Interview: Bob Swindell, President CEO, Greater Fort Lauderdale Alliance

Invisible threat

The pandemic heightened the need for diversity in the local economy

Bob Swindell

President & CEO – Greater Fort Lauderdale Alliance

How did the Alliance’s priorities shift during 2020? 2020 wasn’t a bad year, all things considered. We had almost 2,000 new and retained jobs, which, in light of the pandemic, was better than I expected. In particular, we really shifted to how we could help our businesses weather this unprecedented change. One day we were conducting business as usual and then, in early March, we were shutting down what were considered “nonessential” businesses. I grew up thinking every business is essential because they employ people, so that was a new twist on the phrase, but we understood that this was an invisible threat. We focused on how it was impacting people’s health, and then on how to make sure that we balanced people’s health with our economy. A big focus of the Alliance has always been on diversifying our economy. We’re a service economy-centric community, and travel is a huge part of what we do, with restaurants and hotels. When travel dries up so quickly, you really begin to understand the need to diversify your economy into things like aviation maintenance and repair, technology and headquarter operations.

How are you taking advantage of the increased migration from the Northeast states? That’s one of the strengths of the South Florida region. We’ve been using the tagline “Work in the cloud, live in the sun” for several years now in our regional TechGateway technology branding initiative, but it really transcends technology. Every community in South Florida has a great quality of life. People choose to live in their communities for those reasons, but I think that the current environment has folks looking at what other amenities communities have to offer. When you compare South Florida to the Northeast, or even the Midwest with its dense urban areas, people have figured out that work is not dependent on a place; it’s what you do as an individual, and you can do it at home or you can do it at a coworking lab or office. How is the Alliance looking to reshape the image of Fort Lauderdale over the next few years? When you think about how this community has matured and transitioned over the last few years, we didn’t have Downtown residential multifamily housing when I was growing up here, and now we have thousands of units that are coming online. As a community matures and adds assets like the performing arts center and people can walk to work, it’s the real deal, it’s not a pipe dream.

I think that Fort Lauderdale and Broward County have always had the good fortune of geography. It’s great to be between Miami-Dade and Palm Beach. Miami-Dade has a well-recognized brand, Palm Beach also, and we’ve been working hard to build the Greater Fort Lauderdale business brand.