National City Bank is moving into Orlando in a big way. The 163-year old bank, headquartered in Cleveland, is aggressively expanding its locations across the state, with a concentrated effort in Orlando, and specifically in East Orlando’s Innovation Way Corridor. They’ll triple the number of branches here within the next eighteen months.

“We see great growth opportunities in Central Florida, and like what we hear from UCF’s Center of Economic Studies,” explains Wade Alliance, National City’s Senior Vice President and Managing Director for Corporate Banking in Central Florida. “Even though the area is experiencing some real estate issues, the growth rate here is still much stronger than what we’re experiencing in National City’s legacy markets of the Midwest.” Alliance cites a positive expectation for growth of the commercial/industrial sector in the next five years as key to the bank’s actions.

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Imagine the logistics of a convention in Puerto Rico for a group of 5,000-people with multiple transportation stops on each of four days. Oh yeah, throw in a couple of celebrities and their special needs just for fun. Now imagine being the one in charge of planning the whole thing. Is your heart racing at just the thought of it?

East Orlando event planner Diana Font didn’t even break a sweat. “In the evening it became a massive assemblage of over 50 motorcoaches being moved at once, but we never caused a traffic jam.” 

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When asked to describe one thing that sets his business apart from competitors, Tim Beaman of Sterling Pest Control, Inc.
proudly points out, “We do what we say we’re going to do – we go above and beyond what the service industry standard is.” According to Beaman, that’s always been the philosophy of his pest and termite control company, which has been serving Central Florida for more than 17 years.

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In the last decade, CD and DVD duplicating technology has become popular for various reasons and in multiple industries. Personal uses include creating music CDs, making copies of DVDs, and transferring old videos and photos onto DVDs. Businesses often use digital media as part of their marketing, training, and product strategy. Regardless of usage, anyone utilizing this technology needs to have access to a business with the knowledge and know-how to do it right.

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Lisa Booth can’t remember a time when she didn’t love cooking. “My mom is a great cook and I have very vivid memories of sitting on my stepstool at the counter in her kitchen, watching and learning to cook,” she recalls.

“When I was a child, we ate dinner together every night and I think that has helped me to work so hard to make family time a priority. Every Sunday, my whole family eats dinner together.”

That foundation of dinnertime as family time sets the tone for her new career as the owner of the Super Suppers, a Take n’ Bake kitchen in Lake Nona. “A friend introduced me to Super Suppers and I was hooked!”

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