Shining light on the good, bad and ugly of bureaucracy in Tallahassee

By Red Tape Florida 

The Tallahassee Community Redevelopment Agency quietly pulled a proposed $750,000 Southside construction grant from its advisory board agenda Monday night after Red Tape Florida exposed that the project was intended to subsidize a marijuana dispensary — a fact not clearly disclosed in the public-facing materials. 

According to reporting by WTXL, the CRA item tied to a redevelopment project at 115 West Harrison Street was removed from consideration following public comment questioning both the use and the transparency of the grant. 

That concern echoes a prior Red Tape Florida investigation, which found that while the CRA agenda summary described the project in generic terms — emphasizing “retail” and redevelopment — the applicant’s own documents revealed a different story. Buried deep in the attachments, including an appraisal section beginning on page 52, the intended use of the property was identified as a medical marijuana dispensary, with further confirmation later in the application. 

In other words, the key word never appeared in the summary committee members and the public would reasonably rely on — only in dense supporting materials few would ever read. 

Residents speaking at the meeting made clear that the objection was not to redevelopment writ large, but to the idea that tax-increment dollars intended for Southside revitalization could be used to subsidize a cannabis retail operation, particularly without clear disclosure up front. 

It is unclear if the item will return at a later date, but the episode underscores a recurring concern with the City of Tallahassee Community Redevelopment Agency: critical project details disclosed only after public scrutiny, not before. 

For now, the $750,000 grant remains off the table — and the dispensary question remains unanswered. 

By Red Tape Florida 

This weekend, Tallahassee is hosting something truly historic: the World Athletics Cross Country Championships at Apalachee Regional Park, bringing the world’s best distance runners — and thousands of spectators — to our community. This isn’t just another local race or collegiate meet. This is a global sporting event that lifts Tallahassee onto the international stage and embodies exactly what sports tourism should look like.  

The 46th edition of the championships marks the first time the event has returned to the United States in more than 30 years. Apalachee Regional Park will be filled with elite runners representing more than 50 countries, competing across five championship races that will be broadcast around the world.  

This week, world-class athletes and Olympians from nations like Kenya, Uganda, Ethiopia, Spain and Great Britain arrived in Tallahassee, and spectators have descended on our community to watch them compete. Organizers are expecting more than 450 of the world’s top runners, with economic impact estimates in the millions as visitors fill hotel rooms, dine in local restaurants, and experience our city’s unique hospitality.  

What’s happening here is the culmination of years of strategic thinking and community investment. Tallahassee and Leon County didn’t stumble into this opportunity. Like any successful sports tourism destination, they built it. Apalachee Regional Park has hosted high-profile events for years — from NCAA championships to national meets — and that track record was essential to winning the bid for these world championships.  

At the center of that long game has been county leadership, especially Leon County Administrator Vince Long. Back when the county first set its sights on hosting major cross countryevents, few could have predicted that those efforts would culminate in a world championship. But it was exactly that kind of long-term vision — of recognizing sports as an economic engine and leveraging it — that put Tallahassee in a position to win a global event of this caliber.  

Under Long’s leadership, local officials, tourism partners, and community stakeholders worked together to elevate Apalachee Regional Park from a respected regional venue to a world-class site worthy of hosting the top names in athletics. That collaboration is the essence of effective sports tourism strategy: build quality facilities, cultivate experience hosting big events, and then leverage that to bring bigger opportunities home. 

This weekend, as champions chase medals and cameras broadcast our city to millions, Tallahassee isn’t just hosting a race. It’s showing what sports tourism looks like when you back a plan with persistence, partnership and leadership. 

Thanks to Vince Long and the team he’s helped steer, the world has a front-row seat — and Tallahassee is finally in the spotlight it’s long deserved. 

By Skip Foster, Red Tape Florida 

If you only read the agenda item, this looks easy. 

The Tallahassee Community Redevelopment Agency’s Greater Frenchtown/Southside Citizen’s Advisory Committee is being asked at its Jan. 12 meeting to approve a $750,000 grant for a modest redevelopment project at 115 West Harrison Street. 

The proposal from a developer called WeWould REIT, LLC, sounds familiar, almost comforting: a newly constructed 6,143-square-foot building, two tenants, retail and food service, site work, jobs, improved aesthetics. 

There’s even a friendly rendering. Trees. Pedestrians. A clean, modern building. A big sign on the front that reads, simply, “FOOD.” 

Nothing to see here.  

Except there is. 

And you won’t find it in the agenda summary, the staff analysis, the fiscal impact, or the recommended action. To find it, you have to do what the agenda quietly hopes you won’t: keep reading. 

What the agenda item tells you 

The CRA agenda item is careful and polished. It explains the New Construction Assistance Program, notes that the $750,000 request falls just under the program’s 25 percent cap, and emphasizes consistency with redevelopment goals. It highlights minority business participation, job creation, and long-term economic benefits. 

What it never does — not once — is tell commissioners or the public what the building is actually intended to be used for. 

There is no mention of any controversial or sensitive use. No hint of anything beyond ordinary neighborhood retail. If you stopped here, you’d have no reason to ask questions. 

The rendering helps reinforce that impression. 

About that “FOOD” sign 

Renderings aren’t neutral. They’re persuasion tools, designed to help decision-makers visualize what they’re being asked to approve. 

This one leans hard into normalcy. The most prominent visual cue on the building isn’t a logo or a tenant name, but a generic, reassuring word: food. 

