The power of regionalism: regional economic development efforts can bring South Florida more power and more resources—and may be the only thing that can maintain our high quality of life

J.P. Faber

Exactly when South Florida first woke up to its power as a region is not clear. Some regional policies can be traced back more than 30 years, to the birth of the South Florida Regional Planning Council, an agency created to help control and coordinate growth in Dade, Broward and Monroe counties. You can push the edge of the envelope even farther back, to the 1800s, when the seven counties of Southeast Florida were all one big county called Dade.

It has really only been in the last few years, however, that leaders in business, polities and education have come to realize not only South Florida's power as a region, but its dire need to plan as a region, lest the separate counties be buried under their own helter-skelter growth.

"This is not about creating a supraregional form of government," says James F. Murley, author of a comprehensive report on South Florida recently released by Florida Atlantic University. "This is about our ability to be successful in the global economic arena, and getting our fair share of federal and state resource dollars.... it's about strategically picking the issues and cooperating." Murley, who directs FAU's downtown Fort Lauderdale Catanese Center for Urban & Environmental Solutions, warns that without regional approaches to such problems as transportation, land use, population growth and education, it will be just a matter of time--a couple of decades at best--before "we will be unable to sustain our economic way of life."

Murley's report, entitled Regional Shift: South Florida in Transition, chronicles changes that have taken place in land and water use, housing, traffic, population and the workforce, with not exactly rosy revelations. While Murley characterizes his report as a "wake-up call," many of South Florida's leaders have already heard the alarm. The signs of trouble ahead are numerous and growing in urgency. Traffic congestion has become intolerable. Land supplies have been depleted. Job and wage growth has trailed population growth. Housing prices have soared above state and national averages. Educational resources have become strained. As Murley's report concludes: "Unless the region shifts into gear to more effectively address its challenges, it will be overtaken by them and slip in every major aspect of quality of life."

While problems loom, however, there is hope. A mere half-dozen years ago, South Florida's counties were busy wrestling each other for corporate relocations, burning precious incentive dollars to lure firms across county lines. Today, the principle economic development organizations--Miami-Dade's The Beacon Council, The Broward Alliance and the Business Development Board of Palm Beach County--are cooperating in an unprecedented fashion, assisting each other in the acquisition of new companies from outside the region. The current leadership of these three groups are actively creating an atmosphere of collaboration and trust which has simply never previously existed.

"There is now a personal relationship and trust between the three entities, and that has gone a long way to sort out the difficulties of the past," says Frank Nero, president and CEO of The Beacon Council. Both Larry Pelton, head of the Business Development Board of Palm Beach County, and J.T. Tarlton, head of The Broward Alliance, echo those sentiments. "Larry and Frank and I have decided that we believe cooperation is the right approach to take," says Tarlton. "It's not that others aren't doing the same thing--all three county commissions have been getting together to establish common programs--but we are going to take a leadership role to start the train down the track."

The results have been immediate. Whereas millions of dollars were spent in the past to poach companies from each other, the three economic development groups are now helping each other win new business. Case in point: The Beacon Council was tipped off to a company-expansion opportunity in its own backyard by Pelton's Palm Beach board. After it couldn't find an appropriate site in Palm Beach County, and considered other locales, the company--Safire Aircraft--elected to build a plant at Opa-locka Airport. Although the deal is still pending final regulatory approval, Safire found a site near a runway with enough room for its planned small-jet manufacturing facility.

Another company that moved into South Florida with the support of all three organizations is DHL, which has a facility in Plantation, and is looking to expand its space and locate a new headquarters somewhere in the region. "With regard to South Florida, regionalism means that there are no real geographic boundaries between the three counties that comprise the South Florida metropolitan statistical area," says DHL Americas CEO John Fellows.

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"As an economy there are no barriers between us," says Pelton. "So the most relevant regional issue is to boost our respective counties' economic impact." When it comes to recruiting new companies to the area, he says, "we point to the access to the population in all three counties, to the three port facilities, to the three airports for flights anywhere in the world, to the unique universities in all three counties. It's a selling point for us." Pelton lists the Scripps research facility scheduled to be built in Palm Beach County as a top example of regional cooperation and benefits, with a $1.6 billion economic impact that will be felt throughout the region in the next 15 years. "They'll be partnering with the University of Miami medical school, and Florida Atlantic University, and anyone else [in the region] that wants to participate," he says.

* A Common Agenda

In economic segment after economic segment, it seems, the advantages of regional efforts outshine any individual approach. "We share industry clusters," notes Pelton, which range from bioscience to telecommunications. "The NAP (Network Access Point) that we all supported going into Miami has improved the infrastructure for everybody in South Florida," he says. "We also share our workforces and our capital resources, which are very important for the expansion of business."

That sense of shared resources has produced the first and most tangible priority for the regional interaction: transportation. "Since it's clear that the economies of the three counties are inextricably linked, the movement of goods and services and people across county lines is a perfect example [of a regional priority]," says Nero. "Dade can't solve it alone, and neither can Broward or Palm Beach, without integrated planning."

