FAST-GROWING FLORIDA

A State That Can Hardly Wait

ON the long, soggy peninsula where Ponce de Leon once sought the fountain of youth and Wilson Mizner in the 19203 ordained his palaces of pleasure, winds of change are stirring with gale force. Florida, ending one of its balmiest winters in history, last week greeted the spread of spring across the North with remarkable equanimity. Once the northward exodus of tourists in the springtime rated with the hurricanes as a natu ral catastrophe, inevitably followed by a summer-long slump. Now Florida is the focus of a permanent population shift that has made it the fastest-growing state in the Union and a bustling, year-round center of industry, commerce and building.

More than 3,000 new residents pour into Florida every week, and 76% of them come to settle permanently. In the '503. Florida's population grew 79% (v. 19% for the U.S. as a whole), outpacing every other state. Last year its new citizens demanded 104,000 new dwellings, a pace that jolted one once-sleepy county -- Brevard--into becoming the fastest-growing U.S. county. New industries are pouring in (881 new plants last year alone), and the state's income from manufacturing, farming and construction finally equals the income from its weather-dependent tourist and service industries. Beyond Florida's tawdry nightclubs, neon fagades and kidney-shaped swimming pools lies a new and sustaining domain of factories, fresh communities and solid citizens.

Like its banyan tree, which drops roots from its branches to anchor itself firmly in the earth, Florida is reaching out to broaden its growing base. No longer does the state suggest a congeries of retired queen bees, living unproductive Jives on husbands' insurance and making the worker bees who serve them miserable with demanding, captious ways and parsimonious tips. Florida has become a boiling melting pot, mixing retired Ohioans with young Michiganders, New Englanders with Hoosiers. The state now boasts not only the world's largest shuffleboard club (in St. Petersburg) but its largest missile testing ground (at Cape Canaveral), and air-conditioned jails for its increasing criminal population, one undesirable byproduct of growth.

Sportswear to Spinach. Though the state's fast growth has relieved Florida of its worry about the tourist exodus, it has brought a tangle of new problems. For one. the need for highways is pressing. The state has built 500 miles of four-lane roads in the past five years, but that does not begin to fill the need. Says newly elected Governor Farris Bryant: "We are a score of years and a billion dollars behind in highway construction." As fast as industry is coming into Florida, it still is not coming fast enough to supply the new jobs that the state needs for its burgeoning population. Just to keep ahead of unemployment--which is now at a 9.6% rate for nonagricultural workers--the state needs more than 25,000 new jobs every year.

Florida is making massive attempts to woo new industry, using the lures of warm climate, no individual or corporate state income taxes and a large labor pool that will work for moderate wages. The Florida Development Commission is asking the legislature to tack another million dollars on its $8,900.000 budget request to step up its campaign to attract more companies. Says Governor Bryant: "From sportswear to spinach, if Floridians buy it we will explore the possibility of Floridians producing it." The state's cities are so anxious for new industry that they often fall to fighting over prospects, sometimes souring them on coming to Florida at all.

But, says University of Miami Economist Reinhold Wolff: "Industry has always come where the people are. Growth begets growth." Florida has already attracted 177 electronics plants with a total of 20,000 employees and payrolls of $100 million. Among the biggest are Radio Corp. of America in Palm Beach County and Minneapolis-Honeywell, General Electric and Sperry Rand in the St. Petersburg area. The residents of Cocoa Beach used to be happy just watching the Banana River flow lazily by. Then the first missile blasted off at nearby Cape Canaveral--and Cocoa Beach is now the nation's missile capital, where whole rows of neon-lit motels are named after mis siles and rockets. Chrysler Corp. was in such a hurry to get into Cocoa Beach that it could not wait to build, leased an abandoned saloon to get going.

Industry in the Everglades. Martin Co.'s missile plant at Orlando, 80 miles inland from Canaveral, employs 9,100 persons, more under one roof than any other company in Florida. Many of them are ex-servicemen who learned missiles and a love for Florida at Canaveral. Pratt & Whitney division of United Aircraft, looking for an out-of-the-way place to develop liquid-hydrogen engines, ended up in the Everglades. The state helpfully shuffled land lots so that the company could be next to a wildlife sanctuary, where there will be no neighbors to complain about the ear-splitting test runs. Like California, Florida sees one serious danger in the type of new industry it is getting: it is too heavily concentrated in military work. Concedes Pratt & Whitney General Manager Charles Roelke: "We don't have the flexibility of other industries in the event of a budget cutback."

Florida's climate is so strong a lure that few Florida firms have trouble getting skilled workers. Says Martin's Orlando Employment Manager Clifford H. Lang: "There's a peculiar appeal about the state." Many firms find that men will even leave California for Florida, where they feel closer to home ties in the East and Midwest. To test Florida's attraction, Pratt & Whitney ran two blind ads in

Northern papers, one offering jobs in Florida and the other in New England. Result: 30 to i for Florida. The company has been swamped with 55,000 applications for 4,000 jobs.

Florida has plenty of home-grown industry as well, ranging from fashions to phosphates, from oranges to oysters (which are having one of their best years). Florida's oranges, grapefruit, tangerines and limes, and its fresh and frozen orange juice account for 65% of the U.S. citrus crop, a third of the world crop. Frozen juice has added stability to the business, eases the sharp ups and downs caused by whimsical weather. Oranges have become such a good investment that one enterprising developer is selling plots in groves that he will manage much like a mutual fund, planting orange trees, caring for them and eventually selling fruit for the investor.

