TAMPA - Maybe it was the tributes to Tampa's past business heros. Or the dinner plates piled with steak, chicken and crab cakes. Or Gov. Jeb Bush's congratulatory remarks from the podium.
Whatever the cause, Monday's 50th golden anniversary dinner of the Committee of 100, the Greater Tampa Chamber of Commerce's economic development arm, was a feel-good evening of rising expectations.
Rightly so. Charged with luring new business to the Tampa area and encouraging expansion by local companies, the Committee of 100 is feeling its oats. The economic development times have been good, even as the U.S. economy has struggled since Sept. 11, 2001.
At the least, the committee has come a long way since 1954, when 100 local businessmen (hence the committee's name) each put up $100 to kickstart a new economic development group.
At Monday's fest held at the downtown Hyatt Regency, 2003's outgoing Committee of 100 chairman Randy Simmons of R.R. Simmons Construction praised the area's 3.7-percent unemployment rate as down substantially from 4.6 percent a year ago, and well below both the state and national averages. Then he issued a new unemployment challenge: "How about 3.3 percent?"
That was all it took.
Incoming 2004 Committee chairwoman Judy Genshaft, University of South Florida president and the first academic administrator to serve as the influential group's chief, would not be outdone. After promising a strong year of economic development, including a new emphasis on building up bioscience businesses, Genshaft upped the ante on Simmons.
"Let's try 3.0 percent!" she told the dinner audience.
Nor was that the end of lowering the unemployment limbo bar. The Greater Tampa Chamber's recently named chairman, TECO Energy executive John Ramil, added the final challenge.
Why not shoot for 2.7 percent?
Fortunately, for the sake of economic sanity, Ramil was the last speaker.
Even in jest, it was that kind of can-do evening.
For Genshaft, the morning-after question is: What can she realistically expect to achieve?
The USF president is assuming a one-year title overseeing an economic development group that is well regarded but clearly set in its ways. The Committee of 100 has a solid track record of attracting call centers and, more recently, higher-end back-office and financial processing services (with improving wages) of such big-name companies as J.P. Morgan Chase, Citigroup and Coca-Cola Bottling.
Talk to the committee's top staffers and they get excited about building the area's "financial services cluster" and toss around such optimistic phrases as "Wall Street South."
But don't expect to hear much about Genshaft's hot buttons: bioscience and biotechnology. Redirecting the Committee of 100 is a tectonic event and will require some heavy lifting by Genshaft. If she has the time and backing.
The Committee of 100 is working on more than 100 projects involving corporate expansion or relocation. Several dozen of those projects are nearing a serious stage of negotiation and 13 are close to a final decision. Most of those involve businesses in financial services, technology or customer services.
To her credit, Genshaft has recruited a strong ally from the broader USF family to help press her bioscience agenda. Dr. Bill Dalton, a physician-researcher and CEO since mid-2002 of the Tampa's H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center & Research Institute, will chair the Committee of 100's bioscience committee.
Tampa's financial services cluster, assembled over the past 10 years, is the prototype for a bioscience cluster Genshaft hopes to build in the next decade. She noted USF's recent efforts to build a bioscience research park and the Tampa Bay area's large base of medical manufacturing companies. USF also is nurturing a business incubator.
This area, she said Monday, can become the "principal location" in the state for bioscience development and commercialization. To make that happen, Genshaft will have to compete for and deliver some major government funding to USF's bioscience projects.
Further ahead, Genshaft predicted Moffitt would emerge as a major player in new drug discoveries and distribution.
All commendable goals. But are they attainable? Dozens of major metropolitan areas in the country are focusing their future resources on bioscience - and often clamoring for the same government dollars - in pursuit of the next presumed blockbuster industry.
Genshaft chose not to mention the recent arrival of the Scripps Research Institute, a bioscience giant that was recruited to expand into Florida in Palm Beach County. Scripps chose Florida because Gov. Bush personally pitched the research organization with an unprecedented state and local incentive package exceeding $500-million.
Will the arrival of Scripps in South Florida, three hours from Tampa, spread the wealth and ultimately enrich Tampa Bay's own bioscience dreams? Or sap them by funneling most future funding to the magic Scripps name?
That's a major crossroads the Committee of 100 will not reach for several years.
For 2004, USF's rising clout in the area economy is clear. Genshaft only arrived here four years ago this month to head USF. Now she's heading a key area business group whose leaders traditionally are picked from longtime locals.
