Eight months ago, the billionaires Stephen Ross and Ken Griffin spoke to a group of business executives gathered at the Norton Museum of Art in West Palm Beach. The February event was billed as a global finance and policy discussion, but at times speakers talked about South Florida's growing economy.
Attendees heard Ross and Griffin paint the scene. They predicted South Florida would continue to grow as a business and wealth hub. Then they revealed they had contributed $10 million to a statewide effort to promote the region.
At the time, the multimillion-dollar promotion attracted most of the attention. But what was going on behind the scenes was the real story, and now it is unfolding faster than anyone could imagine.
In September, Griffin revealed
a $3 billion gift to Pittsburgh's Carnegie Mellon University, with $2 billion going toward a Miami campus of the private higher education institution. Carnegie Mellon is among the nation's top engineering schools.
Days later, Nashville-based Vanderbilt University disclosed it had raised $400 million needed for a $520 million campus in West Palm Beach, making the reality of a private graduate business school in the heart of downtown that much closer.
These universities join companies, leading health care providers and even venture capital investors entering South Florida.
Their presence is expected to reshape the region and reverberate throughout the state.
The development, in turn, is yet another pivot, along with hemispheric trade and health sciences investment, in Florida's shift away from its longtime reliance on tourism and agriculture and into a national innovation powerhouse.
"It's a game changer," Eduardo Tobon of Toronto-headquartered BMO Financial Group said of the two universities planning campuses in South Florida.
Tobon is a graduate of Carnegie Mellon's business school. He also sent one of his children to Vanderbilt University. Tobon recently moved from Chicago to Tampa, then to West Palm Beach, to lead the bank's South Florida wealth management offices.
Tobon said having both top universities in his backyard "will generate a lot of economic growth for the region and the country." He predicted more universities will follow suit.
Ross told The Palm Beach Post, part of the USA TODAY Network, he welcomed Carnegie Mellon's expansion to Miami.
"Carnegie Mellon is a global leader in engineering and technology programs, and having that caliber of education in South Florida is incredible," Ross said. "The campus in Miami complements the graduate program Vanderbilt is building in West Palm Beach."
Ross added these institutions are expected to build a top education corridor that will attract top companies "and cement South Florida's place as a leading hub for innovation."
Health care, finance and tech companies pour into the state
Educational institutions are just the latest moves raising South Florida's profile as a sophisticated place to work and live.
Health care companies and tech firms already have been expanding their presence in the region.
In February, Cleveland Clinic announced it had secured enough money in private donations to build a $500 million, 200-bed hospital in West Palm Beach. Then in September, Boston Children's Hospital confirmed it wanted to build a West Palm Beach hospital, too.
Mass General Brigham, together with Tampa General Hospital, threw open the doors to a new radiation oncology complex in Palm Beach Gardens, even as NYU Langone Health is set to unveil an eight-story medical tower in downtown West Palm Beach this year.
Miami's health care systems are growing, too, with help from Griffin, who donated $75 million to Baptist Health Systems and $50 million to the University of Miami Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center.
Then there are the financial companies, artificial intelligence firms and even defense contractors setting up offices throughout South Florida. Wells Fargo moved its wealth management headquarters to West Palm Beach, and the AI firm Palantir moved its headquarters to Miami.
The long road to an overnight business success
The blossoming business efforts can be traced to economic development seeds sown over decades.
Starting in the 1980s and especially after the 2009 recession, economic development boosters gave South Florida, also known as the Gold Coast, a rebrand into a serious business enclave. The program, until this decade, had a mixed record of success.
The effort to position South Florida as a trade and services gateway to the Americas encountered almost immediate success. But when the Scripps Research Institute expanded to Palm Beach County in 2003, business backers hoped the county would be transformed into a biotech and pharma business hub. That didn't happen.
Then came the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, and Griffin's decision to bring Citadel traders from Chicago to the Four Seasons Palm Beach hotel.
Citadel Securities is a market-making firm, and the group set up a makeshift trading floor at the hotel, which was temporarily shut down during the pandemic. The idea was to keep the business running, as executives brought their families there and everyone lived in a tropical bubble.
Within five days of setting up the technology, "we could run the entire U.S. equity market, if need be, from the ballroom of the Four Seasons in Palm Beach, Florida," Griffin said at the business gathering in February.
