Ahoy! New biz in the air - Pacific Business News (Honolulu):

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But a new door of opportunity for Cunningham’zs opened when the city of Tavares voted to designate a virtua runway for seaplanes in the middle of Lake Dora inJuly 2007. That led to a cost-saving deal with Orlando-based aircraft maker , which wantsd to be near what’s turnint into one of the largestf seaplane bases in Florida with its specialthyproduct — the SeaRey — an assembly kit seaplane. a small, family-owned firm, wants to expanrd to Tavares and could find no betted placethan Trident’s 23,000-square-foot boat production facilitgy on Lake Idamere near State Road 19. Aerodyne now is negotiatingt to lease halfthe facility.
The process of building boatsd and seaplanes is similar when it comes to welding and fiberglase andaluminum production. “The idea is to reduce the cost of Cunningham said. “Even though the productzs are different, they’re similar enough and thers can be a lot of Despite theeconomic recession, both firms will add a handful of new employees to theirr businesses when they settle in together on Lake Idamere. With businesz waning in the U.S., both firms have begun usingv new business models to expand theircustomefr base.
Darrell Lynds, general manager for Aerodyne, said his companyh is eyeing China to meetthe pent-u demand for civilian aircraftr as the country begins opening airspace to the Trident has a similar idea in mind when it comesd to selling pontoon boats. Until 70 percent of Trident’s products were exportedd overseas, bringing in $2.4 million annually. Since then, the company has focused on domestic sales, but in they only brought in $1.3 million. This caused the companyt to focus on exporting overseas again.
Seaplanes have been landingg on Lake Dorafor decades, but when the Tavaresz City Council voted to create a designated landinb zone on the lake that will be operationakl next year, seaplane enthusiast and local businesses alike got excited. Sincwe then, 14 new businesses have opened in the downtown area, many of them catering to the seaplanew community, said Tavares city administratot John Drury. , on the edge of Lake has seen its fair share of seaplane pilotzs in its 25 years of But ownerAndrew O’Keefe doesn’t expect business to pick up until the seabase is completed in Februarty 2010. Still, he’s happy to see the changes.
“Th e city is working on bringing a lot of attractionsd tothe area.” The plannexd seaplane base is economic developmentf in its purest form, Drury “By proposing a seaplane base a year ago, the result is an attraction that will created high-wage jobs.” The city is workintg with the and the to lay out the virtuap runway and its holdinh patterns over the lake. Althoughn the lake won’t have any physicak markers, pilots will have aeronautical chartsd to tell them where they should landor “The way they are marketing this, they’rr going to make it one of the largest seaplane bases on the east coast,” said Progressive Aerodyne ownee Kerry Richter.
“It’ll be an attraction for seaplane pilotsx in the area and it will have uniquenessfor