That choice matters. If the project were truly just a speculative shell with no foreseeable end use, the rendering wouldn’t need to guide the viewer’s imagination so carefully. And if the CRA were comfortable openly subsidizing the actual intended use, there’d be no reason to dress it up as something else. 

Still, none of this proves anything. Not yet. 

For that, you have to turn a few more pages. Dozens of them, actually. 

Turn to page 52 

On page 52 of the application attachments — deep inside the technical appraisal materials — the first crack appears. 

In a discussion of buyer intent and marketing history, the appraisal states that the buyers “intend to redevelop the property into a medical marijuana facility.” 

That’s it. One sentence. One time. No emphasis. No explanation. Just a factual statement of purpose. 

If you didn’t know to look for it, you’d miss it. 

Turn to page 114 

Keep going. 

On page 114, the appraisal documents do it again. This time, even more plainly. The borrower plans to convert the property into a cannabis dispensary. 

Again, one mention. One sentence. Buried in valuation paperwork few people read closely and no one summarizes for the board. 

So, let’s pause here to say thank you — sincerely — to the appraiser. Appraisers don’t editorialize. They document reality. And in this case, reality made it into the record even when the City chose not to surface it. 

What’s missing — and why that matters 

The problem here isn’t legality. Medical marijuana is legal in Florida. Zoning questions are separate and ongoing. 

The problem is disclosure. 

The CRA agenda item does not merely fail to highlight the marijuana use — it actively constructs an alternative story. Retail. Food. Jobs. A pleasant building. A clean rendering. Meanwhile, the only honest descriptions of the project’s purpose live on page 52 and page 114 of a dense technical appendix. 

That’s not transparency. That’s a head fake. 

Especially when the developer isn’t shy elsewhere. 

What the developer says when City Hall isn’t involved 

Outside the CRA paperwork, WeWould is perfectly clear about what kind of company it is. Its website openly markets cannabis real estate, including cultivation centers and dispensary facilities. 

The Tallahassee Frenchtown site is already listed in the company’s online portfolio — before the CRA has even voted — as an available asset. 

So, the developer is transparent with investors and the market. The appraiser is transparent in the valuation documents. Only the City’s agenda item pretends this is something else. 

Then there’s the money question 

CRA staff will likely argue that this is just about the building, not the tenant. But that argument rings hollow when you look at who’s asking. 

WeWould REIT describes itself as a private-equity cannabis real estate platform with a stated ambition of assembling a $250 million portfolio and exiting to the capital markets. It touts quarterly dividends and investor returns. 

According to the NCAP application, the company has already invested roughly $1.6 million in the project and has secured a $1.1 million construction loan. 

And yet, it’s asking the CRA to contribute $750,000 — nearly the maximum allowed — from taxpayer-backed redevelopment funds. 

That raises a fair question the agenda item never asks: why is a well-capitalized, nationally oriented cannabis real estate firm seeking public subsidy to build a dispensary in one of Tallahassee’s most historically disadvantaged neighborhoods? 

The reveal the CRA avoided 

If the CRA believes subsidizing a marijuana dispensary is a wise redevelopment strategy for the Southside/Frenchtown district, it should say so plainly and defend that choice openly. 

Instead, the truth was left to page 52 and page 114, hidden behind a “FOOD” sign and a carefully sanitized agenda summary. 

That may get an item through a meeting. 

It shouldn’t get a free pass from the public. 

To our readers

Red Tape Florida conducted a direct, extended interview with the CEO of a fast-growing technology company who requested anonymity to protect current business relationships and ongoing operations. We spoke with the CEO firsthand and at length about his company’s efforts to locate a major new facility in Tallahassee-Leon County and why those efforts ultimately failed.

We agreed to anonymity only after confirming the individual’s role, the company’s legitimacy, and the factual timeline described below, including the company’s eventual decision to locate a significant operation in another Florida market. This account reflects the CEO’s own words and experiences and is published because it offers a rare, inside view of how Tallahassee loses projects it publicly claims to want.

A Red Tape Florida exclusive, by Skip Foster

For nearly a year, the CEO of a fast-growing technology company tried to bring a major new facility to Tallahassee-Leon County.

He believed the city had the right ingredients: a major research university, access to technical talent, and a long-stated ambition to attract innovation-driven employers. He wasn’t shopping the project broadly or playing jurisdictions against one another. He wanted Tallahassee to work.

It didn’t.

“Literally nothing happened,” the CEO told Red Tape Florida. “I spent close to a year trying to move it forward. Eventually, I just gave up.”

The CEO leads a company operating at the cutting edge of advanced technology, developing equipment that requires highly specialized research, manufacturing capacity, and a skilled technical workforce. In 2023, the company began searching for a location for a significant new facility that would combine research, engineering, and manufacturing under one roof.

Tallahassee seemed, at least initially, like a logical fit.

But what unfolded was not a deal that fell apart at the margins or collapsed over money. It was, instead, a slow grind of polite engagement, shifting responsibility, and an absence of clear leadership. It fits the pattern of a lack of economic development performance Red Tape Florida wrote about earlier this year.

“Everyone was friendly. Everyone was welcoming,” the CEO said. “There were follow-up emails, welcome materials, lots of conversations.”

What never materialized was progress.

“The problem wasn’t attitude,” he said. “It was leadership.”

According to the CEO, the project was repeatedly passed between agencies, organizations, and stakeholders — including the Office of Economic Vitality — with no single entity empowered to lead or make decisions.

“There was no quarterback,” he said. “We were handed off from one group to another. Everyone was involved, but no one was actually in charge.”

As months passed, forward movement stalled while approvals were sought, internal checks were required, and additional voices entered the process.

