Adam -
I'm ~very~ familiar with them--that is where I got my PPL and IR. I still remain in contact with my instructor, who has since moved to their "corporate" side. Many of the instructors there are top notch.
As a customer, I was drawn to their well-maintained fleet (primarily new'ish 172R; 172RG; Duchess), their winter operations (deicing, etc.), and quality of instruction. I found that the instructors there are very professional overall, most likely because they realize they are in a 1 1/2 year'ish job interview--if you don't do well and move up through the instructor ranks, you won't be transferred to the corporate side to fly their King Air's and Hawkers. Many of the instructors I associated with, including my instructor, have since moved to the King Air's and Hawkers and were typed by Tradewind's corporate side.
Locally, MI will provide you will a LOT more opportunity for actual IMC than FL. My instructor came from AZ with 3 hours of actual when he first started instructing. Luckily, he had a lot more by the time I was with him. To give you some perspective, I ended up with about 22 hours of actual during my instrument training (total instrument training time was around 40 hours).
KPTK is a large Class D with parallel E-W runways and a N-S runway. It is the second busiest airport in MI--second only to Detroit Metro. There is a lot of corporate traffic at PTK, including an Airbus 319 (DaimlerChyrsler), a number of 727s, and your usual assortment of Gulfstreams, Hawkers, Citations, etc.
Let me know if you need any additional info.
Here are a bunch of photos of mine that show Tradewinds' planes a few years ago:
http://www.airliners.net/search/photo.search?airlinesearch=Tradewinds%20Aviation&distinct_entry=true
