The Small Business Development Center at the University of South Florida has established a Pasco County presence.

The SBDC is part of the Florida SBDC Network, a statewide service network of 35 centers. It is funded in part through a cooperative agreement with the U.S. Small Business Administration and accredited through the national Association of SBDCs.

The new SBDC office in Pasco will be staffed by Jerry Karp, a certified business analyst, according to a release. Karp will be providing one-on-one counseling to new and existing business owners in the area, among other services.

Karp’s expertise in business, especially marketing and sales, is a great asset to the organization, said Eileen Rodriguez, Small Business Development Center regional manager, in the release.

For 13 years, Karp owned a business that specialized in selling business to business. When it was sold to a large corporation, he remained at the company for seven years as manager, the release said.

The SBDC office in Pasco will be housed in the county’s Economic Development Corporation building at 16506 Pointe Village Drive, Suite 101, Lutz.

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As we watch the market towards the end of 2009 we are beginning to see that lenders and developers are working together nation wide to re-energize sales and marketing programs for new construction condominiums.

In fact, last week a group of investors led by Barry Sternlicht’s Starwood Capital Group are emerging as the winner of an auction by the government of the failed Corus Bank’s condominium -development loans.  If Starwood is successful, it will be the latest sign that the firm is emerging as a major force in the purchase of ailing condominiums.  (Wall Street Journal 10-3-09 by Lingling Wei)  Many of these acquired loans were in condominium developments in Florida and also locally within the Tampa Bay market.

Locally in Tampa Bay we have also seen progression with developers and lenders together to put together pricing of new condominiums to more realistic pricing to what the market will bear in 2009 / 2010.  We at Smith & Associates will continue to have an active watch on these new opportunities within Tampa Bay and provide details on progress of the best opportunities in real estate in Clearwater, St Petersburg and Tampa in new condominium developments.

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Fishing boat captains from the Discovery Channel’s reality series “Deadliest Catch” will participate in a multimedia campaign to draw attention to Florida’s fishing industry in late 2009.

Sig Hansen of the Northwestern and Johnathan Hillstrand and Andy Hillstrand of the Time Bandit will appear in print and Web-based media as well as statewide TV public service announcements airing in December.

The captains also will help Florida mark National Seafood Month in October.

Cheap seafood imports, rising fuel prices and the hurricanes of recent years have impeded the fishing industry, Florida Agriculture Commissioner Charles Bronson said in a release. The captains will help raise public awareness about the contributions of Florida’s fishermen, Bronson said.

In addition to promotions featuring the celebrity captains, the agriculture department is producing a series of documentaries about Florida’s working waterfronts in extended-length high-definition video format.

The first documentary, which features Sebastian, will be released in October. Documentaries featuring Cortez, Tarpon Springs, Jacksonville, Destin and Apalachicola, and Miami and the Keys will follow, the release said.

Florida’s commercial fishermen harvest more than 83 million pounds of seafood and fishery products with a dockside value of more than $168 million each year, the release said. Florida is home to roughly 500 seafood processing businesses and 800 businesses that buy and sell seafood as dockside fish buyers, wholesale brokers, importers or exporters.

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High unemployment and housing crisis be darned: Florida is still among the most popular states when it comes to where people want to live.

Only California is more popular, taking the No. 1 spot for the sixth year in a row in the Harris poll by Harris Interactive as the place Americans would like to live if they didn’t live in the state they now live. Hawaii came in third.

“The most popular states and cities where large numbers of people would like to live tend to attract tourists and business,” according to a Harris media release. “They are places where people like to take vacations and where companies like to have their offices and factories.”

Oddly enough, however, no Florida cities were among the top destinations for resident wannabes.

New York City topped the list of cities people would most like to live in or near, followed by Denver and San Francisco.

The other most popular states were:

Texas (No. 4), Colorado (No. 5). Three states tied for sixth place: Arizona, North Carolina and Washington state.

The other cities on the top 10 are San Diego (No. 4), Seattle (No. 5), Chicago (No. 6), Boston (No. 7), Las Vegas (No. 8), Washington, D.C. (No. 9), and Dallas (No. 10).

The poll of 2,498 U.S. adults took place Aug. 10-18.

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Poll: Florida ranks No. 2 for wannabe residents

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