“It felt like an endless maze,” he said. “Every time we thought we were getting somewhere, there was another step, another delay, another person who needed to weigh in.”

The CEO stressed that he encountered capable and well-intentioned individuals along the way. But without a clear chain of command, those individual efforts  were never translated into action.

“Good people don’t matter if the system doesn’t allow anyone to lead,” he said.

After roughly a year of unproductive engagement, the CEO began conversations with officials in another Florida market.

The contrast was immediate.

“In the first meeting, things started moving,” he said. “They understood what we were trying to do, they were clear about what was possible, and they acted.”

Within months, a framework was in place. Soon after, a formal agreement followed. Plans moved forward for a facility that would include manufacturing space, research labs, offices, and room for expansion.

The CEO described the project as exactly the type of development Tallahassee routinely says it wants: advanced manufacturing, high-paying technical jobs, and long-term growth potential.

What continues to frustrate him is that Tallahassee was never competing in a crowded field.

“This wasn’t a bidding war,” he said. “We weren’t shopping the project all over the country. Tallahassee had the inside track.”

Only when it became clear that nothing was going to happen did he seriously look elsewhere.

“We needed to move,” he said. “Time matters when you’re building a company.”

He emphasized that his company was not asking for extraordinary incentives or special treatment.

“We weren’t asking for anything unusual,” he said. “We were asking for less than other successful projects in Florida have received.”

Instead, the process felt designed to delay rather than enable.

“It was like a video game,” he said. “You clear one level and immediately face another obstacle.”

Eventually, delay became decisive.

“I didn’t want to walk away,” he said. “But at some point, you have to make a decision.”

Asked what Tallahassee-Leon County could do differently to win similar projects in the future, his answer was straightforward.

“They need clear leadership,” he said. “One entity that owns the relationship with business, quarterbacks the process, and makes decisions.”

He paused before adding:

“It’s great to feel welcomed. But welcoming isn’t the same thing as leading.”

By Skip Foster, Red Tape Florida 

A recent Wall Street Journal analysis offers a stark, real-world lesson in housing policy — one that Tallahassee and Leon County should be studying closely. 

The Journal, reporting by Rebecca Picciotto, compared two cities separated by a river but united by the same regional economy: St. Paul and Minneapolis. Same labor market. Same population pressures. Radically different housing outcomes. 

The difference wasn’t developers, Wall Street, or demographic change. It was policy. 

In 2022, St. Paul enacted one of the nation’s strictest rent-control ordinances, capping annual increases at 3 percent — even on vacant units, with no inflation adjustment. Minneapolis chose a different path. It avoided rent control and focused almost entirely on allowing more housing to be built, rewriting zoning and land-use rules to permit more apartments and density. 

The results were immediate and dramatic. 

According to HUD data cited by the Journal, apartment-building permits in St. Paul fell 79 percent in early 2022 compared with the prior year. Investment activity froze. Developers halted projects. Lenders pulled back. Property values declined by at least 6 percent. St. Paul has since been forced to roll back parts of the ordinance, exempting newer construction and reconsidering the policy altogether. 

Minneapolis experienced the opposite. Apartment permits surged nearly fourfold. Downtown neighborhoods rebounded faster. New supply came online. And despite ongoing affordability challenges, rent growth in Minneapolis lagged both St. Paul and the national average during the same period. 

This wasn’t a theory. It was a side-by-side governance experiment — and it validated a warning economists have been making for decades – rent controls and growth-stifling measures hurt far more than they help. 

As Swedish economist Assar Lindbeck put it more than 50 years ago, “In many cases rent control appears to be the most efficient technique presently known to destroy a city — except for bombing.” 

Why this matters in Tallahassee and Leon County 

This matters because recent decisions in Tallahassee and Leon County point unmistakably toward the St. Paul model. 

Just weeks ago, the Leon County Commission adopted changes to the comprehensive plan that further restricts where and how housing can be built. The vote was framed as smart growth and community protection. In practice, it adds friction, delay, and uncertainty — the very conditions that cause builders and lenders to pause or walk away. 

Those early warning signs are already showing up locally. In a recent Tallahassee Real Estate Weekly market update, longtime Tallahassee broker and analyst Joe Manausa noted this key finding: “Homes in the lowest 25 percent climbed from roughly $147,000 in 2020 to about $210,000 in 2025. That is close to a 43 percent increase, and it represents the sharpest appreciation of any segment.” 

Manausa added: “When the most affordable homes rise the fastest, tens of thousands of potential future buyers find themselves pushed farther from ownership” 

At the city level, Tallahassee continues to talk about affordability while piling on layers of process, fees, discretionary review, and political veto points that make housing slower and more expensive to deliver. The language sounds pro-housing. The outcomes are not. 

Good intentions don’t override incentives 

One of the most revealing findings in the Journal’s reporting is how rent control altered landlord behavior. Because rent increases were capped annually and vacancy increases were banned, landlords began raising rents every year — even when they previously wouldn’t have — simply to avoid falling behind. Small owners sold. Maintenance was deferred. Investment left. 

This is the part often missing from local housing debates: capital is mobile. 

When government sends a signal that investment is risky, unpredictable, or politically constrained, capital doesn’t argue. It doesn’t negotiate. It goes elsewhere — often across the river. 

Minneapolis understood that reality. St. Paul learned it the hard way. 

Tallahassee and Leon County are now choosing which example to follow. 

The choice ahead 

The Wall Street Journal didn’t write about Tallahassee. But it could have. 

