INDUSTRY: Florida Flowers

Florida got ready for the biggest winter tourist rush in its history. Miami hotels are booked solid to mid-March, and incoming airline traffic is running 20% ahead of the 1956 peak. Altogether, 8,500,000 to 9,000,000 outstaters are planning to flock to Florida in the next twelve months—about 1,000,000 more than in the past year. To house the horde, the sun-blessed state is basking in her greatest building boom. In Miami alone, $75 million is going into new tourist facilities, including four new luxury hotels, nine Cadillac-class motels and 59 apartment buildings.

Kitchen TV. Builders this week put the fimsaing graces on the 301-room DuPont-Tarlton in downtown Miami. To the north, at Bal Harbour, the 162-room Beau Rivage was about ready to open. Nearing December openings along the seven-mile Miami Beach strip were two 14-story towers—the 538-room Deauville and the 620-room Carillon. In the Deauville, guests can tune in the kitchen from their rooms by means of a closed-circuit TV, see what the cook is whipping up for dinner. The Carillon has a different electronic attraction: four bells in its tower.

Throughout the state, the tourist surge is building much more . than ‘ hotels. Straight new highways are springing up to accommodate the tourists, 80% of whom come in by auto. The southern one-third of the abuilding 390-mile, $242 million Miami-Orlando-Jacksonville Parkway is already open for business.

Yet, spectacular as it is, the tourist boom is just a part—the smaller part—of the statewide business buildup. This year Florida manufacturing will outshine Florida tourism as the No. 1 dollar earner by an estimated $1.5 billion to $1.3 billion. Between the two, Florida’s investment in new construction will top $1 billion, the sixth straight yearly record. In the past two years, more than 1,000 manufacturers have built new plants or made major expansions, boosting Florida’s manufacturing payroll by 8% v. the national gain of 2%.

Fringe Benefits. Manufacturing is growing fastest in the Gold Coast tourist spas, where any company can attract employee talent with the free fringe benefits of sun and surf. Dade County (Miami) leads the state with 96 new plants in the first half of 1957; Broward County (Fort Lauderdale) is second with 51 plants. Pinellas County (St. Petersburg) is being transformed from a senior citizens’ haven to a humming technical center. Since 1956, General Electric’s X-Ray division has established a $7,000,000 plant, and Minneapolis-Honeywell Regulator Co. has opened a $4,500,000 missile-parts plant. Sperry Rand and Electronic Communications, Inc. (aeronautical instruments) have also recently finished multimillion-dollar plants.

Other areas are expanding almost as rapidly. Toward the center of the state, outside Orlando, the Martin Co. is putting up a $27 million missile plant (Lacrosses and Bullpups) that will employ 7,000. Near West Palm Beach, Pratt & Whitney is building a $42 million research and testing plant, has already started to work in part of it to develop new jet engines. And in the missile-laden Cape Canaveral area (see NATIONAL AFFAIRS), the roster of industrial newcomers reads like the Who’s Who of American Industry: Boeing, Chrysler, Convair, Douglas, Fairchild, North American, Northrup, Westinghouse.

From all over the country, industries are swarming to Florida’s balmy business climate, with the added incentive of no state income tax. Furthermore, Florida’s resortlike climate is sure bait for hard-to-get engineers and topflight executives. When starting its West Palm Beach plant, Pratt & Whitney advertised for engineers in Northern newspapers, offered them a choice of jobs in the Midwest, New England, Florida, California. Florida led the other areas combined by 25 to one.

Americans will spend almost twice as much on domestic traveling as on new cars this year. The Department of Commerce reported last week that tourism has become a $15 billion to $20 billion yearly business in the U.S., and just 24 tourists a day bring as much to a town as a plant with a $100,000-a-year payroll.