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Talk of the bay

By Times Staff
Published October 16, 2006

Here's a cool concept: BO has 3d renderings

Metropolitan Deluxe is gone, but WestShore Plaza has landed a trendy Danish Modern replacement called BoConcept that opens soon. Sales people design your room plan in a color 3D rendering you can take home. Prices? Try the higher end of moderate: $469 for a leather easy chair or $2,000 and up for a sofa. The chain's specialty, detailed in a 188-page catalog, is modular furniture: standard parts that take on different looks when paired with other standard parts. Some assembly required.

A rebirth for Bentley up north

Bentley Pharmaceuticals Inc., which struggled for years to get its business going in Tampa, has apparently found the right formula in New Hampshire. Once known as Belmac Corp., Bentley moved to Exeter in 1999. Since then, its financial fortunes have been on the upswing. For the second consecutive year, the company is on Forbes' list of the nation's 200 best small companies, at No. 95. During its tenure in Tampa, the company was rather electic: it offered a hemorrhoid drug that was applied to the navel and it was involved in an unsuccessful gold-mining operation in Colombia.

Slowdown? That's homes, not offices

The housing market may be singing the blues but the office market is humming a different tune. Colliers Arnold crows that about 940,000 square feet of offices were leased in the Tampa-St. Petersburg area in the third quarter. The region's vacancy rate is 9.7 percent, with top notch offices in the suburbs coming in at a healthy 6.1 percent, a rate Collier called the third best among large metro areas. Evidently, landlords have keyed in that it's their kind of market. Rents have grown to $21.69 per square foot this year, up from $20.74 a year ago, and about 1.2-million square feet of office space is under construction.

Join the Central Park renaissance

Tampa's run-down Central Park neighborhood needs a renaissance. So Bank of America is playing Leonardo da Vinci. Partnering with the Tampa Housing Authority, the bank is financing redevelopment of the 143 acres between downtown and Ybor City. At a 7:30 to 9 a.m. breakfast meeting Tuesday at the Tampa Convention Center, speakers will spell out plans for Central Park's transformation into a mixed-income residential and retail hub.

Recalls inside

Keep your family safe by finding out what products have been recalled. The feature, formerly found in the Floridian section, debuts in Business today.

[Last modified October 16, 2006, 06:14:57]