by David J. Wilson

Circle One International Inc. president Raymond J. Nielsen is at home in his agricultural research laboratory. Photo by Alex McKnight

When ground was broken in Hernando County for the beginning of the Suncoast Parkway this summer, it did more than disturb the soil. For some, it was a signal for county action to get ready for 2001, when the toll road will be completed; for others, it was the realization of an economic goal, putting the largely rural county within 35 or 40 minutes of population centers to the south.

"We're trying to get ready for 2001," says Ed Daus, a retired attorney who heads the county's economic development commission. "We have a labor force growing at about 3.4 percent a year, and we expect that to expand tremendously when the Parkway is finished. We have about 1,000 in the workforce around the airport now, but we wouldn't be surprised, given our AirPark and our RailPark plans, to see that reach 5,000 within a decade of cutting the ribbon on the Parkway."

County economic observers seem agreed that the Suncoast Parkway is the spark that will ignite the commercial and corporate base of the county, in turn creating an industrial tax base the county would benefit from. "We have to get across to people that residential taxes don't carry the cost of the services required in this county," Daus says. "We've got to build our business tax base."

In fact, even as continuing growth over the past few years has been building a solid foundation for that tax base, some Hernando County companies with innovative products have become known far beyond the shores of Weeki Wachee.

Circle One International, Inc., which like so much of the county's industry is quartered near the Hernando County Airport, is a world leader in research, development, production and sales of sustainable agricultural products. The company grows bacteria for seed soil and silage inoculants, grows fungi to control the nematodes that cause root damage, and "is the largest producer in the world of organic fertilizers and non-toxic insect controls," says founder and president Raymond J. Nielsen. "We distribute in 30 countries," says Nielsen, who moved his company from Michigan to Hernando County eight years ago.

Hernando County Airport's Corporate AirPark opened in June. It offers 13 sites for industrial and corporate use. Industries that use corporate aircraft will be able to construct their hangars in their back yards, says airport manager Robert Mattingly. Photo Courtesy Courtesy Hernando County Airport

After spending the past four years in its current building on Flight Path Drive, Circle One International is about to put its strategic growth plan into effect. "We have to expand quickly," Nielsen says, "and we're going to go from our current 15,000 square feet to 150,000 square feet, plus build 10,000 square feet of offices as our global headquarters." The buildings, also near the airport, will begin to rise in the fall.

Nielsen, a farmer and the son of a Michigan farmer, "started developing products about 25 years ago. My background at Michigan State University is in soil and animal science. Originally, the thrust of my work was to help my own farming operation. I was trying to find better fertilizers, but everything seemed to have a skull and crossbones on it. I couldn't find non-toxic products to affect our plants."

As he developed his products, he found he wasn't the only farmer who wanted to protect vegetables, citrus, and row crops against insects and disease without using toxic chemicals. Rising demand among consumers for organically grown grains and fruits and vegetables (in the United States alone, almost a $4-billion market that is increasing at the rate of 23 percent annually, Nielsen says) added to the urgency, and now Nielsen marvels that "after 25 years of research and trials and developing products, all of a sudden we've got people coming at us from all over the world. It's remarkable."

About 16 chemists, microbiologists and other staff produce Circle One's products that sell at the rate of about $5 million a year and rising, Nielsen says. "You can grow a million acres of fungi a year with two people. Everything that we have is highly concentrated. A gallon of many of our products will do, perhaps, 10 acres."

Circle One's customers are small farmers, large farmers and multi-national farming operations, "a lot of them highly sophisticated operators who want to cut down on their toxicities and their pesticide usage. They use our concentrated materials, nutritionals, and materials that protect plants against insects and disease without toxic chemicals.

"We're talking to some very large players around the world, companies like Mitsubishi, which is already a worldwide player in the food industry. They're going more and more organic and biological, looking for biological, non-toxic, pesticide-free products. We've been kind of held back in that our facilities aren't really large enough for us, so we're growing quickly. We have to. Orders for the first of the year are very, very good."

The new Bealls Department Store in Spring Hill's Mariner Square Shopping Center symbolizes a retail surge in Hernando County. Photo by D.J. Wilson

While not every expanding Hernando County corporation has found gold in the soil, another that has is LIS, Inc. Also at the airport, LIS Inc. manufactures, assembles and sells subsurface liquid and granular turf injection equipment, catering to golf courses throughout the U.S. and Japan. Don Taylor, founder and president of the family-owned business, says his equipment is particularly popular with golf course management companies because it injects various products into the greens without actually mechanically touching anything. "We use 3,000 to 4,000 pounds of pressure per square inch of water to inject the product into the turf. It pulsates as it shoots, and we inject both liquid and granule nutrients or other products in that pinpoint water stream, subsurfacely."

