited, moved its North American headquarters to Plant City in 2001.

Why Plant City?

LUCKY DRAW Phil Green in the Creative Games plant that can print 3-billion lot-tery tickets a year. Photo by Tom Berndt

“We wanted to grow our U.S. business and needed a major presence here to do that,” says Phil Green, senior vice president of sales and marketing for Creative Games. The company (www.creativegames.com) closed a plant in Rhode Island and one in Ontario, Canada, to consolidate business in Plant City. “When it’s 12 degrees with six inches of snow on the ground in January, it’s a lot easier to entice clients and potential employees to Florida than to Rhode Island,” says Green.

Plant City’s central location between Tampa and Orlando, and its affordable real estate, power and water, and a labor market with a “good work ethic” were strong incentives, Green adds. The firm currently has 75 employees locally.

New, more efficient press equipment with the capacity to print up to 3-billion tickets a year, reduced manufacturing costs, beefed-up information technology and stronger marketing have helped fuel growth. Kansas, Arizona, New Jersey and Texas have been added to the company’s state lottery client list. Internationally, the company picked up Poland, Cyprus, the Philippines and Mexico.

Creative Games’ ticket sales “in 2001 (the year we moved) were about $6.5 million,” says Green. “We are forecasting sales of over $11 million for calendar 2004 and expect our employment to increase to over 100 by the end of the year.”

Tied to the World
New product lines and an international connection are at the forefront for Crystals International, a Plant City company known as a specialty manufacturer of freeze-dried juice and vegetable powders for the beverage, confectionery, dairy and pharmaceutical market.

In October, the company (www.crys tals-inc.com) was purchased by the Kerry Group in Ireland, a publicly traded global conglomerate in the food products industry. The acquisition is expected to strengthen the Kerry Group’s position in the food flavoring market and broaden Crystals International’s product diversity.

A Passion for Strawberries “Most people think Plant City was named for its agricultural focus, but it was really named after Henry Plant, who built the first railroad through Florida a hundred years ago,” says Chip Hinton, president of the Florida Strawberry Growers Association. “It wasn’t long before farmers realized they could ship winter strawberries and Northerners would pay premium prices for them.” BERRY MAN David Cassidy at the Strawberry Festival. Strawberry Festival Today, more than 7,000 acres of strawberries are planted in Florida, with the majority of berries grown in Plant City and nearby Dover. Plant City strawberries have a winter season that begins around the first of November and extends until early spring. The area’s major competition is California, which has a longer growing period from late February through October. “We have a short marketing window to produce berries when no one else in the country can,” says Hinton. The positive effect of strawberries on Plant City’s prosperity led to the local Lions Club developing the Florida Strawberry Festival in 1930, an event that continues to this day.

Several other Plant City firms also have overseas corporate headquarters. India’s Tata Tea Limited (www.tatatea. com) produces more than 40 instant tea products for brand-label customers at its Plant City manufacturing plant. The local James Hardie Building Products is part of James Hardie Inc., an Australian company (www.jameshardie.com.au) that manufactures fiber-cement building materials. A. Camacho, the U.S. subsidiary of Angel Camacho S.A. (www.aca-macho. com), an international grower, producer and distributor of olives and olive oil in Spain, has a production facility in Plant City.

“Not too many people realize how many international businesses we have located here,” says Bill Ulbricht, chairman of the board for the Greater Plant City Chamber of Commerce and also CEO of Plant City’s South Florida Baptist Hospital. “Our location – with easy access to Tampa, Lakeland and Orlando, and to major airports and highways – makes for convenient channels of distribution.”

Mayor William Dodson sees Plant City as the “economic hub for East Hillsborough County with great opportunities for expansion, growth and economic development.”

Plastipak, one of the largest plastic container manufacturers in North America, opened a 78,450-square-foot facility last year, after signing a new contract to deliver plastic packaging for beverage manufacturer Tropicana/Pepsico in nearby Bradenton. “Right now we have a crew of about 25 employees, but we’re working up towards 75 people as we expand our product lines and add more customers,” says Bill Fullerton, human resources manager for the Plant City plant.

Fullerton says the Michigan-based company (www.plastipak.com) is “big on buying existing land with good growth potential.”

United Modular, based in Perris, CA, closed two facilities in St. Petersburg this summer and relocated to a 100,000-square-foot factory in Plant City, where it has room to expand production capacity of modular classrooms and light industrial buildings. The company (www.unitedmodular.com) expects to take advantage of Florida voters’ call to reduce classroom size in schools. Its modular classrooms are a convenient way for schools to add space.

