- April 16, 2025
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Observer buys Pelican
The Observer Group, parent of the Business Review, acquired the Pelican Press and PelicanPress Marketplace, a competing weekly community newspaper in Sarasota.
Journal Community Publishing Group, a subsidiary of Milwaukee-based Journal Communications Inc., had owned the Pelican Press since 1998. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
The Pelican Press was founded as a monthly newspaper for Siesta Key in 1971. Its circulation averaged 22,000 a week, according to an audit by the Circulation Verification Council.
The Observer Group owns and operates five newspapers in Florida: the Sarasota Observer, the Longboat Observer, the East County Observer in Manatee County, the Palm Coast Observer in Flagler County and the Business Review. Including its websites, Observer publications reach an audience of more than 200,000 readers each week.
Business moves HQ
CEC Motor & Utility Services, an industrial motor remanufacturer spun off from a company in Detroit, announced plans to move its headquarters to Manatee County.
The firm says it will hire 36 employees during the next five years, according to the Manatee Economic Development Council. Manatee County commissioners approved $126,000 in performance-based incentives for CEC and the state approved $72,000 in subsidies.
CEC Motor is a sister company of Detroit-based CEC Controls Co. Inc., which operates a sales office in Sarasota. That operation, along with CEC Motor's main facility, will be combined into one business in a 21,000-square-foot facility in Palmetto.
Company plans expansion
Sarasota-based Ledtolite Inc., an LED light designer and manufacturer with three employees, plans to move to a larger facility and hire 26 employees over the next five years, CEO Alain Bricoune says.
Sarasota County commissioners approved $80,000 in performance-based incentives to support the growth.
Ledtolite will move to a 2,200-square-foot building in Nokomis. The 10-year-old company moved to Sarasota from France two years ago.
USAmeriBank plans hires
USAmeriBank recently announced it will hire at least eight new employees for its mortgage lending division by the end of the year, according to a release.
The Clearwater-based bank recently reached $1 billion in assets just four years after opening its doors.
Mauro Harto, who joined USAmeriBank in March as director of residential lending, will lead the firm's hiring efforts. Harto came to USAmeriBank from Superior Bank, which recently underwent an ownership change after the FDIC shut it down.
“Our mortgage division is expanding at a time when there is plenty of opportunity in this area,” Harto says.
Led by CEO Joe Chillura, USAmeriBank is now one of the largest banking institutions headquartered on the Gulf Coast, second only to Raymond James Bank in assets.
Channelside condos sold out
In early 2010, more than half of the luxury condo units at Towers of Channelside in Tampa were on the market. Last week, the last of those 257 units was sold.
JMC Realty Inc., which was hired last year to help sell Towers units, says the 137 condo sales brought in more than $45 million in revenue. JMC Sales and Marketing Director McCormick Brown says the firm cut prices early in 2010 to boost activity. It then kept prices at that same level until the building was sold out.
In a release, Brown says the towers' latest sales show “there is demand for high-quality, well-priced housing in downtown Tampa. The sellout should instill confidence in developers and help to encourage new urban residential development in the area.”
The 257 condo units at Towers of Channelside occupy two 28-story towers on Cumberland Avenue in Tampa.
Alico names CFO
Alico, the La Belle-based agricultural company, named Mark Humphrey as chief financial officer, its third CFO in less than a year.
Humphrey was formerly chief financial officer for Compass Group, a Naples-based asset and financial management organization.
Prior to that, Humphrey served as senior vice president of finance for Source Interlink, a Bonita Springs-based magazine publisher and distributor.
Humphrey replaces Scott Whitney, who resigned in April after seven months on the job for undisclosed personal reasons.
Alico reported net income in the second quarter of $2.7 million, nearly double the same quarter in 2010. Quarterly revenues rose 15% to $36.5 million.
Yippy dividend
Yippy, a Fort Myers-based Web and search-engine operator, plans to offer a stock dividend to shareholders of record as of June 27.
The company (symbol: YIPI) says it plans to offer shareholders a stock dividend equivalent to 5% of their recorded shareholdings no later than June 30.
Company CEO Richard Granville says the company wanted to reward existing shareholders for their loyalty.
Ft. Myers home sales drop
Sales of single-family existing homes dropped nearly 14% to 1,234 in the Fort Myers area in May compared with the same month a year ago, according to the Realtor Association of Greater Fort Myers and the Beach.
However, the Realtor organization says the median sales price of an existing single-family home in May in the Fort Myers area rose nearly 10% compared with May 2010, to about $100,000.
Realtors attributed fewer sales and rising prices to the drop in low-priced foreclosures in Lee County, one of the hardest-hit areas of the country. In May, traditional sales made up about 55% of sales of existing single-family homes, with the remaining made up of foreclosures and short sales.
