One gas line, and it was cut

14. November 2010 · Comments Off · Categories: Economy, Home, naples, News, Tech · Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Natural gas service in Southwest Florida was shut down Thursday because there is only one line in which to route the fuel’s flow through most of Lee and Collier counties.

When it was severed by a construction worker, it carried a multimillion-dollar price tag and sent another dagger into the hearts of business owners struggling to stay afloat in the worst recession since the Great Depression.

Graphic: Southwest Florida’s gas network
Related: Gas restored to about 500 customers

Gas, which powers everything from dryers to water heaters to residential and commercial ovens, was turned off when the main supply pipe that runs from the Caloosahatchee River in northern Lee County to Fiddler’s Creek in southern Collier County was hit by a road worker.

Lance Horton, a senior project manager with Tampa-based TECO who headed up the building of the system in the late 1990s, said Saturday alternate supply lines have not been built.

“There is yet no redundancy,” Horton said. “As systems go, this one is immature.”

Gas service to this area began in 1998.

“We don’t have ways to reroute the gas as yet,” he said. “Those will come based on customer growth.”

Horton said in older systems – such as in St. Petersburg, Tampa and Miami that have used natural gas for almost 100 years – time has allowed TECO to develop work-around routes so only small sections of homes and businesses are affected if there is a line break.

In a newly developed area such as Southwest Florida, building alternate routes where there are few customers is usually cost-prohibitive.

“Since the system is originally designed based on where the customers are located,” said TECO spokesman Rick Morera, “it is difficult and costly to build redundancy not knowing the direction of future growth.”

Area businesses continued to suffer Saturday.

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“My business was barely surviving in this grim economy,” said Mike Lavin, owner of Gulf Gate Laundry in Naples. “It is possible this shutdown will do me in.”

For some, though, better times were at hand.

Service to the company’s highest priority customers – hospitals and elder care centers – was restored Friday night. By Saturday evening, crews working 15-hour shifts, had an estimated 500 users up and running.

And Morera said “work in the Fort Myers Beach and downtown areas has gone well.”

For others, however, it could take the better part of a week before gas service resumes.

Restoring service is a complicated and lengthy process, Horton said. It includes a representative visiting each customer.

“Our goal is one visit. That’s a tough objective,” he said. “A business might be closed and we can’t get in touch with them. Or someone’s not home. That’s why it takes a week to get all the service back.”

Those visits include turning the gas off at the meter, turning it back on and reigniting a pilot light.

“We work on a mandated protocol for safety,” he said. “We don’t want our customers turning the gas on or off.”

TECO’s assault on the problem resembles, in many ways, how a utility company goes about getting the lights back on following a hurricane.

The company has set up a large staging area at its Fort Myers headquarters just west of Interstate 75 near Luckett Road. More than 200 technicians and repair personnel have come from all over Florida to help.

Horton said the trouble here has not presented insurmountable problems.

“All situations are unique,” Horton said, “and all are similar. You have different geographics, and in this situation, it is a little more difficult because our 7,200 customers are spread out across 50 miles.

“But we know what to do, and how to handle it.”

One gas line, and it was cut

Obama surprised by political cost of health law

08. November 2010 · Comments Off · Categories: Economy, Health, News · Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

9:34 A.M. — WASHINGTON ? President Barack Obama says the political cost of overhauling the health care system turned out to be higher than he had expected. And he admits that he gets discouraged at times when dealing with the economy.

In an interview airing Sunday night on CBS’ “60 Minutes,” Obama said the health care system itself is huge and complicated and that changing it eluded previous presidents because it was so difficult.

“I made the decision to go ahead and do it, and it proved as costly politically as we expected ? probably actually a little more costly than we expected, politically,” he said.

Obama said he thought that he would find common ground with Republicans by advancing health care proposals that had been introduced by Republican administrations as well as potential presidential candidate Mitt Romney when he was governor of Massachusetts.

“I couldn’t get the kind of cooperation from Republicans that I had hoped for,” he said. “And that was costly, partly because it created the kind of partisanship and bickering that really turn people off.”

Obama said the danger of a second major recession is “much reduced” and a great depression is not on the horizon. Still a danger, he said, is the nation being “stuck in a new normal where unemployment rates stay high.”

“I do get discouraged. I mean, there are times where I thought the economy would had gotten better by now,” he said. “One of the things I think you understand as president is you’re held responsible for everything. But you don’t always have control of everything, especially an economy this big.”

However, Obama sounded optimistic about the nation’s economic future.

“I am constantly reminded that we have been through worse times than these, and we’ve always come out on top,” he said. “And I’m positive that the same thing is going to happen this time.”

Obama said his two years as president haven’t changed his ideals.

“But I think that in terms of how I operated on a day-to-day basis, when you’ve got a series of choices to make ? I think that there are times where we said let’s just get it done instead of worrying about how we’re getting it done,” he said. “And I think that’s a problem. I’m paying a political price for that.”

The “60 Minutes” interview was taped at the White House on Thursday, before Obama left for a four-nation tour of Asia.

