TPL Opens Southwest Florida Office

10/1/02, Tallahassee–The Trust for Public Land announces the opening of the Southwest Florida Office at 1595 Bay Street SE, Suite 3, St. Petersburg. John Garrison is the Project Director and will oversee the new office, assisted by Becky Bremser, Project Associate. This office will serve the entire southwest Florida coast, from Citrus to Collier County. The office is in downtown St. Petersburg in the Salt River historic district. The telephone number is 727 895-5090 and the fax number is 727 895-5190. TPL is also on the web at www.tpl.org. Before coming to TPL, Garrison spent 13 years in the U.S. Virgin Islands, first as the owner/operator of a charter yacht business in the Virgin Islands and then as president of Friends of the Virgin Islands, a private land trust on St. John.

Before that, he worked for 15 years as a marketing executive in the computer software industry in Silicon Valley, including a stint as vice president of marketing for Automatic Data Processing, Inc. A former naval officer, Garrison has an MBA from American University.

Becky Bremser has a BA in Conservation Biology, with a minor in Environmental Studies, from the University of Wisconsin at Madison and has worked in the conservation field since 1998. This is TPL’s fourth office in Florida. The Tallahassee Office, which houses both the Southeast Regional Office and the Florida Office, opened in 1975. The South Florida Office, located in Miami, opened in 1990, and the Northeast Florida Office, in Jacksonville, opened in 2000.