WEST PALM BEACH, FL-Despite announced plans to trim expenses by cutting 1,800 jobs system-wide, Wachovia Bank won't be retrenching in South Florida. This market is so lucrative, the Winston-Salem, NC-based bank wants to open more branches here.

PLANTATION, FL-A $15-million moderate-income residential development being planned by a Miami developer for a local site would include 150 apartments and 38 single-family homes within a gated community.

SUNRISE, FL-American Classic Voyages is scouting for a new 250,000-sf headquarters site in this Fort Lauderdale suburb, Atlanta and Los Angeles. The new office building would house up to 750 workers.

MIAMI-Two retail properties for which Terranova Corporation found new buyers some years back have been refinanced through the firm's capital markets unit.

MIAMI-The red-hot commercial property market in South Florida has encouraged more national real estate services firms to open local offices or expand existing operations. This has upped the ante for deal-making skills and begun a game of musical chairs as brokers move from company to company.

FORT LAUDERDALE, FL-No, it's not Greater Miami where 3,000 hotel rooms have been built in the last two years and another 5,000 rooms are due to come on line by 2002. But Greater Fort Lauderdale is experiencing a hotel-building boom of its own, particularly near the airport and the local cruise-ship terminal at Port Everglades.

MIAMI-Local developer Terremark Worldwide and high-tech operator Telcordia Technologies of Morristown, NJ are pooling their resources to design, build and manage the planned six-story, 730,000-sf Technology Center of the Americas, a Downtown complex that will house a 125,000-sf Network Access Point of the Americas operation. Completion is scheduled for 2001.

WEST PALM BEACH, FL-A group led by Node Com Inc. of Morristown, NJ has acquired the six-story, 75,000-sf Meridian Building at 326 Fern St. for $5.65 million ($74.67 psf) from local investor Albert Beriro who bought it two years ago for $2.3 million ($30.67 psf). The 145% jump in value of the Downtown property is attributed to the building's fiber-optic lines and telecommunications switches in demand by tech companies.