Girls Inc. Stephania Feltz with Business Ethics Alliance Co-Founder Terry Miller before the group’s inaugural luncheon on Monday.

They may just pull us out of this rut of an economy. They all represent fledgling economic engines that are being nurtured by creative entrepreneurs in the post-real estate-driven economy.

The Sarasota Tiger Bay Club offered a peek into Sarasota’s economic future last week and a light at the end of the recession. A panel of five speakers representing film production, competitive and recreational rowing, aquaculture, tech/creative start-ups and the Institute for the Ages offered an optimistic view of the potential (or realized) economic impact of Sarasota’s new economic drivers.

At one end of the spectrum was one of the most misunderstood—the Institute for the Ages (www.scopexcel.org), which would encourage entrepreneurial solutions to everyday problems relating to aging. SCOPE executive director Tim Dutton, who is overseeing planning for the institute, offered an example of a product that could be conceived and manufactured here—a Wii controller better suited to the gaming system’s fastest-growing fan base—the aging, many of whom have arthritis in their hands. The institute is a long-term, collaborative project.

At the other end is the Sarasota HuB (www.hubsarasota.com), founded with a running start by Rich Swier Jr. and Matt Orr, which has become an incubator for Internet-based companies, new social events to appeal to creatives, and “a launch pad for cool ideas,” according to Swier. The HuB’s most recent project was the campaign to attract Google’s ultra-high speed Internet to Sarasota.

Sarasota is on track to create the only class-A, international rowing course (www.rowingsarasota.com) in North America by 2011, and to bid on hosting a national regatta by 2012. “We would have a monopoly on rowing,” said Paul Blackketter of Benderson Development. Last year’s youth regattas had a $1.7 million impact in hotel rooms rented, as well as purchases of groceries, supplies, and dining.

Mote Marine is expanding its aquaculture program, which now produces and sells sturgeon meat and eggs, to include marine fish to release into the environment. Aquaculture is a $100 million industry in Florida with tremendous growth potential, as up to 80 percent of fish Americans consume now is imported, said Dr. Kevan Main of Mote.

Film production in Florida received a big boost this past legislative session when the legislature passed a $242 million tax credit incentive program for film, “the likes of which Sarasota hasn’t seen,” said Jeanne Corcoran, director of Sarasota County Film & Entertainment Office. “It’s a tool that helps us to get bigger projects and have them stay longer.” The film office continues to work on a soundstage for the area. “We want to see Sarasota County become the West Coast of Florida epicenter for television and film production,” Corcoran said.

The speakers reiterated that Sarasota’s creative capital—its entrepreneurs, artists, designers, researchers, its arts institutions and colleges and other out-of-the-box thinkers—are the driving force that will help the county weather this downturn and create the more balanced economy. Fortunately, we are blessed with an abundance of such individuals and institutions, and they’re finally being offered the leading roles they deserve.