Day: November 13, 2008

Edgewater gets new Conference Center

Beginning this week, the Edgewater Beach and Golf Resort conference center is undergoing a $250,000 plus facelift.  This is the first of several phases of renovations to the resort property which will take place between now and the beginning of 2009.

As one of the largest conference center properties in Bay County, the Edgewater conference center has more than 32,000 sq. ft. of flexible meeting space. The conference center was constructed in 2000 to accommodate the growing demand for meeting facilities in Panama City Beach and currently hosts more than 2,000 meetings, conferences, weddings and sporting events each year.

“Since 2000, our conference center has been utilized by locals and national clients,” said Tom Sparks, general manager of The Resort Collection of Panama City Beach. “We are excited about the completion by the end of November.”

Other renovations on the horizon for Edgewater Beach and Golf Resort include a kid’s pool and water feature, sports complex to include a basketball, batting cages, kids playground, resurfacing of the current tennis courts, exterior improvements to the resort towers and new landscaping.

“The additional features we are adding to the resort property will add more value to our guests,” said Paul Wohlford, vice president of sales and marketing. “The renovations will allow us to maintain a competitive edge in the vacation and meetings market.”

I’ll be here all week, in and out, shoot timelapse of the whole thing – sweet!

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Community Banks Lending Despite Credit Crunch

As regional and national banks eagerly rush to accept government bailout loans in the face of frozen credit markets, local community banks are quickly becoming the go-to source for mortgage loans in Florida. Despite tighter underwriting guidelines from Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae and a secondary mortgage market with little appetite for Florida real estate, local community banks are still stepping in with loans designed to accommodate the local real estate market. These local banks have studied the specific needs of our local market and are offering loans tailored to the unique needs of Bay and surrounding counties.

One example is Panama City Beach. On the beach, the vast majority of properties listed for sale are condominiums which sprouted up all along the coast in the boom years of the first half of the decade. The flurry of condo development was due, in part, to the easy flow of credit and lax underwriting and property standards so prevalent at the time. Now, as investors paint all of Florida with the same broad brush, Beach condos are left with the same stigma as South Florida and labeled as “condo-tels” – a name coined by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to describe a hybrid between a condo and a hotel with resort-like facilities and daily rental desks. Though Fannie and Freddie didn’t seem to draw a distinction between condos and condo-tels in the past, they certainly do now. Financing for these properties has all but evaporated leaving many prospective second-home buyers with no options. Enter the community bank.

With deep roots all along the Florida Panhandle and in their respective markets, community banks understand our unique market and have a vested interest in its success. One such local community bank is Vision Bank. With a sincere belief in the viability of the Beach condo market, Vision Bank is lending its own money by developing portfolio products designed to provide affordable options for the local real estate market and the out of state second-home buyers so crucial to its resurgence. Vision Bank, while adhering to sound lending practices and diligent underwriting, is offering bank-held, fully amortizing mortgage products with no pre-payment penalties and no hidden fees designed specifically for the condo-tel market. Vision knows this market and knows that more condo sales will help stabilize prices and draw even more potential buyers back to the Beach and all of Bay County. That is the essence of a community bank – investing back in the community.

For this and more, visit my blog at www.activerain.com/blogs/hpalmer

Hunter Palmer

PCBDaily.com to Get New Server Home

With increased traffic, come slower load times with the same old equipment.  Over the last couple of months, as we’ve seen tremendous growth, the page load times have gone down the toilet, if you’ve even been able to get the page to load at all.

PCBDaily has been on the same old server for more than 2 years, and it is time for an upgrade.  The new server should allow much faster load times and a much more reliable connection, and we shouldn’t see those pesky “page cannot be displayed” errors any more.

We’ll be switching everything over in the next few days, but we are carefully planning everything out so as to make the transition as seamless as possible.

Thanks for your patience.