{"id":383655,"date":"2026-08-28T15:55:32","date_gmt":"2026-08-28T15:55:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/383655\/"},"modified":"2026-08-28T15:55:32","modified_gmt":"2026-08-28T15:55:32","slug":"fridays-afternoon-update","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/383655\/","title":{"rendered":"Friday\u2019s Afternoon Update"},"content":{"rendered":"

What you need to know about Florida today<\/p>\n

Climate change reshuffles where people are moving in Florida\n<\/p>\n

Some of Florida\u2019s biggest growth spots are now on former citrus groves and cattle pastures in the interior parts of the state far from the state\u2019s famous beachside cities. That\u2019s increasingly due to climate migrants escaping coastline risks like hurricanes and flooding, as well as the high cost of homeownership from skyrocketing insurance rates following a series of recent storms. More from the South Florida Sun Sentinel<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Orange County faces tough call on $1.1B in hotel tax projects amid reserve concerns<\/p>\n

Orange County officials took a key procedural step toward deciding which of $1.1 billion in recommended hotel tax-funded projects will move forward, turning their attention now to the question that has loomed over the process from the start: How much can the county responsibly afford to spend? More from the Orlando Business Journal<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Grand Theft Miami-Dade: County pitches \u2018Vice City\u2019 marketing deal for video game<\/p>\n

Grand Theft Auto\u2019s fictional Miami backdrop may make the jump from video game to real life under a marketing deal floated by Miami-Dade County. The administration of Mayor Daniella Levine Cava has taken several meetings with executives from the company behind \u201cGTA\u201d about briefly transforming county buildings and facilities into homages to the drug-dealing video game\u2019s hometown of Vice City.
\nMore from the Miami\u00a0 Herald<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Rays stadium deal clears Tampa by one vote after years of failed plans<\/p>\n

The Rays arrived at Tampa City Hall Thursday morning needing four votes, the latest test in a stadium search that had already survived one failed plan after another. A proposed waterfront ballpark in St. Petersburg went nowhere, the Ybor City deal collapsed in 2018 and Major League Baseball rejected a split season with Montreal in 2022. More from Tampa Bay Business & Wealth<\/a> and the Tampa Bay Times<\/a>.<\/p>\n

JTA interim CEO: \u2018Everything is on the table\u2019 regarding U2C, gas tax plans<\/p>\n

A Jacksonville Transportation Authority executive said autonomous public transit development in Downtown Jacksonville and surrounding neighborhoods will be reexamined amid a second straight year of revenue shortfalls and expense increases for the JTA. Cleveland Ferguson, who was named interim CEO of JTA at the Aug. 27 board meeting, said \u201ceverything is on the table\u201d as the authority considers how to spend $247 million that was planned for the build-out of the Ultimate Urban Circulator. More from the Jacksonville Daily Record<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"BusinessBusiness Beat – Week of August 28th<\/a><\/p>\n

Get top news-to-know with Florida Trend’s headline-focused video newsbrief, hosted by associate editor Brian Hartz.<\/p>\n

In Memoriam
Bill Edwards, leading St. Petersburg business figure, dies at 81<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Prominent St. Petersburg businessman and philanthropist Bill Edwards, whose reach spanned real estate, sports and the arts throughout the Tampa Bay region, died Thursday morning. He was 81.\u00a0Years ago, the Tampa Bay Times published a graphic that mapped out his holdings across a Monopoly board dubbed \u201cBillopoly.\u201d In response, Edwards at the time quipped, \u201cThey didn\u2019t get it all. \u2026 There\u2019s not enough squares on the board.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00bb Read more from the Tampa Bay Times<\/a> and the St. Pete Catalyst<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"What you need to know about Florida today Climate change reshuffles where people are moving in Florida Some…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":383656,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[29754,29755,29756,202,204,203,199,201,200],"class_list":["post-383655","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-st-petersburg","tag-even-more-keywords","tag-keywords","tag-more-keywords","tag-st-pete","tag-st-pete-headlines","tag-st-pete-news","tag-st-petersburg","tag-st-petersburg-headlines","tag-st-petersburg-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383655","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=383655"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383655\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/383656"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=383655"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=383655"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=383655"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}