Adjustments can be made to inject products anywhere from one-half to 10 inches below the surface, Taylor says, emphasizing that the process "eliminates almost all the contamination hazards you get from airborne or drift factors. We found that products you leach into the soil tend to dilute. When we inject, the product stays in its zone longer." His firm has a patent on the process. A few years ago, the company, founded in Houston, sold its industrial division and moved to Florida "which has a zillion golf courses" and a very long season.

Expansion is in LIS, Inc.'s plans. "We're selling units in Japan, Australia and Europe in addition to the U.S., and we think the European market is going to be very good. They're very strict on pesticides, and our machinery suits that. We assemble our small unit here now, but we plan to eventually move the large unit manufacturing from Lafayette, La., to Hernando." Employee count will rise from five to between 10 and 20, Taylor says.

Sho-Me Packaging, Inc., is also involved with nutritional products, but of the sort destined for human beings. The new company Ð founded in January by its president, Chris Reckner Ð employs five staff "and huge machines" in 10,800 square feet of new space at the airport to package "sports supplements, vitamins and a variety of other food, drug, and nutritional products," says assistant to the president, Michelle Norwood.

Panther Building Materials, Inc., another growing Hernando firm currently in the Northeast Industrial Park near the airport, is planning to build a 16,000-square-foot distribution facility for occupation in April. In the Corporate AirPark itself, another area of airport property on which ground was broken in June, PAR International, Inc., a reseller and distributor of electronic circuit boards, is expanding into more warehousing and distribution space to use as on-site testing and quality control for its planned just-in-time delivery of the boards to U.S. customers. And AutoTrim Express Inc., currently employing about 15 people and operating out of a few small sheds, has experienced such significant growth that its sales are about ready to break through the $1 million mark, and it's building a new facility in which to produce its airbrushed graphics for the recreational vehicle industry, says Richard Michael, executive director of the county's Economic Development Commission.

LIS, Inc.'s subsurface granular injector (SGI) treats soil without damaging the turf. Photo courtesy of LIS, Inc.

The 300-acre Corporate AirPark makes Hernando's corporate enticement package unique, Michael says, because it provides both landside and airside lots for development Ð and in some cases it allows for a company to put up a hanger at its office/warehouse/manufacturing facility, allowing company personnel to fly in and out of the airport and to taxi right up to their own building.

The park has another asset. That's its planned RailPark facility. "We've had a lot of interest in that," says Ed Daus, "from outside the corporate park as well as from out of state. Now we'll have access by land, air and rail."

That intermodal access concept is in the design stage, says airport manager Robert Mattingly, and "about to go to contract." He said more funding, "perhaps some Florida Department of Transportation intermodal grants," is being sought. If some federal grants can be obtained, Mattingly says, the whole railpark concept may be constructed with little or no investment cost to the airport itself.

Glo-Tech, Inc., a Newark, New Jersey, firm, will be the first to make use of the triple-access area. The company will be known as Polaris Plastics, Inc. after it moves to a new 20,000-square-foot building being constructed by Proud Pelican Construction, Inc. It manufactures plastics that protects the extrusion sheeting used in the raw rubber process for automotive industry products, particularly tires. It needs the railroad spur to ship its products, and the RailPark concept sold the move, says the EDC's Michael.

Rick Pearson, president of Pearson Industries, Inc., and its construction arm, Proud Pelican Construction, Inc., has been involved in much of the airport development. Proud Pelican built the new Central Fire District firehouse near the airport industrial park, has or is constructing several build-to-suits for new or expanding Hernando County manufacturers, and in the second quarter wrapped up work on the new 12,000-square-foot Brooksville Golf and Country Club building.

Pearson says his company now leases buildings to 15 manufacturers at the airport. County-wide, Pearson leases 176,600 square feet, and overall, during the past 10 years, Proud Pelican has built 376,493 square feet of industrial space just at the airport," he says.

"The airport has always been the center of activity. It leases out at attractive rates, and there are advantages with fees and other costs if you locate there." Pearson Industries also puts out about 20,000 square feet of spec space every year, a pace likely to continue, Pearson says.