Griffin, who graduated from Boca Raton High School, subsequently moved the headquarters of his Citadel hedge-fund firm and his Citadel Securities firm to Miami from Chicago.
Griffin's decision to operate Citadel from South Florida attracted attention in the financial world. Soon, financial firms from New York and Chicago began opening small offices, then regional offices and, in some cases, headquarters offices in Palm Beach County, specifically in new office towers being built in West Palm Beach.
The Business Development Board of Palm Beach County, a private-public business recruitment arm, pounced on the "Wall Street South" trend, promoting the county on New York City billboards and even trademarking the moniker.
But Palm Beach County also is home to other growing industries outside finance.
D-Wave, a quantum super computing firm, moved to Boca Raton from California, leading tech backers to tout the emerging "Quantum Coast."
In northern Palm Beach County, the presence of the Herbert Wertheim UF Scripps Institute, the FAU Stiles-Nicholson Brain Institute and the Max Planck Florida Institute for Neuroscience are creating a movement todub this part of the county the "Brain Coast."
More recently, tech firms throughout South Florida have sought to brand the region as a new "Silicon Valley" destination.
But with the coming presence of Carnegie Mellon University and Vanderbilt University, business backers say another comparison might be North Carolina's Research Triangle, or even Boston's innovation hub.
Both areas are home to several top universities close to one another, helping fuel new companies in the region and throughout the states. North Carolina has Duke and the University of North Carolina while Boston boasts of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard.
"The universities in the Research Triangle feed off each other," said Bill Perry, managing partner of the West Palm Beach-based law firm Gunster, which is growing rapidly statewide to keep up with the state's business growth. "They create an ecosystem that encourages innovation and investment in new companies."
Vanderbilt's splashy move attracts attention
Vanderbilt's expansion to West Palm Beach, more than any other move, has caught the attention of businesses and investors. The planned new campus has been fueled in large part by Ross, a Palm Beach resident who leads the Related Ross real estate firm and also owns the NFL's Miami Dolphins football team.
Ross gave Vanderbilt $50 million for the West Palm Beach campus, set to be built on 8.3 acres donated by the city, Palm Beach County and the Palm Beach billionaire investor Jeff Greene.
For years, Ross has been intent on transforming West Palm Beach into what he calls "a model city." He also has talked about turning Palm Beach County into the next Silicon Valley.
Ross, who developed CityPlace and now is building two new office towers, is downtown's dominant builder.
But even as Ross touted his luxury offices to prospective businesses, he also acknowledged the need to elevate the area's educational offerings.
"You can't get companies to want to expand in an area without having great education," he told a Palm Beach business group in January. "It's all about getting into great universities."
That's why, in addition to supporting Vanderbilt, Ross also donated $100 million to the respected Pine Crest School of South Florida. The private pre-K-12 school now plans to build a West Palm Beach campus.
In Broward County, which is sandwiched by the two impending university campuses, business leaders say they know the growth that bookends them on the north and south will only serve to lift the county's economy.
"When South Florida adds this caliber of research, talent and innovation, the benefits extend well beyond the campus itself," said Bob Swindell, president and chief executive of the Greater Fort Lauderdale Alliance.
"The stronger South Florida’s overall innovation education ecosystem becomes, the more competitive the entire region becomes on a national and global scale," Swindell said.
A return to South Florida for a new opportunity
Many business backers say the best part of the region's economic growth is that college graduates who used to leave Florida for jobs elsewhere now can work here.
For Natasha Sachs, that's already happening.
Sachs grew up in Boca Raton, then worked at Google in Europe and Washington, DC, followed by a move to California, where she worked for an education tech firm.
Now Sachs is back in Palm Beach County, where she was just named assistant vice chancellor of Vanderbilt University's planned West Palm Beach campus.
Sachs said it was a "wonderful moment" to be able to apply her expertise to her hometown. "I get to be home and help build something with Vanderbilt that will have lasting value," she said.
Alexandra Clough is a business writer at The Palm Beach Post. You can reach her at aclough@pbpost.com. X: @acloughpbp. Help support our journalism. Subscribe today.
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: South Florida is pivoting from tourism to national biz hub
