ORLANDO-About 100,000 sf are vacant in metro Orlando after independent owners saw customer counts falling in recent weeks. The 692-unit Austin-based restaurant company is interviewing new franchisers for the locations. Schlotzky's posted a third-quarter profit of $659,000 or nine cents per diluted share.

ORLANDO-Despite impassioned pleas from environmentalists, Gov. Jeb Bush and his six-member Cabinet voted 5-2 Tuesday to give Orlando landowners Willoughby T. Cox and Karick and Stephen Price another five years to develop the 1,433-acre planned unit development in an environmentally sensitive site in rural Lake County.

ORLANDO-A week after hesitating to memo Gov. Jeb Bush on the controversial, 1,433-acre, estimated $1.2 billion mixed-use venture in rural south Lake County, the governor's Cabinet affairs department is now recommending the Orlando landowners be given five more years to break ground. Anti-development activists are furious. Bush is scheduled to make his own ruling today.

ORLANDO-After four years of trying to find a moneyman for his planned hotel-retail-convention center undertaking six miles from the competing Orange County Convention Center, former car dealer-turned developer Rob Miller missed his Oct. 29 deadline to come up with the cash. Osceola County commissioners killed the project.

CLEARWATER, FL-Colliers Arnold Commercial Real Estate Services is studying plans for a 17-story, 92-unit condominium community, high-end retail and an 86-room boutique hotel on a site now occupied by the firm's headquarters building at Drew Street and Osceola Avenue. Clearwater is 80 miles west of Downtown Orlando.

ORLANDO-Commercial real estate in all categories is still seen as one of the best long-term investments, but, for the short term, lenders will be closely checking all deals and borrowers before releasing funds, brokers and analysts tell GlobeSt.com.

ORLANDO-Egerton van den Berg, a former Orange County commissioner, one-time airport authority member and one of the area's foremost lawyers, says the public should have been told in advance of the expected amenities that were not in the $750 million budget for the fifth-phase, 972,000-sf expansion.

ORLANDO-Deal volume is down for the first nine months of the year as lenders tighten underwriting; sellers stay firm on price; and buyers, most of them private groups now, continue to hunt for bargains.