30 projects in pipeline:
Developer starts work on 255-room
Embassy Suites hotel in Panama City Beach
Florida Construction News staff writer
The St. Joe Company says it has
started building a new 255-room
Embassy Suites hotel in Panama
City Beach, one of 30 projects the
developer has in the pipeline for
2019. The developer is working with
Key International, Inc., on the proj-
ect in the Pier Park area, adjacent to
the area’s lifestyle center at Front
Beach Road.
Key International is a Miami-
based real estate investment and
development company. The land is
currently owned by St. Joe.
Once complete, St. Joe will man-
age the day-to-day operations of
the hotel. Plans call for the hotel to
feature 255 guest suites, a pool,
meeting space, a fitness center, an
on-site restaurant and an upper-
level, gulf-view social, catering and
event space.
“This development comes at a
10 – OCTOBER 2019 — Florida Construction News
time when demand for hotel space
in the Pier Park area is high. Visita-
tion to Panama City Beach has been
rising for the past several years with
Northwest Florida Beaches Interna-
tional Airport surpassing the one
million passenger mark for the first
time last year,” said Jorge Gonzalez,
president and CEO of St. Joe.
“With this location’s proximity to
the Pier Park lifestyle shopping cen-
ter, which offers approximately
900,000 square feet of shopping,
dining and entertainment, the Rus-
sell-Fields Pier and the Gulf of Mex-
ico we are thrilled to work with Key
International and to see construc-
tion begin,” Gonzalez said in a
statement. “We are excited to be working
with St. Joe on the development of
this new Embassy Suites in Panama
City Beach,” said Key International
co-president Diego Ardid. “We be-
lieve this property will complement
the area’s thriving tourism sector
and family-friendly nature in an un-
paralleled location.”.
This hotel joins the TownePlace
Suites adjoining Frank Brown Park
in Panama City Beach as hotel proj-
ects that St. Joe currently has under
construction. St. Joe also intends to
construct, own and operate a new
branded hotel immediately adjacent
to Northwest Florida Beaches Inter-
national Airport.
The parties anticipate the hotel
to be completed in 2021.
St. Joe says in the statement
that the new hotel is one of at least
30 new residential, commercial or
hospitality projects that it has or in-
tends to initiate in 2019.
For more information on the
company’s current project pipeline,
see the company’s Business Strat-
egy section of the 2018 Annual Re-
port on Form 10-K, Quarterly
Reports on Form 10-Q and other fil-
ings with the Securities Exchange
Commission (SEC).
New construction report reveals the
“Data Ownership Battle” between
project owners and contractors
Florida Construction News special feature
A new study by Dodge Data & An-
alytics in collaboration with con-
struction technology provider
e-Builder, a Trimble Company, re-
veals the unintended consequences
of increased adoption of project
management software by project
owners and the impact it has when
contractors use their own, discon-
nected software workflows.
The study, entitled “Connecting
Owners and Contractors: How Tech-
nology Drives Connected Construc-
tion,” highlights the challenges that
arise when owners and contractors
manage construction projects using
disparate software applications with-
out automated data exchange. For
standard processes such as RFIs,
submittals and progress payments,
this situation can drive increased
cost, higher risks and schedule de-
lays. Conflict over data ownership
and transparency often results in du-
plicate data entry and negative im-
pacts to productivity.
Key findings from the study re-
veal the growing challenge:
• 42% of contractors report using
both the owner’s project manage-
ment application, as well as a
specialized project management
application designed for contrac-
tors. This results in increased risk
to the contractor due to dupli-
cated effort.
• Only 45% of respondents are sat-
isfied with the current state of
data connectedness. 65% of
owners and 51% of contractors
see high or very high value in a
single data platform that all par-
ties can use for collaboration and
sharing. • 73% of contractors report
medium or high impact on the
productivity of workers due to
double-entry of construction data.
“The need for contractors and
owners to use their own project
management applications has al-
ways been there,” said Steve Jones,
senior director of industry insights
from Dodge Data & Analytics.
“The problem is, they (the two ap-
plications) have not worked together
well. The data in this research quan-
tifies the impact of the data silos be-
tween contractor and owner.” The
problem will only increase as more
project owners adopt their own proj-
ect management system.
Trimble’s strategy of connecting
construction data, as part of its Con-
structible Process, seeks to provide
efficiencies in building construction.
“The instant the first construction
management software was in-
vented, the clash over data owner-
ship and transparency on
construction projects was born,”
said Chris Bell, vice-president of
Marketing at e-Builder. “Unlike some
vendors that attempt to serve multi-
ple stakeholders with the same ap-
plication, the latest technology trend
is purpose-built software with con-
nected data. We are proud to be the
first to offer this for construction
project management.”
A complementary version of the
Connecting Owners &
Contractors SmartMarket Brief is avail-
able at www.connectedaec.com.
Florida Construction News — OCTOBER 2019 – 11