Workers build pieces of FPL's new solar plant near Indiantown.

These frames will eventually hold mirrors to collect the sun's energy.

With the first mirrors set to arrive this week, that promise is starting to take shape.

“We want to harness all that free energy,” said John Gnecco, FPL’s director of project development.

The idea of solar-thermal energy sounds easy enough, and it is. Kind of.

In the most basic terms, the process works like this: The sun’s light strikes a mirror and is beamed into a pipe, which “catches” the energy and moves it, via molten liquid, into a power plant where it boils water into steam. The steam is used for power.

Jose Suarez, a spokesman for FPL, explains it this way: “When the sun comes up every day, you’re able to take your foot off the gas and let the sun generate steam.”

What seems simple on paper, though, is far more complex on the ground. (more…)

INDIANTOWN — Beyond the taqueria and past the cattle ranches here, more than 700 workers are busy building the largest solar-power plant in Florida.

They’re assembling giant aluminum frames that stretch 40 feet long and weigh 2,800 pounds apiece.

When the frames are finished, they will fit them with 192,000 mirrors.

And, eventually, they will attach steel pipes to hold liquid that the sun will heat to 700 degrees Fahrenheit.

To see the scene at Florida Power & Light Co.’s solar-thermal plant in western Martin County is to think that a new era of clean energy has finally dawned in the Sunshine State.

But not so fast.

Despite lots of talk about the need to be green, state lawmakers dragged their feet on proposed legislation this year. They never managed to pass a renewable-energy bill.

FPL says it has more solar projects ready to go — but it can’t build them until the state approves a law allowing it to recover the costs of construction. (more…)

PORT ST. LUCIE — City Manager Don Cooper is resigning his post after 20 years on the job.

Mayor Patricia Christensen made the surprise announcement at the end of Monday night’s City Council meeting.

“After 20 years of phenomenal work for the city of Port St. Lucie, Mr. Cooper will be leaving us the first of the year,” Christensen said.
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TALLAHASSEE — Two safeguards on a secretive process that turns tax dollars into cash incentives for private corporations were quietly removed in the final days of the 2009 legislative session to help a Jupiter Island investment manager quickly secure $20 million for his digital animation company.

An amendment gave Gov. Charlie Crist’s office, which helped craft the language, sole authority to award $42 million in economic development money. As a result, nine companies, each identified only by a code name, were awarded shares of the money within a week this summer. One $7.4 million project in Taylor County was never discussed in public.

Nearly half of the summer’s total went to Project Bumblebee — a proposal from John Textor, who is targeting Port St. Lucie for a spinoff of Digital Domain, a visual effects company he owns with Hollywood blockbuster producer Michael Bay.

Textor has promised that the spinoff, Wyndcrest Holdings, will create 500 jobs by 2014, and the recession-ravaged city is considering a separate incentive package worth $10 million in cash, land in Tradition and additional stimulus money from the city and St. Lucie County for a building.

But while the city considers its offer, the last-minute state budget amendment has already benefited the election campaigns of Crist and state Reps. Kevin Ambler, R-Tampa, and David Rivera, R-Miami, whose support was critical for the amendment.

Just days after the legislative session in May, which ran into overtime as lawmakers squabbled over the budget, Textor gave $5,000 to the Republican Party of Florida’s federal campaign account to help Crist, who has raised more than $6 million for his U.S. Senate race next year.

In June, Textor gathered $2,000 in donations for Ambler and $1,500 for Rivera. Textor also helped arrange for former Miami Dolphins quarterback Dan Marino, one of Textor’s business partners, to attend Ambler’s kickoff fund-raiser last month for Ambler’s state Senate campaign. Textor said he hopes to host a fund-raiser for Ambler in Palm Beach County. (more…)

J.J. Taylor Companies, the second largest beer distributor in Florida, plans to start construction this week on a warehouse and beverage distribution center in Fort Pierce.

About 57 employees are working out of a temporary location in the city, said Jose E. Rivera, vice president of finance and administration for the company. Those employees will move to the new 25,000-square-foot center when it opens next year in the Crossroads Park of Commerce on Okeechobee Road, he said. (more…)

Five years ago, Vought Aircraft Industries Inc. announced plans to close its Stuart plant, a move that would have ended more than 50 years of history at Witham Field.

Now, the Dallas-based airline parts manufacturer calls Stuart a success
story. The plant has won more company awards than any other site. It just announced its second major expansion in two years, and Vought¹s chief executive officer says Stuart “has offset” some of the company¹s losses with the downturn of the economy.

So how did the Stuart plant come back from the brink? (more…)

FORT PIERCE — Land along Ten Mile Creek, west of Florida’s Turnpike, owned by former Cleveland Browns and Miami Dolphins quarterback Bernie Kosar, may be auctioned as part of a bankruptcy settlement.

To satisfy creditors of his companies and investments, Bloomberg.com is reporting that Kosar filed a plan last week that would include auctioning 140 acres of the proposed development called Creekside.

The undeveloped land is owned by Kosar’s company BJK.
(more…)

FORT PIERCE — Faced with double-digit unemployment and one of the highest rates of foreclosure in the country, St. Lucie County commissioners created a “local stimulus program” to speed up construction projects and create jobs in an economy desperate for them.

The plan included an ordinance to give local companies an edge in the bidding process and ensure that most workers involved in county projects live in St. Lucie.

But six months into the program, it’s hard to define how successful it’s been.
Economic change comes slowly, and even “fast-tracked” projects can take months to go through the design, bidding and building process. County officials, however, say their efforts have improved St. Lucie’s dire economic situation without raising taxes or increasing long-term debt.

“It’s incremental, but any jobs that we can add to the local economy absolutely has to help,” said Faye Outlaw, the county administrator.

Officials point to these milestones: (more…)

Construction jobs continued to decline on the Treasure Coast during the past year, according to a report released last week by the Associated General Contractors of America.

The Port St. Lucie metropolitan area, which includes Martin and St. Lucie counties, lost about 700 jobs, or 6 percent, between August 2008 and August 2009. The Treasure Coast ranked 59 out of 337 metropolitan areas in the country for least jobs lost. The worst losses were in Reno, Nev., which ranked 337.

The Associated General Contractors of America, based in Arlington, Va., released the numbers to highlight the decline in construction jobs across the country. (more…)

When Michelle Holmes, bought her Martin County town house, she never thought she’d be securing a loan guaranteed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

“It was really easy to work through,” Holmes said about buying her $120,000 town home late last year. “It had a really quick turnaround time.”

Without a down payment and good credit score, she was able to secure a Rural Development Home Loan, backed by the USDA, through Palm City-based East Coast Mortgage Lenders.
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