The lesson from the Twin Cities isn’t that housing is easy, or markets are perfect. It’s that local governments can make housing crises worse — very quickly — by mistaking control for competence. 

There is still time to choose a different path. One focused on supply, speed, and certainty rather than restriction and symbolism. One that acts like Minneapolis instead of St. Paul. 

Because once projects stall and capital leaves, reversing course is far harder. 

And by then, the damage is already done. 

A sad tale of progressive hypocrisy; Chamber silence and a leadership void 

By Skip Foster, Red Tape Florida 

Leon County residents say they want affordable housing. They say they want workforce housing. They say they want to prepare for the 42,000 new residents projected in the decades ahead. 

And then, when given a chance to expand the Urban Services Area in a place planners have identified for years as a logical location for future growth — directly beside Southwood, along major arterials, with a mandatory master-planning process already required — the Leon County Commission caved to a vocal NIMBY minority and once again said no. 

And as is now routine in this community, they did so with no counterproposal, no housing strategy, and no leadership from the institutions, like the Greater Tallahassee Chamber, that claim to care about affordability. That vacuum — from elected officials and from the organizations that supposedly represent economic interests — hangs over every one of these debates. 

On Wednesday, a majority of county commissioners rejected a needed USA expansion.And they did so while acknowledging they have no unified plan for where future housing should go. This is policymaking driven by fear. And it is worsening a housing-supply crisis that Leon County’s own data makes painfully clear.

The county’s analysis of vacant and potentially developable land shows the actual supply is far more limited than advertised — only about 10,646 acres are truly viableafter accounting for environmental and regulatory constraints, and much of that land is scattered or unsuitable for meaningful housing development. Large, contiguous parcels are rare. Yet the commission just eliminated one of the few chances to build a new master-planned community on scale. 

Commissioners Christian Caban, Nick Maddox and Brian Welch understood all of this — and said so plainly. Welch, in particular, gave the most honest and comprehensive explanation we have heard during this entire 30-year Comp Plan rewrite. 

He began with a truth that Tallahassee’s political class works hard to avoid: 

“We have to grow in this community. The biggest threat to our community is our frustration with accepting that we have to grow.” 

He then dismantled the idea that this proposal was “sprawl,” noting that the land in question sits directly beside Southwood: 

“You’re talking about a property directly next to Southwood, where there are 3,000 acres and 2,000 homes. To call that sprawl — and then to say infill in historic neighborhoods is also unacceptable — is a perfect encapsulation of the paralysis we are experiencing.” 

Paralysis is the precise word. In Leon County, every idea becomes unacceptable: 
• Infill is opposed. 
• Edge-of-USA expansion is opposed. 
• Mixed-use redevelopment is opposed. 
• Master-planned communities are opposed. 
• Density is opposed. 
• Sprawl is opposed. 

The impacts are predictable: rent keeps climbing, home prices keep rising, and families continue to struggle. 

The anti-growth coalition is not just wrong — it is causing the affordability crisis 

This is where hypocrisy becomes impossible to ignore. The same people who speak endlessly about affordable housing — who hold summits, commission studies, and lament rising rents — are the very people voting, again and again, to restrict the supply of housing. 

They are not bystanders of the crisis. They are architects of it. 

Leon County does not have an affordability problem because developers are building too much. It has an affordability problem because policymakers and anti-growth activists have spent twenty years making sure they build too little. Every time they kill a project, limit density, or wall off new land from the Urban Services Area, they tighten the noose around the working families they claim to champion. 

This isn’t academic. It’s math. When demand rises and supply doesn’t, prices go up. And when prices go up, people get pushed out — first from homeownership, then from rentals, and eventually into housing insecurity and homelessness. 

The anti-growth faction pretends these outcomes are unrelated to their decisions. 

They aren’t. 

Their obsession with halting development is not only worsening the housing shortage — it is directly feeding the rise in homelessness in this community. 

Welch said it succinctly: 

“We talk about affordable housing in the community. We have to build housing in order to create affordable housing.” 

But the majority did the opposite. Again. 

The leadership vacuum — especially from the Chamber 

The silence at Tuesday’s meeting wasn’t just on the dais. It echoed from the organizations that claim to represent this community’s future. 

Start with Commissioner Carolyn Cummings — a Chamber-backed candidate, the person business leaders were told would bring pragmatism and economic sense to the Board. She voted against housing growth

That alone should prompt some soul-searching from the Chamber. But the deeper problem is institutional: 

The Chamber itself was nowhere to be found. Again. 

Not at the hearing. 
Not in public comments. 
Not in a press release. 
Not even in a social media post. 

If the business community cannot speak up for housing supply — the single largest factor driving workforce shortages and pushing families out of Leon County — then what, exactly, is it for? 

The anti-growth activists show up every time. They flood hearings. They pressure commissioners. They shape the narrative. 

The Chamber shrugs. 

Silence is a position. And on Tuesday night, silence sided with fear, stagnation and scarcity. 

The only three who saw the stakes clearly 

Welch, Caban and Maddox were the only commissioners who treated housing as a real policy issue rather than a political nuisance. 

Welch closed with a reminder that should hang over every land-use debate: 

“Everybody has a right to a home. Everybody has a right to a place to live. And we have a responsibility to facilitate that.” 

Three commissioners tried to do exactly that. 

The others did not. 

The bottom line 

Leon County says it wants affordability, opportunity and competitiveness. 

But a county cannot remain affordable if it refuses to grow. 
It cannot solve homelessness while restricting the supply of homes. 
It cannot attract employers while driving workers out. 
It cannot claim compassion while embracing policies that push families to the brink. 

