Abacoa Archives - OnGardens

‘A launch pad for science:’ Wertheim’s $100 million gift to ignite UF Scripps

‘Not one dollar … will go up north,’ UF board chair Mori Hosseini says; aim is to raise $1 billion over 10 years.

When Dr. Herbert Wertheim was a young engineer working for NASA in the 1960s, he saw miracles take flight.

Now he’s a billionaire who just gave $100 million to the University of Florida. And he sees Jupiter as the next Cape Canaveral.

“We have what I call ‘sciencenauts,’” he told dignitaries and scientists gathered Oct. 12 at the UF Scripps campus in Abacoa. “They’re going to help us solve health-care problems, not only when you’re sick, but my number one emphasis has been how do we keep people well.

“So let’s think about Jupiter as a launch pad like we think of Cape Canaveral. And this is gonna be a launch pad for science.”

Life Time’s opening day pitch: ‘Disney of a healthy way of life’

Life Time Athletic Country Club leads one local fitness studio to fold but others don’t fear the industry giant.

The founder, chairman and CEO of Life Time Group Holdings sat in the first-floor bar at the Aug. 11 opening of his 160th club and explained how Life Time stands so far above the crowded fitness marketplace that it doesn’t have to worry about competition.

“Our goal is to create an incredibly exclusive experience but offer it inclusively to all kinds of people,” Bahram Akradi said at the Life Time Athletic Country Club in Downtown Palm Beach Gardens. “To do that you have to create a place that has a magnetism. … It has to be a completely elegant, Four Seasons-like experience every single day.”

He urges his employees to think of it like Disney.

“There were amusement parks before Disney showed up,” he said. Disney “came to Orlando but they built magic. They didn’t build an amusement park. They created extraordinary what was ordinary in other places. And Life Time is Disney of a healthy way of life.”

North county growth: UF now holds key to 70 acres at Alton

Palm Beach County donated the land to Scripps Florida in 2006 to cement deal to bring Scripps to Abacoa.

Second of two parts

It started as a deal-sweetener to ensure that Scripps Florida would be built at Abacoa.

Now the vacant 70 acres at Alton in Palm Beach Gardens could become a key piece of a deal worth hundreds of millions to convert Scripps Florida into a branch of the University of Florida.