That is the same conclusion reached by numerous other groups, including the Urban Land Institute (ULI), a nonprofit organization devoted to enhancing the environment through the responsible use of land. Because land development is inextricably tied to transportation, that issue is on the top of the ULI agenda. "There are a lot of people doing business across county lines, and living across county lines," says Neisen Kasdin, chairman of the Southeast Florida/Caribbean division of the ULI. "We have to make people realize that this issue will have to be resolved on a regional basis."

A huge step in that direction was taken last year with the formation of the Regional Transportation Authority (RTA), a tri-county agency equally funded by all three counties. Not only does it operate the Tri-Rail system that links Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach, but it is also involved with regional planning for the coordination of bus routes and the development of land adjacent to Tri-Rail stations.

The RTA was put into effect by the Florida legislature largely at the prompting of the Regional Business Alliance, a group formed four years ago that joined together business leaders from the three counties. In particular, the RBA is composed of business organizations whose membership consists of local CEOs: The Broward Workshop, the Economic Council of the Palm Beaches, and the Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce.

"We found that we had a lot in common," says Ralph Marrinson, chairman of the RBA. "It made sense that by working together we could accomplish things, and deal with issues larger than any single county could deal with." Rather than trying to be "all things to all people," says Marrinson, the group focused on transportation as an issue where it could have an impact in a reasonable period of time. Holding monthly meetings at the offices of the South Florida Regional Planning Council in Hollywood, the group developed and sponsored the legislation to create the RTA.

Holding its meetings at the offices of the Regional Planning Council was also symbolic; it is the oldest regional organization in South Florida. Originally established by the state in 1969 as the Tri-County Jetport Planning Council, the organization was renamed the South Florida Regional Planning Council (SFRPC) in the early 1970s, with responsibility for Monroe, Dade, Broward, Palm Beach, Martin and St. Lucie counties. In 1975, it was split into the SFRPC and the Treasure Coast Regional Planning Council, losing its two most northern counties. Today it is one of 11 such regional organizations in Florida.

While usually associated with supplying input for the state on what are called "developments of regional impact"--large-scale housing projects and public venues--its mission, says SFRPC executive director Carolyn A. Deckle, is to "understand and solve long-range issues that our regional leaders will confront." In practical terms, the SFRPC supplies research and data to the State Land Planning Agency and to local governments, which have the actual teeth to enforce its conclusions. "Our authority comes from providing good information and good analysis," says Deckle. "People in development aren't interested in facing [our negative conclusions]. It requires them to overcome the objections."

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Despite its reputation for shooting down projects that, for example, endanger the region's water supply, "We prefer to talk more about what we'd like to have happen rather than what we don't want to have happen," says Deckle. To that end, the SFRPC is currently finalizing its Strategic Regional Policy Plan for South Florida, which covers everything from education and housing to historic preservation and natural resources. Its overriding purpose? "The top issue for us is the affordability of living in South Florida," she says. To her, that encompasses all of the region's issues.

"There are so many different facets to dealing with the affordability issue," she says. "One of the key parts is land use and how that effects transportation. Then there is housing and education, all of which tie back to the core issue of how we can develop this urban center and still have a quality of life that we can enjoy."

What it comes down to is good urban planning--land use that would, for example, allow a working class family to drop the use of one car in favor of convenient public transportation, saving at least $7,000 a year. It's just the sort of planning that is going into the new pedestrian-friendly downtown in Sunrise, a Codina Group project called Metropica, or into the use of a trolley system that was inaugurated last year in Coral Gables, enabling Metrorail riders to reach jobs in that city.

"In many ways, we're really not inventing anything new, but putting it back the way it was," says Michael Cannon, managing director of Integra Realty Resources-South Florida, and a ULI board member. "Back in the 1930s, Standard Oil and General Motors bought up all the trolley systems in the US and shut them down. Every city around this country is going back to them. Light rail is the cheapest form of transportation you can have--and I'm not taking about the phony trolleys we have that use gas and tires. You need hard rail, because electricity is the cheapest fuel."

When it comes to urban planning, Cannon believes that future property values will be as much affected by proximity to regional transportation systems as by proximity to other amenities. "The Fannie Mae study on the cost to own car says it's a $7,000 to $12,000 annual expense. If you can create urban housing for the workforce, you can capitalize that payment with a ten-times multiple. Don't own that car and you can afford $100,000 more in housing."

* Building a Regional Brand

Besides the economies of scale and synergies that come from regional planning, one enormous benefit from forming a united, three-county front lies in the arena of national and global branding--including South Florida's ability to acquire federal funding. A huge leap in that direction occurred last year, when, for the first time, South Florida was designated as a single MSA, or Metropolitan Statistical Area. Previously, the region had been divided into three MSAs: Miami-Hialeah, Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood and Boca-West Palm.

