Things To Do In SW Florida

John Rivers’ Winter Park restaurant The Coop is set to close Sunday.

The Southern restaurant, 610 W. Morse Blvd., revealed the closure on Facebook Monday, citing higher rents, a growing problem for Orlando restaurants and retailers.

“A testament to the vibrancy of the Winter Park market, current market rates are unfortunately well beyond what our little business can justify in renewing the lease,” the Facebook post signed by Rivers said.

The average asking rental rate price in Orlando shopping centers for the first three months of this year was up 4.4% over six months ago, according to a report from JLL. Typically, rents will go up just 2% to 3% over an entire year,  said Justin Greider, a senior vice president and Florida retail lead at real estate firm JLL.

Cupcake shop Sweet by Holly closed its Waterford Lakes store last month, also citing an anticipated rent spike.

Rising Orlando shopping center rents squeeze small businesses

Rivers, founder of the Winter Park-based 4 Rivers Smokehouse chain, opened The Coop in 2014.  read more

Florida voters are evenly split in their assessment of the epic culture war between Gov. Ron DeSantis and Disney.

A Florida Atlantic University/Mainstreet Research/PolCom Lab poll released Monday shows 47% of Florida voters strongly support DeSantis and 43% strongly or somewhat support Disney.

With the poll’s margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points, that’s effectively a tie.

The feelings on both sides of the issue are especially intense, with 35% of those polled saying they strongly support DeSantis and 33% saying they strongly support Disney.

There aren’t many Florida voters with undefined or murky views on the conflict: 12% somewhat supported DeSantis and 10% somewhat supported Disney.

The same poll of Florida Republicans showed former President Donald Trump enjoys a 20-point lead over DeSantis, 50% to 30%, in the contest for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.

Partisan split

The FAU/Mainstreet/PolCom Lab poll found an enormous split depending on respondents’ political affiliation. read more

SORRENTO — Keith Seifert Jr. is calm surrounded by bees.

While he wears protective gear over his head, the 34-year-old beekeeper leaves his arms exposed in a T-shirt as he opens up a hive under the sand pines on his Sorrento property in Lake County.

It’s when he starts talking about the onslaught of trouble his Sweet Bee Company has faced over the last year that Seifert gets tense. It’s been one sting after another since Hurricane Ian flooded hundreds of his bee hives last year and damaged the trees, flowers and plants the bees need to make honey and keep him in business.

“When I’m out working my bees, that’s like my zen time. It’s just me and the bees and that’s what I love,” Seifert said. “This is my passion. It’s relaxing for me, but when I have to sit in here in the office and think about how am I actually going to continue this company and this business with this model, that’s where it gets really stressful.”

Across the country, honey beekeepers lost 48.2% of their colonies over the 12 months ending this past April, up from last year’s loss of 39% and approaching the record 50.8% loss from 2020-2021, a survey by Auburn University and University of Maryland researchers found. read more