Patient Money

How long does it take to create a new commercial development in Florida?

Just ask Rich Galvano, who's been on a 10-year quest to develop a 241-acre tract of land ideally situated near Florida Gulf Coast University and Southwest Florida International Airport in Fort Myers.

“I feel like Rocky at the beginning of the fight with the Russian,” Galvano says, referring to the famous boxing movie. Dubbed the Innovation Hub, Florida Gulf Coast University plans to jumpstart the development by constructing a 25,000-square-foot building there for its Emergent Technologies Institute.

“I identified that property back in 2004,” Galvano recalls. At the time, Naples residential developer Paul Hardy owned the land but it didn't have any necessary permits to allow anyone to build on it.
For four years, Galvano shepherded the property through Florida's Byzantine permitting process, spending nearly $5 million to do so. The most expensive part of that was purchasing “panther credits” to buy 300 acres of swampland for the state with a pledge to maintain it in perpetuity for Florida panther habitat.

Until the housing bust, the land was going to be home for a residential development. Galvano, former CBS President John Backe and other undisclosed investors paid $21 million for the land in 2008 and began clearing it in 2009 for a corporate park with 2 million square feet of commercial space. That's enough room for nearly 35 football fields. Today, that land is worth $42 million, Galvano cites recent appraisals.

Besides donating about seven acres to FGCU, Backe also gave a $1 million gift to the university to endow a chair in renewable energy that is now filled by Joseph Simmons, the former head of the Arizona Research Institute for Solar Energy at the University of Arizona.

Still, FGCU needed the state legislature to provide about $13 million to build the first building at the Innovation Hub. That took longer than Galvano had hoped because both governors Charlie Crist and Rick Scott vetoed funding on several occasions.

“I was blown away the last time it was vetoed,” says Backe, the former television executive who now lives in Southwest Florida. Only this year did FGCU finally get the funding it needed to move ahead with its project on the site. “Hopefully that's the seed money that'll get it all started,” he says. “I didn't think we'd ever have to go through these hoops with the state government.”

Galvano isn't clear why the project stalled so often in Tallahassee, though he says State Sen. Lizbeth Benacquisto was instrumental for appropriating money for the project in the state budget. He says he's not a conspiracy theorist, so he doesn't suspect ill intent from utility companies who shun renewable energy projects or rival state universities who want to keep research money among top-tier schools. Galvano's brother, State Sen. Bill Galvano, had this advice for his brother: “The governor has a mind of his own.”

For his part, FGCU President Wilson Bradshaw says the university didn't do as good a job as it could have to explain the job-creation potential of the research park. “We always felt that the project was consistent with the governor's [job creation] priorities,” he says. “It should serve as a magnet for emerging companies and startups.”

Now that the project has been funded and FGCU can move ahead with its building, the Innovation Hub appears to be on its way to landing its first non-university occupants. “We've had a lot of people who have waited to move on the site,” says Backe. “All those are now beginning to happen.”

For now, Backe has this advice for those who want to partner with state government and universities: “You'd better have plenty of time, you'd better have some patience.”

Follow Jean Gruss on Twitter @JeanGruss