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Florida, it's time for a new message

Our overheated December won't set any cool-weather records, but I'm noticing a distinctly brisk draft on my neck.

By Robert Trigaux, Times Business Editor
Published December 30, 2007

Our overheated December won't set any cool-weather records, but I'm noticing a distinctly brisk draft on my neck.

If there was One Big Florida Business Story in 2007, it was this: America's long-standing love affair of the Sunshine State became positively chilly amid a rising chorus of "gee-I'd-love-to-move-to-Florida-but-I'm-not-so-sure-anymore."

It's not a freeze by any means. But we have troubles. And barring major mojo and stronger leadership, Florida's economic heydays may be in jeopardy.

As an experiment, I checked in with our do-it-yourself moving experts at U-Haul. I wanted to check the prices of renting a 26-foot truck one way and moving into -and out of - Florida to three destinations commonly considered competitors to us.

Move 1: St. Petersburg to Charlotte, N.C.: $1,583. The price of the same one-way move but in the opposite direction: $341.

Move 2: St. Pete to Atlanta: $893. Price in the opposite direction: $253.

Move 3: St. Pete to Knoxville, Tenn.: $1,726. Price in the opposite direction: $298.

Sure, there are bound to be logistical reasons for price differences. But the same-distance trip costing three, four and five times as much? Clearly, the demand to exit Florida is way up. The demand to move here is, by price, puny.

Last week's offering of new U.S. Census data confirms what we find in our U-Haul test. During the past year that's July to July by Census folks, 35,301 people moved to Florida from another state. That's an astonishing 134,798 fewer than the year before. That's also the slowest rate of domestic migration into Florida in at least 17 years.

There's a loud message here. I'm just not sure Florida's jumble of metro areas and distracted state leaders are really listening.

Sure, people about to move are rethinking Florida because its housing market is in a downswing, because the hurricane-whipped property insurance market is still in tatters, because property taxes are unfair, because schools (for all the good intentions) are barely holding their own, much less preparing kids for global competition, and because jobs here increasingly are perceived to pay lousy wages because of the sharply rising cost of living.

We know all that. We've heard these arguments. The message we fail to hear in Florida is that the state has changed and now lacks a good story to tell people looking at coming here.

What's our story, Tampa Bay? It's no longer We're the place of cheap housing in the sun.

Problem is, we haven't figured out a new story.

Atlanta has a story to tell:We're the big sprawling city of the South where all are welcome (and where housing is cheaper than Tampa Bay). Charlotte has a story:We're the biggest banking city in the country but with all that clout we're still a good ol' Carolina city. Plenty of Tennessee cities offer similar stories: We're still affordable, still warm enough, still enjoyable out of the fast lane.

The census numbers tell their own tale. Georgia - with half of Florida's population - had a bigger net gain of people last year than Florida (202,670 vs. 193,735). Smaller North Carolina attracted 191,590, barely fewer than Florida gained.

What is our story? Until we get it together, it's this: We're big, we're sprawling, we're getting expensive, and we're too busy thinking that maybe we should be somewhere else.

Who wants to hear that?

Robert Trigaux can be reached at trigaux@sptimes.com.

[Last modified December 28, 2007, 22:15:45]