Delays have continued to plague a luxury boutique hotel planned on Palm Avenue on land being purchased from the city of Sarasota, but developers and professionals involved with the project say they have no plans of abandoning the effort, and should have permit requests in to the city within weeks. “We’re happy with where we are,” said architect Jonathan Parks. “We’re almost running out of stuff to do.”

The tentatively titled Floridays Hotel Sarasota, expected to be a part of Hilton’s Curio Collection, has been in the works since 2012. It was delayed substantially while the city dealt with a lawsuit from the Leiter Group involving previous plans nixed in 2008. This summer, the city moved forward with plans to close on the property with Palm Avenue Hospitality Holdings, a company formed by Angus Rogers of Floridays and Larry Abbo of Prime Group that will obtain the title for the property. In recent weeks, though, city officials said they have become frustrated that little progress has occurred at the site. “We had all this momentum and now it seems to have ceased or gone backward,” said Tim Litchett, director of Neighborhood and Development Services. Litchett said the city is still waiting for the application for a foundation permit.  

But Rogers and Abbo say the project is on track. Rogers noted that in addition to the city property, $1.6 million was spent by developers for an adjacent property to the city land and there is no plan to walk away. “We have not come back with anything that kills the deal or makes it undoable,” he said. Developers acknowledged it has been time-consuming meeting the requirements of the city, those of Hilton and simply the standards of developers, but efforts are moving ahead. 

Officials were scheduled to move ahead on a Major Encroachments agreement and on closing the transaction on Monday, but delayed any action on the deal until an upcoming meeting of the commission, either later this month or in early December. But City Commissioners said developers need to improve communication. “I thought this was a real sweetheart deal in the beginning,” said City Commissioner Susan Chapman, noting the city has done substantial road improvements and will allow use of a city-owned parking garage next to the hotel. But other officials were complimentary of the work being done and remain optimistic the project will be stellar when it is complete. “I don’t think they (developers) are getting a sweetheart deal,” said City Commissioner Suzanne Atwell. “Maybe the city is.” 

Every business should take extra steps to safeguard its customers’ information and protect business technologies from hackers. It is always a good practice to change passwords at least 3 times a year. Make your password hard to crack. Good passwords should include both uppercase and lower case characters, special characters (like #$%! etc.) and be at least 21 characters long. You can find a few good online password generators (https://lastpass.com/generatepassword.php). If you use a password generator, make sure the passwords are generated on your local device such as your laptop or desktop instead of your handheld, and to be extra safe, change a few of the characters in the auto generated password before you use the new password. A strong password would look like this: “g8T06^P4h&Jw@5X*8Aa79We." Using a phrase with numbers replacing some key text characters is also a great idea.

A strong password is important to protect personal information and business assets online. Using a different password for each unique web site login that is long and has multiple types of characters (numbers, letter and symbols) will help protect you and your business from someone hacking into your accounts.   

Make sure you have a current and up-to -date back-up of all customer information, which is located on your server or customer database. Purge any stored credit card information. The best practice is to simply not store credit card or payment information at all. Consider placing your sensitive information on a secondary computer with a second layer of protection. If possible, segment the information or databases into groups by states (example - Florida, New York, etc.) and keep the information encrypted and current. 

Store your back-ups off-site by signing up to a cloud service or tape backup and then manually remove the tapes from the property to a safe off-site location. Have an emergency plan in place for different scenarios. Identify one person as your point of contact and have a communication plan. Set up a private Twitter account accessible only to your executive level staff, who can quickly send out alerts should any information breach occur. Make sure all SSL certificates are up-to-date, and update or change all encryption keys.

Example of an emergency plan. 

Pre plan - work up some scenarios and have communications ready to send that deal with the following five items: 1. Denial of service attack; 2. Attacking of sensitive information 3. Security breach of website, outdated software, badly programmed application; 4. Security breach of credit card information; 5. Web hosting server ceases to work or crashes

Emergency execution plan

Designate a lead contact person. Create an alert system internal to your business. A "private” Twitter channel is a good inexpensive solution. Have a team of legal advisers, security experts and programmers available to act if you must respond to an alert. Run through some of the above scenarios. Know your legal responsibilities in the instance of a breach. Find and remove the malware or define the security breach and remedy the problem. In case of a breach, immediately change all passwords and if possible perform a server level lockdown of all ports.

I know most of you think you will never deal with any of these problems. Unfortunately, the facts are that your data will or has already been targeted. If your website is online and accessible through the Internet, you're already exposed. The last thing you need to worry about when you're on vacation are any of these issues creeping up. Taking some simple steps now and doing some preventative maintenance goes a long way towards giving you a measure of security. And the timing is perfect. 

Have your website creative completed and time implemented on your website. Technology exists today to allow you to create a season-specific theme for your website that will automatically launch on a given date and expire and revert back to the non-holiday look automatically. Upating your website for the holidays sends a message to your customers that proactive and aware of their needs. Designate a specific section of the website for holiday specials, rebates and coupons. Install analytics and tracking software to make sure you're getting the most out of visitors to your website.

Pedro Pérez is a founding partner of Nuevo Advertising Group, and an adjunct professor of Global Brand Strategies at Ringling College of Art and Design. For over 17 years Pedro has offered clients his knowledge and expertise. Pedro has always demonstrated a keen analytical sense combined with a good dose of common sense in crafting digital and online marketing strategies as part of an integrated marketing plan.  

Retired banker Thomas Stuhley has joined Caldwell Trust Company’s board of directors, according to  R. G. “Kelly” Caldwell Jr., CEO and president. After earning a bachelor's degree in Economics and Speech from the University of Arizona, the Southern California native began a career in banking. Stuhley served as a trust officer at a Midwestern bank at the beginning of his career and was also a banking officer and director of several northern Illinois banks. In 1988, he purchased a small community bank in southern Wisconsin and subsequently grew it into the successful chain of Mid America Banks before retiring as CEO/chairman/owner in 2007. 

Caldwell Trust Company

Steven L. DuToit and Mark Midyett announced their partnership to create the Midyett-DuToit Property Team at Keller Williams Realty Select in Lakewood Ranch.  The merger creates a team dedicated to offering the maximum level of customer service and communication to individuals buying and selling real estate in Sarasota or Manatee counties, company officials said. 

Keller Williams Realty Select