Business Archive

Santa Rosa County’s newest insurance agency office, Brightway, opened Monday, Oct. 16.

The new insurance company office is led by a man with a life similar to that of Forrest Gump. Before getting into the insurance industry a decade ago, Pensacola’s Eric Sewell, 51, grew up in and around the shrimping industry of Bayou La Batre, Alabama.

Santa Rosa County officials joined executives from Hershey’s Ice Cream on Oct. 24 to break ground on the company’s planned 30,000-square-foot distribution center located at the new Northwest Florida Industrial Park @ I-10, just south of the interstate.

In the spirit of transparency, Holley Navarre Water System Inc. (HNWS), recently published that the Articles of Incorporation Amendment vote may not use proxies. After legal interpretation and due diligence, HNWS would like to announce proxies MAY BE used to vote for the Articles of Incorporation Amendment.

In November, a famous group of horses will visit the Pensacola area.
Budweiser recently announced that the Budweiser Clydesdales will be in town for multiple events including the Blue Angels Air Show at NAS Pensacola Nov. 3 and 4.

Each summer brings crowds of visitors to Navarre Beach and Santa Rosa County. These visitors contribute to the local economy and to the Tourist Development Tax, which is Santa Rosa County’s bed tax.

Eglin Federal Credit Union recently held a ribbon-cutting ceremony for its Gulf Breeze ATM/Video Teller Drive-thru located at 3959 Gulf Breeze Parkway.
The first phase of this site is now open. A full-service branch will open at this location later in 2024 or early 2025.

Noncompliance with established policies and procedures, contradictory policies and procedures, lack of disclosure of conflicts of interests and insufficient background checks for important positions within the company were just some of the findings of the forensic audit of Holley Navarre Water System.  

The Florida Supreme Court on Thursday said state regulators did not adequately justify approval of a settlement that increased base electric rates for Florida Power & Light and ordered a new explanation. Justices, in a 4-2 opinion, sent a battle about the settlement back to the Florida Public Service Commission, saying regulators in a 2021 decision did not meet a legal requirement of showing why the agreement “is in the public interest and results in rates that are fair, just and reasonable.”

Coffee lovers are in luck. According to county records, Navarre will soon be getting a new coffee shop along Navarre Parkway.
Scooter’s Coffee, a restaurant chain of coffee shops, is looking to open a new location at the 8700 block of Navarre Parkway near Slippery Mermaid. The company was founded in Nebraska in 1998.

A Santa Rosa County gun store owner is alleging the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) harassed him and his store manager after criticizing the agency in the past. Chris Smith, the owner of Gulf Coast Gun in Milton, says the ATF attempted to audit him for a license he had yet to use after he spoke out against ATF policies at a congressional field hearing held June 26 at the Okaloosa County Administrative Complex in Shalimar.