The canceling of the Cuban sugar quota has produced a rush by farmers to grow sugar cane, and Florida hopes for a 20% rise in its sugar quota. Floridians support the nation's biggest dog-racing industry and train a big share of its trotting horses in such sun-drenched towns as Ocala, where Sofa Manufacturer Bernard Castro is a leading horse breeder.

Little Venices. It is the building industry that is doing the most to make Florida boom--and raising the greatest fears of a bust. Even though building was slowed last year by the recession (statewide building was off 20%), communities are still going up at an amazing rate. The biggest, General Development's Port Charlotte on the lower west coast, has mushroomed from vacant land to a city of 7,000 in four years, is planned to hit 750,-ooo. The scramble for waterfront lots is so great that builders are turning parts of the state into little Venices, pushing fingers of land out into waterways and interlacing them with canals so that everyone can moor his boat at his own front door. The housing industry's hard-sell tactics, full of gimmicks that staid real estate men frown on, do most to revive old fears that Florida's economy, which collapsed so disastrously in the '205, is again made of papier-mache and overpapered mortgages. Despite the inrush of population, home builders still have put up more houses than they can sell. Says Economist Wolff: "There is no justification for building so many homes as are being built in Florida." Yet the land boom shows few signs of busting. Land prices have slipped only slightly, though the recession has made it easier to get land on easier terms. One brake on the boom is the difficulty of getting credit in Florida. The state's banks, still shell-shocked from the spectacular bust of the 19203' boom, advance money grudgingly. Majiy plants that would like to open in Florida find they just cannot get the credit that they could in New York or Chicago.

Advised to be more cautious, the builders only step up their selling campaigns. Agents scour the North selling lots for retirement homes at $10 down, $10 a month. Other builders have launched a campaign to convince Northerners that they can afford a second home in Florida. General Development President Frank Mackle Jr. will sell a furnished house in his Port St. Lucie Country Club development for an average down payment of $5,200. When the owner is up North, Mackle rents it to tourists, puts the rent toward the mortgage. Says he: "We are not selling sunshine, climate, or even attractive homes. We are basically selling the ability to live on $250 a month."

Florida cities, too, have the building fever. From Sarasota's avant-garde architecture (the city has won many national architectural prizes) to Jacksonville's $400 million redevelopment program, which has transformed the messy downtown area and the rat-infested wharves into a showcase, new buildings are shooting up like sugar cane. Jacksonville has become the insurance hub of the South, with -regional offices of 18 companies.

Speed Trap & Oyster Shells. While the builders make money, the tourists continue to be the biggest spenders. Aside from their pasty pallor, they can usually be distinguished as the only ones who swim in the ocean (Floridians prefer pools). Florida has invested more than $2 billion in the housing and entertaining of tourists. The coming of the jet plane was heralded as the beginning of an all-time tourist boom--but the jets also made it easier to spend just an hour or two longer in the air to reach the Caribbean islands. Still, the jet has also made it easier for people who formerly came to Florida once a year to hop down oftener for shorter stays. And 80% of all tourists brave oyster-shell roads and speed traps en route to roll in by auto.

The state's flashy hotels and motels are not doing the business they once did, or getting the same kind of customer. Innkeepers' revenues are down 11% thus far this year from last year, and occupancy has dropped from 84% to 81%-- still a good rate. Gaudy Miami Beach hotels, built for the free spenders, are trying to buck the times by offering cheap family package tours that some fear take away from the glamour that once drew the jewelry-loving, steak-absorbing guys and dolls. The only hotels really prospering are those that, like the lavish Americana have virtually forsaken the tourist iri favor of big-spending conventioneers. The airlines, which have helped to change the kind of sun lovers that Miami Beach draws, are also making Miami a springboard to Latin American markets. Miami has more direct air connections to the 21 principal U.S. air hubs than has either Boston or San Francisco, and more flights to Midwestern manufacturing cities than any other city in the U.S.

No Old Folks' Home. Cartoonists to the contrary, Florida is not becoming just one large, palm-fringed old folks' home. Retirement is still big business to the state, as can be seen in the rows of oldsters on green benches along St. Petersburg's streets and the jam-up at the post-office when social security checks arrive. But people are retiring younger than ever before. Mackle's Port Charlotte has so many young retired servicemen that the city's average age is only 42. And more and more young Floridians are staying home. Half of the twelve colleges started in the U.S. last year were in Florida. While 11.5% of the Florida population is in the over-65 age group, v. a national average of 8.8%, the state also has more people in the 18-10-44 age group than the national average.

Floridians--natural or adopted, transient or permanent--are incessant boosters. And the presence of President Kennedy and his clan brings publicity not only to Palm Beach but to the entire state. "Wish you were here" postcards and enthusiastic letters sent back home to Idaho or Michigan talk up the pleasant climate, the casual dress, and the saving on furnace bills. Florida newspapers chauvinistically play up every Northern storm so that no one will forget how lucky he is to be in the sunshine. Of course, Florida is not all sunshine and lotus living. Many settlers complain of the heavy humidity that belies the low temperatures advertised in August and September, of water that tastes like sulphur, and of the bugs, bugs, bugs.

Off the Beach. Whatever its handicaps, Florida at last knows where it is going, is no longer basking on its beaches thinking about it. Economist Wolff calls the state "California, 35 years late." Like California, Florida has become a state of mind, an American dream of rejuvenation, of living the simple life, of going back to the outdoors--even if that outdoors becomes one long, neat stretch of suburbia. To many industries and individuals alike, Florida suggests an escape from the ugliness of old, tired industrial cities with their dark pewter skies and soot-covered bricks. All the plan needs now is an assist from Tin Pan Alley--a tune that says, "Florida, here we come." Floridians on the scene would also like the lyric to say: "Bring money."

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