Obama surprised by political cost of health law

His and hers lists help market couple’s home

18. September 2010 · Comments Off · Categories: Cars, Economy, Family, Home, News, Real Estate, Tech, Video · Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Tina Haisman needed to stand out.

Her family’s home at 11471 Persimmon Court had been on the market for three months and had been shown to about 10 prospective buyers with little fanfare.

“We’ve had people come to look at our house two and three and four times and tell us they loved it but they would go back to Canada or something and say ‘Oh, we’ll be back in a month,’ ” Haisman said.

Haisman, 37, her husband Paul and their two young children moved to the Chicago area for Paul’s information technology job. The family became frustrated with the failed attempts to sell their 2,280-square foot, four-bedroom home, which is located in Gateway and listed for sale at $269,900.

“The problem is there are so many homes,” Haisman said. “People have plenty of time to search and that sense of urgency that used to be there when you were shopping for a home – that you better make a bid on it if you want it or you’ll lose it – that sense of urgency is not there.”

So Haisman, owner of Tina Haisman Public Relations, did what any PR pro would do. She began strategizing ways to draw attention to the 19-year-old dwelling.

To help them come up with a marketing idea, Haisman and her husband decided to first create a list of what they liked about their home – a brainstorming technique some real estate agents suggest to sellers prior to showing a property.

Paul typed up his ideas and e-mailed his version of the list to his wife. When she read his top 10 selling points, Haisman completely disagreed with her husband on the home’s best features.

“As I was reading it I thought, ‘Oh my gosh. I would change half the things on here.’ It was not what I thought at all,” she said.

The couple realized how differently men and women sometimes view a home’s attributes and decided to each create their own top 10 list. Whereas stellar landscaping, a split floor plan and vaulted ceilings made the cut for Haisman, her husband focused on technical aspects such as the new roof, cable wiring and hurricane panels.

“My top 10 list is more about the beauty of the home,” Haisman said. “My husband’s list is more of the functional, practical, manly man’s list. I don’t think a woman would care as much that you get free hot water from the air conditioning as a guy would.”

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The real estate agent the Haismans were working with at the time posted their dueling top 10 lists to their home listing on Realtor.com. The agent created a flier about the husband and wife’s selling points for the home and e-mailed it to agents on the Lee County Multiple Listing Service. Several local agents applauded the creativity and asked if they could use the husband-wife list idea with their clients.

Haisman then sent press releases to news outlets near Boston, Minneapolis, Detroit, Chicago and Columbus, Ohio – areas traditionally home to Southwest Florida snowbirds.

The day she sent the release, 30 people viewed Haisman’s home listing on Realtor.com. More than 70 people interacted with the media release – meaning they saved it to their computers, printed it or clicked on links within it. It received approximately 40,000 headline impressions, or the number of times people viewed pages that included the headline for the release.

In addition, Haisman – who was reading Daniel Pink’s “A Whole New Mind” at the time, which discusses, among other things, the importance of storytelling in business and marketing – created a blog in an attempt to create a personality for the home she and her family lived in for nine years. On her blog, Haisman posted home photos and has written about everything from winds the home withstood during hurricanes Charley and Wilma to the fun of neighborhood block parties on Persimmon Court.

“I wanted to tell the stories so maybe people can envision their family living there and creating their own memories,” she said.

The mother and public relations professional tweets about her home and blog, posts information about it on Facebook and has asked some friends to post the information on their Facebook pages as well.

Marla Martin, spokeswoman for the Florida Association of Realtors, called the Haisman top 10 lists “very creative” and she said she hadn’t heard of that tactic before. Still, Martin said she is not surprised by the family’s marketing efforts.

“During the boom years, you almost didn’t have to do anything because the homes were moving so fast,” she said. “Now, our members report lots of creative things for sellers.”

Those efforts include holding signs along roadways to promote open houses and an increased use of social media sites and YouTube videos to advertise homes on the market. Sunni Hammermeister of Sellstate Realty Systems Network, who signed on as agent for the Haismans last week, has even seen people offer cars and boats with the sale of their home.

As they continue to aggressively market the home on Persimmon Court, Hammermeister said it has a good chance of finding the right buyer. Haisman, who plans to create a second media release soon, also remains optimistic.

“Hopefully, these things will help us stand out,” she said of her PR efforts. “We’re trying to be positive in this economy and proactive and take action instead of just complaining about how horrible things are.”

His and hers lists help market couple’s home

Athletes, families help Lee County economy

04. July 2010 · Comments Off · Categories: Economy, Family, International, News · Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

Sasha Ratliff charges after the basketball, her ponytail bouncing high.

From the bleachers at Estero Recreation Center, her family cheers. Later, they’ll talk about where to go for dinner after the last tournament game of the day.

The 7-year-old from Atlanta is the kind of visitor Lee County tourism promoters earnestly pursue this time of year: A young, amateur athlete playing on a team – with family members tagging along. Many of these athletes and their families fly in to Southwest Florida International. They sleep at local hotels, eat at area restaurants, maybe shop at the malls, and visit a local attraction.