Mattingly says the flexibility of the airport commercial sites, which can offer anything from two to 60 acres (current leases are running between 20 to 40 years), and will be bracketed by two Suncoast Parkway intersections (at Spring Hill Boulevard and County Line Road) just four miles apart, is a powerful draw. And that's even before you consider the 7,000-foot-long runway, Category 1 instrument landing system, global positioning system for approaches, and its status as a full-service fixed base operator, Mattingly says.

Proud Pelican Construction, Inc., has erected several spec buildings like this 10,800-sqft facility at the Hernando County Industrial Park. Photo Courtesy of Pearson Industries, Inc.

The airport's importance as an industrial/manufacturing center is unquestioned, says Don Lacey, senior vice president of Coastal Engineering Associates Inc. in Brooksville, but there are other pockets worth noting. Lacey, who has been with the 40-year-old consulting engineering firm for 17 years, says "right now, we're probably the busiest we've been in 10 years." He recalls that in the 1980s, during the Spring Hill residential construction boom, Hernando was the second-fastest growing county in the nation.

"Commercial is coming into its own more of late," Lacey says. "With the population up to about 120,000, the demographics are drawing in Home Depot, Wal-Mart, Perkins, Red Lobster. It's a place they want to be."

Other than the airport, there's some concentrated commercial development in the county's planned development districts at I-75 and SR 50, and also along what Brooksville residents used to call the "Truck By-Pass" looping around Brooksville, Lacey says. It's no longer a by-pass, having been designated the official route of SR 50.

Northwest of Brooksville, Lacey expects "U.S. 98 to start opening up, around World Woods (golf courses). Near that is the Dunes at Seville, which "started residential development before its time, but I expect it will work out now. And Silverthorn (west of Brooksville), with Publix and other commercial is also doing well."

All this means more work for engineering firms like Coastal Engineering Associates. Lacey says the 22-person company recently has added engineers and technicians.

Business is certainly looking good to John Wickert of ReMax Advantage Realty in Spring Hill. An EDC board member, Wickert tracks commercial trends and says he can't remember a more optimistic period. Consider retail, he suggests.

"Sales & Marketing Management magazine last year projected Hernando County will have a 43.5 percent retail sales growth by 2001. It's happening. When the new 72,000-square-foot Bealls opened up (at Mariner Square in Spring Hill) it was the largest Bealls in the state. OfficeMax is coming (at Mariner Boulevard and SR 50), and restaurants are opening up.

"From a retail standpoint, Hernando County has been a secondary market to Tampa Bay. The retailers are now recognizing the opportunities here. And it's a draw. We're getting people from north of the county, coming south to shop at Wal-Mart and the other stores."

Healthy vegetables and fruits result when using Circle One International, Inc.'s organic nutrients, says this ad for the Japanese market. Photo Courtesy of Circle One International, Inc.

Wickert also cites the medical and medical service sector as a "huge part of our economy. It's a higher paying sector than some others. The support for it comes from the demographics. We're a couple years older than the typical Tampa Bay population, although that's coming down. There's been a boom in the doctor business development sector along SR 50. I've sold four or five sites for doctors' offices. If there's any doubt as to the importance of highways, let me say that doctors are slow to move, a few years ago I couldn't give those parcels away. Then they four-laned SR 50, and it's been a 2-1/2-year boom."

The Suncoast Parkway looms large in Wickert's projections for Hernando County's economic future. "We're semi-rural compared to the rest of Tampa Bay, and U.S. 41 and U.S. 19 are both challenges. The Parkway will allow me to be at Tampa International Airport in 35 minutes, not 1-1/4 hours. From a commercial real estate viewpoint, we've already got tremendous activity from Pinellas and Hillsborough, small companies with 25 employees or less, looking to relocate for the cost benefits, for the lifestyle. I see employees using the Parkway to commute in both directions, with employees from Pinellas and Hillsborough driving north to work at their small companies, and with Hernando County residents commuting to the larger companies in the bigger counties.

Rick Michael of the EDC sees the same picture. "We're the northern-most member of the Tampa Bay Partnership, and the Parkway is only going to strengthen our position, tying our industrial area to the major industrial areas to the south. And we've got inexpensive real estate, land that sells for three to five cents a foot compared to 25 to 35 cents a foot for the same land in Pinellas or Hillsborough. And we have all the amenities here. Our infrastructure is in place except for the eastern part of the county. I think it's going to be a boom time for the real estate market here."

When the ground broke for the Suncoast Parkway, Michael says, commercial, industrial and real estate people all had the same thought: "It's really happening; it's for real."