"The biggest benefit of regionalism is our ability to leverage dollars," says Tarlton. That includes both the power to pool local economic development dollars and to acquire federal and state funding. The designation as a single statistical area catapults South Florida into the top half dozen MSAs in the nation, opening up new streams of government grant monies, in such areas as housing, transportation and education.

A regional approach also adds huge power to the South Florida brand. "As the 6th largest MSA in the country," continues Tarlton, "it shows the rest of the world that we are a global business location for companies that are interested in coming here, starting a business here or expanding their businesses into new markets."

"The thing that's bugged me for a long time about Broward. Dade and Palm Beach counties is how each county treats the other as the major competitor, when in fact our real [global] competition is places like Atlanta. Houston and Dallas," says Miami city commissioner Johnny Winton. "Atlanta, in particular, watches everything we do down here and then tries to steal it, whether it's the flower import business or international flights to Latin America.... Linked together I think South Florida can be very powerful. Divided, I think we're always going to be a little weaker."

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Of course, in order to meet the demands of new international as well as domestic businesses which expect to relocate here, South Florida has other regional concerns to contend with--one of which is the workforce issue, which includes both vocational training and higher education. The state's Workforce Florida, Inc. program currently divides the region into separate entities for each county, whereas workers and employers ignore those political boundaries.

"Nurses, construction workers, mechanics, teachers--these jobs are not bound by county lines," says Robert Crook, head of South Florida Workforce, which oversees Miami-Dade and Monroe counties. "All three of us [the Workforce agencies in Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach] meet on a regular basis to forecast for the region, to make sure we have the manpower to meet the demand." With about $100 million available for worker training in South Florida--about two thirds of it in Miami-Dade--Crook wants to make sure those dollars are spent with regional requirements in mind.

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"We are trying to put together regional solutions, coming from a context that the cornerstone of economic development is workforce development, and that our job is to increase the skills of existing workers," Crook says. "That will create a pipeline for high-demand industries that our economic development organizations can go out and recruit."

A similar regional approach makes sense for affordable housing, not only in terms of quality of life, but also in terms of business development. According to Murley's FAU study, South Florida's 2002 median home price of $193,400 was 37 percent higher than the state average, and 22 percent higher than the national average. That gap has only widened in the meantime, making it ever more difficult for service and blue collar workers to live in the area.

"As I see it, affordable housing is economic infrastructure in the same way as roads and schools and parks," says Lloyd Boggio, CEO of The Carlisle Group, one of South Florida's top builders of affordable housing. "The cost of housing is growing in the tri-county area three to four times faster than the growth in personal incomes, and so the gap between what the blue collar working person earns and the cost of housing is getting greater every year. Unless you want to have a county where the service workers commute to it, you have to have affordable housing. And that notion of people commuting in is impossible."

In order to close that gap, companies like The Carlisle Group use state tax incentives, which are awarded based on local needs and contributions by local municipalities. Indeed, the efforts of the private sector cannot in this and other areas succeed without the consensus and cooperation of the political entities of South Florida. In the end, political leadership, in addition to business leadership, may prove to be the necessary capstone for regionalism.

Fortunately, such political leadership may finally be in the offing, though it is still far from fully developed. "You are seeing a synergy between the business leaders--and the businesses are leading--but there has also been change in the political environment," says Nero, "We couldn't be doing this without the respective tacit understanding from our political leadership."

Even so, say leaders such as Miami-Dade mayor Alex Penelas, the actions have not yet matched the words. "I think we have made significant progress, and the three [county] commissions now meet regularly, and we have a tri-county agenda that we submit to Tallahassee," says Penelas. "But we need to do a lot more. We talk a good talk about regionalism, but I don't think we are doing enough from a practical perspective."

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If the region's economic development leaders have anything to say about it, those practical priorities will soon be sorted out.

"This is a huge challenge," says Tarlton. "The biggest factor is the trust that is lacking between local governments and at the state level, and between the public and private sector groups. That's big. On the other hand, we have many initiatives underway that have some sort of regional component to them. So the other challenge is that we need some kind of umbrella leadership to ensure that we are focusing on the right programs and that we can get some traction. You can't boil the ocean, but you can boil buckets. So you can't make the initiatives too large. People want to see some results on a local level."

With that cautionary note in mind, South Florida may have progressed more in its regional outlook than most local observers give it credit for.

Don Upton, president of Tampa-based research firm Fairfield Index, Inc., has conducted numerous studies of regionalism nation-wide. "Some areas come together just for advocacy--for education or transportation dollars," says Upton. "Other areas come together for certain opportunities, such as an industrial project. Others come together on leadership development. South Florida will have to do all three....

"Having said that, I don't think there is any other North American region that has the depth of diverse industries, diverse leadership, and diversified inter-agency communications as South Florida. It is already more linked than almost any other region in the country ... Regionalism is a natural here, in terms of environmental systems, transportation systems, communications systems. Just look at where people go to work everyday. If there is any individual turf left here, it will be easier to overcome than other areas ... as a region, South Florida is all opportunity."

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