Central Florida Real Estate

Wine flowed recently as the well-heeled toasted the money that had already poured in from Central Florida gilded wallets after only a week of fundraising.

Powered by real estate developer Jim Pugh's $7.5 million pledge, the glitterati raked in enough capital to build a quartet of modern Boys & Girls Clubs facilities in several of the region's less shiny neighborhoods.

But that's not what the money was for. The more than $20.5 million in pledges came from art patrons hoping to raise $100 million to help grease the construction of a new downtown Orlando performing-arts center.

Hooray. As the dad of an aspiring Broadway star, I salute the arts. Yet, somehow our priorities seem askew when we move faster to accommodate West Side Story than to change the script for kids in disadvantaged lives on the West Side.

Orlando -- Joe Lee, the retired chairman and chief executive of Orlando-based Darden Restaurants Inc., won the 2006 Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year award Saturday in the real-estate, hospitality and construction category.

Lee, who began working in restaurants at age 15, was on the team that opened the first Red Lobster in 1968 in Central Florida and became its manager. He led Darden, Red Lobster's owner and the nation's largest casual-dining company, for more than a decade before retiring last year.

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Already a force in Central Florida development, Crescent Resources LLC intends to expand its operations here following an infusion of capital from a Wall Street investment firm.

"We plan to substantially expand our operations in Florida, and we now have adequate capital to support our growth," said Whit Duncan, senior vice president for Florida.

Duncan didn't specify any new projects, but Charlotte, N.C.-based Crescent has land for millions of square feet of commercial development in both Orlando and Tampa.

Duke Energy Corp., the giant electric utility that owns Crescent Resources, recently announced that it is now a joint-venture partner with Morgan Stanley Real Estate Fund.

Duke Energy and the Wall Street financial-services company are now equal owners of Crescent Resources, Duke reported.

Ernest Charles Pusey, 111 years old and nattily attired in a dress shirt and light blue cardigan, smiled slightly when Gov. Jeb Bush walked inside his mobile home in Bradenton, Fla., Friday and gave him a medal for helping win World War I.

Pusey - his friends call him "Ernie" - wasn't feeling too talkative but seemed to enjoy the hubbub surrounding the awarding of his World War I Victory Medal and a visit from the governor on the day before Veterans Day.

"It looks pretty good, doesn't it?" Bush said, placing the glass-encased medal on the table next to Pusey's recliner.

Pusey is indeed special. He's one of just 15 living World War I veterans - out of nearly 5 million who served - and the only one in Florida. He was in the U.S. Navy from 1917 to 1919 aboard the battleship USS Wyoming, which spent much of the war patrolling the sea lanes around the British Isles.