A Sweet Draw
While a major draw for national and international corporations may be Plant City’s central location, local civic leaders also are betting on an entirely different venue: marketing the city as a friendly, small-town destination for local, state and national events.

The city’s premier event, now approaching its seventh decade, is the Florida Strawberry Festival. Today the festival (www.flstrawberry festival.com) attracts as many as 725,000 visitors from all over the country to celebrate the area’s abundance of strawberries. “It makes sense to market ourselves as an event town,” says Ulbricht. “Plant City does a great job of organizing events. We can bring in thousands of people and its goes off like clock work.”

In the past few years, downtown Plant City has strengthened its identity as dozens of antique shops, cafes and small stores have opened along historic brick streets. The chamber has developed events that take advantage of this quaint area. The monthly Bike Fest is a good example. Bike Fest, says Mayor Dodson, “drives in over 5,000 bikes each month to downtown Plant City.” This is a family event geared more toward people who enjoy riding on the weekends as a hobby.

Bike Fest’s success led to the Chamber’s introduction this year of the Strawberry Classic Car Show, an event for classic car aficionados. In November, the Chamber will host the first annual Plant City Pig Jam, a barbecue competition with a $10,000 purse for the winning professional entry.

Also bringing in people is the International Softball Federation (www.internationalsoftball. com), with world headquarters at the Plant City Stadium complex.

“We were looking for a new location because of the growth and development of our sport internationally,” says Don Porter, executive director. “Plant City was a perfect fit.” The federation organizes world champion competitions for men’s and women’s teams and hosts softball seminars and clinics for coaches, teams and umpires.

The federation’s impact on Plant City is big, says Porter. “We’re holding events and bringing in people from around the world who are using restaurants, hotels and rental cars,” says Porter. “We’re also offering the community enjoyable entertainment by opening some of our games to the public.”

Where ’s New Residential?
Plant City residents treasure their small-town atmosphere, and one of the biggest challenges the city faces is how to plan for balanced future growth. One stumbling block is lack of available land for new residential development. While other sections of Hillsborough and Pasco County are bustling with new communities, that’s simply not happening in Plant City. “We have a good amount of land zoned for industrial use, but currently, have a shortfall in residential land,” says City Manager David Sollenberger.

In August, developer WCI Communities closed on its last home in 2,000-acre Walden Lakes, Plant City’s upscale subdivision that includes 3,000 homes, a golf course and polo field. Now, city officials are wondering what’s next.

Jennifer Closshey, CEO of Crystals International and chairman-elect of the chamber, says visioning sessions are underway with city commissioners and business leaders. Community workshops are soliciting residents’ input.

Dodson envisions aggressive development and expansion that doubles the population in the next two decades and includes annexing areas just outside city limits. This year, the city gained 200 acres in a volunteer annexation of land.

“At some point in the future, we hope to bring annexation to a vote and allow the people who live there to decide whether to join us,” says Dodson. He also sees land along the I-4 corridor as ripe for development, which would spur the need for additional Plant City highway exits as growth occurs.

Bruce Erhardt, senior director for Cushman& Wakefield in Tampa, says his commercial real estate firm has property one-half mile south of I-4 near County Line Road currently being rezoned from agricultural to industrial and residential. He expects a groundbreaking by the second quarter of 2004 on a new 200- acre development that will include area for industrial development, as well as multifamily dwellings, single-family homes and retail space.

Balanced planning means protecting Plant City’s valuable agribusiness interests, says Dodson. This means integrating large tracts of farmland used for growing crops with residential and industrial development, and making sure that “we’re all good neighbors.” More than 2,600 farms in Hillsborough produce fruit and vegetable crops with an annual value of more than $450 million, says Chip Hinton, president of the Strawberry Growers Association.

In an important step toward planned growth, Plant City received approval this year from the Southwest Florida Water Management District to increase its consumptive water use permit from 6.2-million to 9.8-million gallons a day.

The city’s infrastructure is also getting a boost. In early fall, the city closed on a $3-million, 16-acre property formerly owned by Auto Nation that will now house a 65,000- square-foot police station and a 35,000- square-foot maintenance facility for city-owned vehicles. Remodeling the existing structure will begin around the first of the year, with move-in expected by early 2005.