Florida Trend | Florida's Business Authority

Servius Group offers private travel security by former Navy SEALs and Special Forces veterans

INNOVATION

Bags?

Passports?

Special Forces?

Vero Beach and the Treasure Coast are known for service businesses catering to ultra high-net-worth families. Nick Goracy has a unique idea to appeal to that clientele: Private travel security provided by 35 former U.S. Navy SEALs and Army Special Forces veterans.

Goracy earned a master’s in global security studies from Johns Hopkins. While in the Washington area, he worked for a private security firm. The idea for his company came to him at the Monaco Yacht Show while he was working with a multi-generational family. He founded his Servius Group in 2020 to offer something beyond bespoke private security. He saw the rise of experience-based travel globally and reasoned that veterans of the nation’s elite units, with their top-tier training in skills such as sky diving, scuba diving and mountaineering — or as medics — would be perfect for offering security and training to ultra high-net worth families.

Goracy, 27, matches expertise with family interests. In May, he partnered with luxury travel adviser Embark Beyond.

The price, he says, depends on duration, location and skills needed. “We really do try to customize everything.”

EDUCATION

  • Broward College will spend $5.3 million of its $190.5-million budget to improve student recruitment and retention. It also dedicated more support to employees, plans to hire 15 new faculty and has budgeted fixed-term assignments for 100 part-time faculty so that they have more stability and are available to tutor and mentor students. In May, the college was recognized as one of the nation’s top community colleges as a “finalist with distinction” in the 2021 Aspen Prize for Community College Excellence.

REAL ESTATE

  • In a civil complaint, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission accused Larry B. Brodman of Property Income Investors in Coral Springs of diverting $1.12 million from investors for his personal use. Brodman raised $9.1 million from 2016 to 2020. He settled with the SEC by promising no future violations and letting a receiver take over nine properties.
  • Dr. Ernst Langner and his wife, Nataly, sold their seasonal residence on Ocean Boulevard in Palm Beach for $109 million, the second-highest residential sale in Palm Beach County history. The record was set in February at $122.65 million.

ENVIRONMENT

  • Secret Woods Nature Center in Dania Beach will house a two-story viewing platform where people can see manatees in the South Fork of the New River. Manatees use the area to reach the warm waters coming from a nearby FPL plant.

RETAIL

  • Tractor Supply Co. plans a store in Indiantown.

TRANSPORTATION

  • Indian River County dropped its failed litigation attempt to stop expansion of private passenger rail Brightline into the county. The rail company pledged to make improvements to rail crossings in the county.
  • West Palm Beach’s downtown trolley service resumed in July, after being closed for 14 months.

PHILANTHROPY

  • Mackenzie Scott included Broward College and Florida International among her donations, giving $40 million to FIU and $30 million to Broward College. Broward will use the money to expand and fund in perpetuity its Broward UP program, an effort to expand education opportunity and economic mobility in the county’s poorest ZIP codes. The University of Central Florida received $40 million.

TOURISM

  • Celebrity Cruises’ Celebrity Edge sailed from Port Everglades in June, the first ship to sail from the United States with passengers following the 15-month domestic industry shutdown from the pandemic. Port Everglades, Broward’s seaport, lost half its revenue from the industry shutdown. In a typical year, cruises provide nearly $60 million in revenue.
  • Royal Caribbean welcomed its new Odyssey of the Seas, its first Quantum Ultra Class cruise ship, to homeport Port Everglades. The Odyssey began cruises this summer.
  • Fort Lauderdale-based peer-to-peer boat rental firm Boatsetter launched Boatsetter Lux Charters to enter the luxury boat charter market.

HEALTH CARE

  • Holy Cross Hospital in Fort Lauderdale gave $500 to employees as a bonus for their pandemic work, its second employee appreciation award.
  • The Moran Foundation donated $2 million to establish the Holy Cross Family Health Center at Holy Cross Health in Fort Lauderdale to help underserved youth, individuals and families with social and behavioral health services and health care.
  • The Moran Foundation also is donating $200,000 over two years to House of Hope, a non-profit provider of substance abuse and mental health programming in Broward County.

DISTRIBUTION

  • West Palm Beach-based food distributor Cheney Bros. will put its newest distribution center in a 427,000-sq.-ft., $55-million facility in Legacy Park at Tradition in Port St. Lucie, employing 380 at an average salary of $55,000.
  • Fairfield, N.J., based Woodmont Properties joint-ventured with Coconut Creek-based Butters Construction and Development to acquire a six-acre site in Pompano Beach for construction of warehouse space.

 

Read more in Florida Trend's September issue.
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