Until elected leaders — and the institutions that claim to represent the business community — stop treating growth as a threat rather than a necessity, nothing will change except the price of a home. 

And that number is only moving in one direction. 

State Representative Jason Shoaf is weighing in on Gulf County’s controversial $500 “administrative fee” on private building inspectors — and he’s not mincing words. In an exclusive statement to Red Tape Florida, Shoaf said the practice “isn’t good government” and urged every local government in Florida to “start following state law.” 

Shoaf didn’t name Gulf County directly, referring only to “one panhandle county,” but it’s clear who he’s talking about. The practice he condemns — a local government turning a state reform into a new toll booth — is exactly what Red Tape Florida has exposed. 

“When the state passed reforms to make building inspections more efficient,” Shoaf said, “the goal was to help small builders, working families, and tradesmen — not to create a new toll booth. But that’s exactly what is happening.” 

The state’s 2020 private-provider law was designed to keep construction moving by letting contractors use licensed third-party inspectors rather than waiting for government schedules. Gulf County’s $500 surcharge effectively punishes builders for using that option — and, as Shoaf put it, “taxes the very people who are trying to do the job right and by the book.” 

“These inspectors aren’t lobbyists or lawyers,” Shoaf continued. “They’re the men and women inspecting the builders’ work, climbing ladders, and making sure homes are built to code. They hold licenses, meet state standards, and pay their taxes. They don’t need to be taxed again by local bureaucrats inventing new ways to slow them down and tax them even more.” 

Shoaf’s statement marks the first public rebuke from a state official since RTF began reporting on the issue — and it sends a clear warning to other local governments considering similar schemes. It also should get the attention of the Florida Association of Counties, which has been considering Gulf County’s request to pursue a revision of the long-standing state law. 

“I’m calling on all political subdivisions of the state to immediately suspend this practice and start following Florida law,” Shoaf said. “I will be following this story closely to determine if further action is warranted.” 

Translation: The Legislature that opened the fast lane is watching the counties that keep putting up toll booths. 

Read the full statement here.

Why aren’t Tallahassee-Leon leaders demanding better performance from a $5-million-a-year organization that hasn’t landed a new business in 2025? 

Special Report By Skip Foster, Red Tape Florida 

In economic development, the scoreboard is brutally simple: Did companies choose you? Did they build here? Did they hire here? Did new paychecks land in your community? Everything else is costuming. 

By that standard, the Office of Economic Vitality in Tallahassee-Leon County has posted a goose egg for 2025. Zero relocations. Zero transformative expansions. Zero net new job announcements. But you’d never know it from the steady hum of OEV newsletters — filled with conferences, expos, dashboards, “talent initiatives,” awards, rankings, and community events. All perfectly pleasant. None remotely related to landing employers. 

This is exactly the kind of civic misdirection Red Tape Florida was built to expose. When process replaces product, when slogans replace substance, and when leaders congratulate the machinery rather than the outcomes — someone has to say it. 

And, by the way, this red tape is expensive. 

OEV carries a $5 million annual operating budget, part of the $31.6 million Blueprint budget. We are sure that money pays for hard-working folks who want to succeed. But if you track OEV’s public storytelling over the last several years, you recognize the cycle: the breathless tease, the unnamed “secret project,” the giant job number floating just over the horizon, the “exclusive” well-placed local media story hinting at transformation … and then silence. No deal. No construction. No payroll. Just a new round of teasers. 

“Project Whatchamacallit” 

You might be saying: Wait! Didn’t I just read about big things coming? 

Indeed, in October, the breathless news: Project Vertigo “may bring 2,000 jobs to the Tallahassee airport.” A headline so aspirational it practically floated off the page. But the story was unmistakably conditional — “may,” “could,” “under consideration.” No commitments. No dates. No contracts. No site plan. Yet the public was left with the impression that a monumental win was already being loaded onto a cargo plane and taxiing toward Tallahassee. 

We hope THIS is the one that gets OEV off the 2025 schneid.  

But we’ve seen this show before. 

In 2022, the Tallahassee Democrat ran a piece featuring a “hitlist of known, confidential projects in the pipeline.” It featured a list of 13 code-name “Projects.” So far as Red Tape Florida has found, none of them materialized  

And those aren’t the only ones. Tallahassee has a long trail of “Project X” promises that never turned into payroll: 

1. Project Alpha – North American Aerospace Industries 
   • Hype: Airport cargo/teardown project at TLH, framed in Tallahassee Chamber release as a “game changer,” with estimates of roughly 700–1,000 permanent jobs, hundreds of construction jobs and ~$147–$450 million in economic impact. 
   • Reality: By 2024, the Tallahassee Democrat was reporting that the deal with North American Aerospace Industries had “failed to take off,” after years of cheerleading and silence from the city on its status. 

2. Project Bravo – TLH Cargo & Logistics Campus 
   • Hype: In 2022, the City of Tallahassee finalized terms with Burrell Aviation for a major cargo, logistics and aircraft-services campus at TLH — pitched as a multi-facility development that would “transform” the airport, expand the region’s air-cargo capabilities, and position Tallahassee as a southeastern aviation hub. Tallahassee Mayor John Dailey called it “the beginning of the game change.” 
   • Reality: By March 2024, the Tallahassee Democrat reported that the entire deal with Burrell Aviation had fallen apart — no facilities, no campus, no jobs. After nearly two years of boosterish framing, the project evaporated quietly, joining the growing list of Tallahassee airport “game changers” that never made it off the runway. 

