Table of Contents
SEPTEMBER 1999

• Inside Corner
  Photographing the future. Correction at Midas. The E Factory Web. One tree at a time, light post at a time photos of the future take shape on computers at Dutter Design & Consulting Inc. in a process that may one day make artistic renderings of buildings obsolete. At Automotive Service Centers Inc. the short marriage of acquisitions expert Steve Uiterwyk and Midas franchisee family businessman Lonnie Orns has ended in a friendly separation. In Dade City, they're celebrating celebrity in the millennium. For a small town in the shadow of a citrus plant, it has produced a long list of notables, including two who are about to become leaders of national business organizations.
  
  
• Leads & Deals
  A digest of bay area business news. Robert J. McDonaugh has joined Hunt Douglas Real Estate Services Inc., Tampa, with responsibility for new development and acquisitions. Tropicana Products Inc., Bradenton, named Roger Berdusco senior vice president of marketing for North America. Margo Darlington has been named executive officer of the Pasco Building Association, New Port Richey. And in Sarasota, Charles H. Jackson and Linda R. Hoydic has been named officers of Flagship National Bank.

• Growth Strategies
  A monthly feature that allows our readers to take lessons from the best. There's no horizontal construction going on at Pinnacle Towers Inc. of Sarasota. It's a vertical REIT -- the only vertical REIT -- and its towers on which wireless telecommunications companies hang its hardware seem to be cash machines for the hard- charging company that owns about 3,000 towers and is angling for more.

• Company Profile
  Sarasota's Pinnacle Towers Inc. builds vertical space for rent.
  by Melissa Wells

• Resource Center
  
  
• Ask the Experts
  
  
• Banking & Investments
  The CMBS Takes a Wild Ride. Not long ago the commercial mortgage-backed security was considered a great investment, and the money it generated was a major source of commercial construction financing. It bombed a year ago, climbed back, sort of, and is in the tank again? What of its future?
  
  
• Corporate Meetings, Travel & Getaways
  Gone fishin' at the downtown Tampa convention. Rodbenders Inc. has been a fairly obscure high-end fish-and-tackle shop in Tampa's Channel District. But as the district is on the move, and Rodbenders is branching out, going for the convention and high-end business market for fishing trips just a few minutes from downtown Tampa.
  
  
• Corporate Relocation
  Inward Bound
  Nothing stems the tide of corporate expansions and relocations everywhere in the bay area.
  By Bridget McCrea
  
  
  

• Downtowns Alive!
  In Tampa Bay cities, downtowns are becoming important once again. It's been a long slide for downtowns as the money and the residents moved to the suburbs during the 1950s and 1960s, but they're coming back. After a lot of false starts, it look as though the 40-year story has reached a turning point. Residents are coming back to St. Petersburg and Tampa, businesses is building again in Lakeland, and once derelict downtowns are starting to look prosperous once more
  by Melissa Wells and Davis J. Wilson
  

• GREATER ST. PETERSBURG
  Company expansions, office building renovations and new meeting places spur the city past its obsession with baseball.
  by Melissa Wells
  
  
• Who You Gonna Call?
  Buyer's Guide to Office Furniture A Maddux Report listing of where to find them, who to call.
  

• BUSINESS PARK GUIDE
  New Space Fills Quickly
  by Laurel S. McQueen
  
  
• Focus Map
  Tampa Bay's news and leads on growth and development.
  
  
• On the cover:
  Pretty little Dunedin has a downtown that works. Now the bay area's bigger cities are sprucing up, too.
  Photo by Steve Widoff.