It’s been a whirlwind few months since our company, Indian River Media Group, purchased this magazine. Since then, we’ve worked feverishly to relaunch Space Coast Living, keeping many of its fine attributes while adding a few of our own.
By way of introduction, I grew up on the Indian River 50 miles south of Melbourne, in Fort Pierce. I spent the first years of my career working as a reporter at The News-Tribune in Fort Pierce and then later as a reporter and editor at the Sarasota Herald-Tribune and St. Petersburg Times, now the Tampa Bay Times.
In 2001, I moved to Alabama to become managing editor of The Tuscaloosa News, a newspaper owned by The New York Times Co. While there, as part of a company initiative, I launched the lifestyle magazine Tuscaloosa. I was amazed at the community feel-good reaction to it. Readers loved that the magazine provided a positive reflection of their community. They were proud to place it on their coffee tables.
The reaction and success got me hooked on magazine publishing, so in 2006 I returned to Fort Pierce to launch my own magazine, Indian River, with childhood friend Allen Osteen, president of East Coast Lumber & Supply Co. At the time, St. Lucie County had no glossy lifestyle magazine and our idea was to create one that would serve not only St. Lucie, but Indian River to the north and Martin County to the south.
Our mission was simple. We would publish magazines that would reflect the beauty of the region and highlight the unique environmental qualities of the Indian River, North America’s most diverse estuary. We also wanted to put a spotlight on the history, personalities and cultural institutions and nonprofits that make the area a great place to live.
Our company later grew to publishing a total of seven magazines serving the region while at the same time creating custom publications for businesses and governmental institutions. I also returned to Tuscaloosa for a time and in 2009 launched a college football magazine covering Nick Saban’s Crimson Tide, Crimson Magazine, which I sold in 2013. The sale allowed me to focus solely on publishing magazines in Florida.
So when the opportunity to buy Space Coast Living arose in March, I jumped at it. The purchase has enabled our company to serve all the counties along the 156 miles of the Indian River, which covers 40 percent of the east coast of Florida. Our mission with Space Coast Living is the same as with the other publications under the umbrella of our company.
In the 15 years I’ve been publishing magazines in Florida, I’ve learned that one of the most popular features is our history stories. Newcomers love learning about their adopted home while old-timers enjoyed filling in the blanks from things they might have forgotten or never learned about.
So you’ll see lots of stories that share the history of Brevard, a topic about which I’m especially interested. My own family arrived in Titusville in 1891 and my great-great grandfather, Stephen Gladwin, had the first ice plant on the Indian River.
Consider this issue, the first under our publishing brand, as a preview of great things to come. A heartfelt thank you to all the advertisers who helped us bring this magazine to you and to our sales director, Lori Reader, and to all the outstanding writers, photographers and editors who came together so quickly to deliver such an engaging publication. We all look forward to earning a place on your coffee table.
Gregory Enns