3. Project Glove Story – logistics prospect at TLH 
   • Hype: In 2021, OEV submitted an official community response for “Project Glove Story” through the GSLI site — a logistics/warehouse prospect tied to TLH-adjacent parcels, dangling nearly $5 million in estimated incentives and flagging Tallahassee as “open for business” for a sizable operation. 
   • Reality: There’s been no subsequent public announcement that a Glove Story project actually chose Tallahassee, broke ground, or hired anyone. It looks like another one that lived in the pitch deck and died in the real world. 

4. Project E-Boat – electric-boat manufacturing concept 
   • Hype: Another OEV response through GSLI under the code name “Project E-Boat,” pitching Tallahassee as a site for an electric-boat related operation with the capacity to support 500+ employees within three years, again built around TLH-adjacent logistics advantages. 
   • Reality: Same pattern — detailed RFI response, big job potential, then radio silence. No public record of an E-Boat project choosing Tallahassee or announcing jobs here. 

5. Airport FTZ / IPF jobs bonanza 
   • Hype: Chamber/airport communications around the International Processing Facility and associated Foreign Trade Zone status tout an anticipated 1,600+ jobs and $300 million in annual economic impact once everything is up and running and the FTZ is fully utilized. 
   • Reality: The IPF itself is years behind its original opening timeline and the jobs/impact numbers remain projections on paper — not actual payroll in Leon County. It’s not branded as “Project [Noun],” but it fits the same pattern of huge numbers in presentations with no corresponding private-sector job creation. 

It is always “big things are coming.” Somehow, the big things never quite land. 

Meanwhile, the OEV weekly newsletter archive from this year, analyzed one by one by Red Tape Florida, shows an unbroken streak of zero real wins. Not a single new employer choosing Tallahassee. Not one. And yet city and county leadership remains remarkably quiet — as if failing to land a single project in 11 months is simply an unfortunate scheduling issue, not an indictment of the model. 

When a win becomes a loss 

Consider the high-profile “wins” Tallahassee does have on record. JetBlue lasted all of five minutes before departing. And OEV is actually touting Wawa as economic development? Delicious sandwiches, but still a gas station. These are not the kinds of economic developments you build a regional strategy around. 

Yes, Amazon was a big addition … when it was announced four years ago. But insiders say that landowner Devoe Moore was as much or more responsible for the deal as anybody in government. Plus, Amazon basically picked a point on the map where it needed distribution — it wasn’t a matter of “if” but “where.” Meanwhile, OEV’s list of wins is so thin it has to claim things like a pharmacy relocation in Woodville as a victory. 

While these are perfectly respectable community happenings, they are not seven-figure-ED victories. These are everyday business decisions occurring with or without government help. When your scorecard lists items that routinely happen on their own, it’s a sign the system isn’t producing anything above ordinary background business activity. 

Now, to be fair, there is value associated with activities that increase the prospect pool. Securing the MDSM Magnetics Conference for the second year is a major accomplishment, as was the TakeOff Aviation Conference that was held at TLH earlier this month. 

But if they don’t translate to wins, their value is diminished. 

A deeply flawed system 

When you examine the structure, the lack of outcomes starts making painful sense. 

OEV sits inside the Blueprint Intergovernmental Agency. Under the Department of PLACE. Managed by the Intergovernmental Management Committee. With oversight and advisory input from the Economic Vitality Leadership Council, the MWSBE Citizen Advisory Committee and the Competitive Projects Cabinet. Any incentive package above roughly half-a-million dollars must go to the full IA board — all city and county commissioners — in a public meeting, unless it gets stuck earlier in the chain. 

That’s five veto points before a project even touches dirt. It’s a process designed for careful deliberation, not speed — for compliance, not competitiveness. Companies choosing between Tallahassee and Alabama or Georgia can’t wait months for three committees and a workshop on a Tuesday afternoon. 

Red Tape Florida has heard from multiple CEOs considering Tallahassee that there simply wasn’t enough urgency displayed by local officials. In one case, a leader actually preferred the Tallahassee market, but eventually gave up for a lack of engagement from local officials. 

Meanwhile, the rest of the I-10 corridor continues racking up wins like it’s Black Friday. 

• In Bay County, Oxford Technologies committed $7.5 million and 40 new aviation manufacturing jobs. 
• Also in Bay County, Global Impact Products opened a 100,000-square-foot facility bringing 150 advanced manufacturing jobs — actual bodies, actually hired. 
• Bay County again: Project Kilowatt, a Canadian marine manufacturer, locked in $37 million in capital investment and 285 new jobs. 
• Over in Jackson County, PackEx USA is constructing a 400,000-square-foot aluminum packaging plant — $50+ million, 75 jobs. 
• Santa Rosa County landed Mondelez International (Nabisco’s parent company) with a new distribution center anchoring the I-10 industrial park. 
• Okaloosa County secured one of the biggest aviation projects in Florida history: Williams International’s $1-billion turbine-engine manufacturing complex, bringing more than 330 high-wage jobs. 

These aren’t speculative headlines. These aren’t “projects under discussion.” These aren’t “we might, they might, someone might.” These are executed deals. Buildings. Worksites. Construction. Payroll.  

And make no mistake – this isn’t just missed opportunity – it translates to jobs … or, better put, a lack of them.  Compared to similar-sized counties, or even small counties in close proximity to Leon, the county’s job growth since the start of 2019 has been anemic – just 7.5 percent growth in the past 6 years.  

While others are counting new tax revenue from a growing industrial base, Leon County residents are left to chuckle at yet another Hail Mary attempt at improving the Tallahassee Airport, through an airline incentive program with projections so large and so distant you practically need binoculars to see the end date.  