Sasha played on the Atlanta Pistol’s team last week in the Amateur Athletic Union President’s Cup for girls age 8 and younger that ended Thursday. It was a small tournament this year, drawing just four teams and an unknown number of family members.

A larger prize, however, is just ahead: the Perfect Game USA Baseball Championship Series. It’s a program designed to showcase top ballplayers ages 14 through 18.

Between today and July 26, three different age brackets will arrive, compete for a week and then depart. Altogether, more than 10,500 visitors are expected over the three weeks. Most of them will stay in paid lodgings.

“It makes our July,” said Joan Jenkins, sales director for Crowne Plaza in south Fort Myers.

Athletic entourages big and small pumped an estimated $63.8 million into the local economy last year, according to the county Sports Authority.

“For inland properties, amateur sports are huge,” said Jack Copeland, general manager for SpringHill Suites by Marriott in south Fort Myers.

Sasha’s family stayed at Embassy Suites. “This was over $3,000 just for this trip: airfares, hotel, rental car and food,” said Kristina Ratliff, Sasha’s mother.

“The area is very nice. I’m from Miami; this is less-congested and a nice change of scenery,” said Sasha’s aunt, Felicia Joseph. The family group, which totaled 10, drove out to Fort Myers Beach for part of a day, and also dined at Firepit City Grill in Gulf Coast Town Center.

Team sports tourism helps local hotels and other businesses survive long, hot and humid months when other visitors typically are scarce.

If anything, this sector is even more coveted during the economic downturn and the region’s hotel-building boom: More than 2,600 new rooms opened in Lee County alone over the past three years.

Hotel-building appears to have abated.

However, the glut of rooms still presents a problem: The county Visitor & Convention Bureau estimates guests using paid lodgings must increase in number by 5 percent this year just to maintain the county’s average 2009 occupancy rate.

It’s another hurdle to clear for the Lee County Sports Authority, an agency funded through bed tax dollars, which courts amateur sporting events to fill local hotel rooms.

Said Executive Director Jeff Mielke: “We’re projecting 16,500 total (hotel) room nights for July. That’s about even with last year.”

Athletes, families help Lee County economy

Unemployed volunteer to get jobs, boost resumes

19. June 2010 · Comments Off · Categories: Economy, News · Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

They are tour guides, airport greeters, hospital helpers, fund-raisers and more. They provide hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of work for free.

They are volunteers. And, neither the struggling economy nor summer doldrums have taken a lasting toll on their numbers or hours of service.

But they aren’t always easy to find: Some area organizations have worried about finding enough help this year.

Yet help has come from a strange place: the ranks of the unemployed. Many people who have lost their jobs are volunteering to stay busy and fill gaps on their resumes.

At the Bonita Springs Chamber of Commerce, “We’ve struggled getting people to volunteer in the summer. Fortunately, we’re less busy now,” said Tiffany Esposito, communications manager.

Esposito aims to recruit five or six volunteers for the busier months of November through March. Meantime, she’s fielding inquiries from local high school students, who need service hours to graduate and who are having trouble finding summer jobs.

Margaret Baugher directs the Retired & Senior Volunteer Program at Senior Friendship Centers. The center recruits and refers volunteers to more than 60 agencies in Lee County.

When the local economy hit the skids, “we initially lost volunteers – about 200,” Baugher said of the volunteer corps of nearly 2,000 people today. Then, as Lee County’s unemployment soared – to a peak of 14.2 percent in January – “we got droves of people coming in to volunteer: people who’d lost their jobs. … Quite a few got jobs through volunteering.”

Debra Olvera, 56, is one of them. She started as a volunteer at Senior Friendship Centers headquarters in Fort Myers last July, after months of job-hunting and skills-upgrading at the Career and Service Center.

“When we moved from Texas two years ago, we thought the employment situation here was OK, but it wasn’t,” Olvera said.

After 25 years in clerical work for insurance and construction firms, a church and other organizations, office work at Senior Friendship seemed a good match. Also, Olvera lived within walking distance to center headquarters.

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Olvera volunteered as a part-time receptionist from July till November, when she was hired for that position, full-time.

Even if unpaid work doesn’t evolve into a paid job, “volunteering fills in those gaps on your resume,” Olvera said.

According to Bureau of Labor Statistics surveys, one in four Americans volunteer, a rate that’s been static for 40 years. The Corporation for National and Community Service, the federal agency that oversees service programs, says volunteering rose 1.5 percent in 2008, the most recent year for which data was available.

Volunteer recruitment and training occurs year-round at the Edison & Ford Winter Estates. Over the past two years, the volunteer crew has risen from about 170 to 250. They include full-time people employed in professions as well as retirees and people between jobs, said Chris Pendleton, estates CEO. High school and college students assist in the summer day camps.

After 100 hours of service, volunteers are awarded free estates membership, which can be used for free or discounted admission to allied cultural attractions and museums.

Pendleton, however, said a thirst for learning drives most volunteers: “They want to learn about history, science, how to garden. They’re attracted to the history.”

Unemployed volunteer to get jobs, boost resumes