Spoiler alert: Until we get some economic development wins, the airport situation won’t improve. 

Where is the leadership? 

This piece didn’t require particularly difficult digging or an amazing sense of awareness. Everybody knows OEV isn’t working. Why the silence?  

Where are local leaders, who are supposed to ask hard questions when the scoreboard reads zero? Not one commissioner, IA board member or civic stakeholder has stepped forward to publicly demand accountability for a year with no wins. We hear praise for process. We hear confidence in strategy. We do not hear the one question Tallahassee desperately needs its leaders to ask: 

Where are the jobs? 

Pay-for-play(ish) awards like All-America City don’t mean much when the on-the-ground results don’t include economic development and robust job growth. Tallahassee is a community laden with cheerleaders when it needs just leaders. Our local government officials would be well-advised to put down the pom poms for a few minutes and pick up a pen and start working on a new economic development structure. Perhaps the local Chamber could pitch in.  

If Tallahassee wants to compete with the rest of the corridor — or anywhere — the model has to change. Economic development must be measured by outcomes, not panels. Deals need to be approved in weeks, not semesters. The mission must return to its core: recruit employers, expand employers, retain employers, produce jobs, invest capital, and report results transparently. 

If it doesn’t show up on the scoreboard, it doesn’t count. 

This is precisely why Red Tape Florida exists. When systems stop producing results, when leaders stop asking questions, and when the public is expected to simply believe the press releases rather than the outcomes, someone has to point to the scoreboard and tell the truth. 

If we aren’t getting deals, why isn’t anyone in charge demanding them? 

By Skip Foster, Red Tape Florida 

For months, Red Tape Florida has heard the same complaint from people who deal with Tallahassee’s permitting system: the City goes silent on email whenever things get sensitive. 

Developers. Solar installers. Private providers. Commercial property owners. They all tell us the same thing: routine questions sometimes get answered by email, but the moment there’s a dispute, a code interpretation, a major correction, or anything controversial, staff suddenly insist on handling it by phone. No written explanation. No written directive. No written record. 

This is not a customer-service quirk. It’s a transparency problem. 

And it’s time for the City Commission to fix it. 

What applicants are telling us 

RTF has now spoken with multiple applicants who describe virtually identical experiences: 

In the recent and now infamous “shed” case RTF covered, the City repeatedly avoided answering by email even as the applicant was told to withdraw and reapply — and threatened with daily fines. That’s not transparency. That’s control without accountability. 

We are also hearing similar reports from other counties, where inspectors and plan reviewers shift sensitive issues off email specifically so the discussions are not discoverable through public records requests. RTF is looking into those cases now. 

Why this matters 

Permitting decisions affect property rights, construction budgets, financing, timelines, and livelihoods. When the City tells someone to change a building plan, withdraw an application, pay a new fee, redesign a structure, or face enforcement — that is the government exercising power. 

Applicants deserve to know exactly what the City required and why. And the public deserves to be able to see it. 

Phone-only directives make that impossible. They leave applicants guessing, private providers exposed, and citizens in the dark. They also undermine consistency: if instructions are not written down, nothing stops staff from changing the rules from applicant to applicant. 

What the law expects 

Florida’s public-records law is simple: communications made or received in connection with official business — including emails — are public records and must be retained. Nothing in the law says officials can avoid the public record by avoiding email. Tallahassee’s own policies acknowledge this by requiring electronic communications to be archived. 

The law doesn’t force staff to use email. But it absolutely expects that the public’s business be conducted in a way that can be reviewed by the public. Directing a citizen to take costly action, with no written record, does not meet that expectation. 

A fix the City Commission can implement now 

RTF is calling on the Tallahassee City Commission to adopt a simple requirement: 

Any material change in a permit — any directive that affects cost, timing, scope, code interpretation, classification, or potential fines — must be communicated in writing and placed in the permit file. 

Staff can still use the phone for quick questions. But if it’s important enough to trigger work, cost, delay, enforcement, redesign, or legal exposure, it must be documented. 

And the City should make clear that undocumented verbal instructions cannot be enforced against applicants. If it matters, write it down. 

Sunshine shouldn’t disappear when a project gets complicated 

The public has a right to know how decisions are made. Applicants have a right to consistency and clarity. Staff have a duty to operate in the open. 

Tallahassee cannot preach transparency while allowing its most powerful permitting decisions to happen in the shadows. 

RTF will continue investigating these patterns locally and elsewhere. In the meantime, the Commission can act now — by making sure that when the City wields its authority, the record reflects it. 

By Skip Foster, Red Tape Florida

There is a running joke among Florida builders that you can erect a 300-unit apartment complex faster than you can get a permit to fix a shed. It’s funny until it isn’t. 

Ask Gordon Thames. Actually, don’t — he’s busy planning to demolish a perfectly functional maintenance shed because City Hall made it too expensive to keep.

Yes, demolishing. A shed. From 1989. Not because it was dangerous. Not because it violated some modern fire-code breakthrough. But because the City of Tallahassee’s building bureaucracy turned a routine renovation into a three-year maze that would embarrass Kafka.  

But this isn’t just a story of unimaginable red tape. It’s a story of mistrust and misplaced priorities. 

We know that because, at one point, a City of Tallahassee building official told Gordon Thames III that he “does not trust the document review from private providers.” That skepticism — not safety — became the justification for the blizzard of comments and delays that followed. 

More on that later. 

But first, the sorry tale of how a long-time apartment complex shed became a window into the state’s dysfunctional permitting culture. 

A 35-year-old shed walks into City Hall 

Eagles Landing Apartments were built in 1989. Like many properties of that vintage, it had two small maintenance sheds — unremarkable, functional, boring. The kind of structures that exist everywhere without incident. 

In 2022, the owner, Arbor Properties, decided to refresh one. By their own admission, they assumed a permit wasn’t needed for a simple renovation. When they later attempted to get a power meter, the City pounced with a stop-work order — fair enough, rules are rules. 

What followed was not enforcement — it was attrition. 

The owner cleared a whopping 28 plan-review comments on a maintenance-shed renovation — that’s an entire house’s worth. 

Three years later, still chasing comments 

The City bounced the application, voided it, and forced a completely new permit process years later — requiring: 
• New surveys 
• A rain-garden plan 
• Tree-mitigation calculations, even though no trees were removed — just grass behind a parking-lot curb 
• Removal of a dumpster pad on the opposite side of the property 
• A structural engineer to confirm 1989 concrete footers (spoiler: they’d need to X-ray them) 
• A new gas-line relocation meeting 
• A one-hour fire-rated wall 
• And trimming part of a wall because the corner of the shed allegedly sat four inches over a property line, even after the neighbor submitted a letter saying they didn’t care. 

Four inches. Thirty-five-year-old building. With neighbor consent. 

And, to be clear, the “violation” wasn’t a wall or foundation — it was the roof eave extending about four inches past the setback line. 

City Hall: “Never heard of it. Get out a saw.” 

Meanwhile, when the owner met with the public gas team, the building inspectors reportedly crouched on their hands and knees “looking for stuff to nitpick.” 

This is how you treat a developer who builds hundreds of quality housing units here? 

The tree-mitigation mirage 

Then came the greenest absurdity of all. 

In one plan-review round, City staff demanded a full tree-mitigation plan — including a canopy calculation and protection fencing. 

But as Arbor’s engineer pointed out, no trees were cut down. None. The work area was existing green space — just grass behind a curb, not a single stump in sight. 

“No trees were removed as part of this project,” the engineer wrote. “Existing vegetation remains unchanged.” 

Yet the tree-mitigation item stayed open through multiple rounds of review, clogging the workflow for months and forcing the owner to pay consultants to prove a negative. 

For a city that brands itself as a national model of sustainability, Tallahassee somehow managed to turn phantom trees into real paperwork. 

The private-provider slip 

The City’s posture toward private inspections was clear from the start. 

Florida law allows licensed engineers to perform reviews and inspections in place of local government — a process designed to speed construction and reduce bureaucratic load. But inside Tallahassee’s building division, private-provider work is often treated with suspicion instead of relief. 

That culture of mistrust led to duplicated reviews, endless comment cycles, and what Thames calls “a moving finish line.” 

Say it out loud: a City official openly admitted he doesn’t trust licensed professionals doing the same job under state statute. 

There’s a word for that. It’s not “policy.” 

A pattern we’ve seen before 

If you think this sounds like a one-off, look west. Our work in Gulf County documented the same dynamic: projects cleared by state-licensed private inspectors got dragged back into government review, timelines stretched, and costs stacked — not for safety, but for control. 

The details change, the playbook doesn’t: contradictory re-reviews, moving goalposts, and a quiet message to builders — use the lawful private-provider pathway, and expect extra friction. The net result is the same whether you’re on the coast or in the capital: fewer improvements, higher costs, and less trust. 

Bureaucracy vs. honeymoon 

Fast forward to late 2025. The City scheduled a final code-enforcement hearing. Initially, when told that Thames would be on his honeymoon the answer was: tough luck. Eventually it was pushed it to the spring. 

That moment of reason, though, came with a catch: if the owner wasn’t in compliance by a certain date, daily fines would begin — even though the delays were almost entirely caused by the building department’s own review backlog. 

The absurdity of being threatened with fines for failing to meet a timeline the City itself created says everything about how the system functions. 

The cheaper option: destruction 

After three years of bureaucratic ping-pong, the owner realized something terrifying: 

It was cheaper and faster to demolish a functioning structure than to satisfy the City’s demands. Initially, Thames was told he needed a NEW permit – a demolition permit. And, for a while, as he waited on that permit, he was facing fines for not resolving the underlying problem. 

To the City’s limited credit, both Building and Code Enforcement later agreed to let Arbor demolish the shed without a demo permit — a quiet sign, perhaps, that someone inside finally recognized the overreach. 

Still, think about that logic. A 35-year-old building, structurally sound and code-compliant by any reasonable measure, headed for the landfill because compliance was harder than removal. 

Climate plan? Sustainability? Affordability? 
Meet the permitting division. 

Why it matters 

This isn’t about one shed. It’s about what it says: 
• Bureaucracy is prioritized over problem-solving. 
• The City will destroy value before it will bend. 
• Private inspection options trigger institutional defensiveness. 
• Housing providers watch this and think twice about investing here. 

Tallahassee’s growth strategy cannot be “annoy them until they leave.” 

One question for City Hall 

Is this the business climate we meant to build — or just the one we accidentally built because no one is watching the building department? 

How can a city government preside over a process that literally values destruction more than improvement? 

What kind of culture allows that to happen — and who’s proud of it? 

For the sake of fairness, the City has shown small signs of course-correction — but the larger pattern remains: systems designed to serve are too often built to stall. 

We don’t expect quick answers from those in charge at City Hall. Just the usual smirk, the shrug, and the mumble as they turn their backs on the private sector: 

“Shed happens.”