Area leaders visit Dubai seeking investors

Mayors, company officials attend UAE investment meeting

There are strong similarities between Fort Lauderdale and Dubai, the city on the Persian Gulf coast that is most populous in the United Arab Emirates.

Both boast manmade islands, beaches, international airports and seaports. Their local economies rely heavily on tourism, aviation, real estate and trade.

But Dubai, which is 7,825 miles away, has a lot more of what Fort Lauderdale and other Broward County cities need: money.

Several weeks ago, the mayors of Fort Lauderdale, Broward and Miramar, along with officials from several private sector companies, journeyed to Dubai at the city’s invitation to pitch a wish list of projects and business ideas that might interest investors. The gaggle attended both the 11th edition of the UAE’s Annual Investment Meeting and a separate World Government Summit.

Over the years, the AIM meeting has evolved into a high-end summit about world global investment trends in fields ranging from financial services and insurance and banking to infrastructure, real estate, tourism, trade and technology.

South Florida government officials, eager to take advantage of a surge in company relocations and the migration of high-income residents from other parts of the country, say they want to improve the area’s profile of local transportation systems, future technology businesses and international trade at Port Everglades.

But some Fort Lauderdale residents are wondering how much the trip for Mayor Dean Trantalis and three of his coworkers cost.

After Trantalis released a newsletter describing the visit, which occurred in late March, some wondered whether the trip was worth the price of the airline tickets and room bills in a city that is a world leader in 5-star hotels. The South Florida Sun Sentinel sent a public records request to City Hall on April 18 seeking details on the cost of the trip but is still waiting on the answer.

No information was immediately available from Broward County and Miramar, whose mayors also journeyed to Dubai.

Fort Lauderdale resident Robert Walsh speculated the trip “around the world” cost as much as $30,000.

“Wait till you get the bill,” he said. “The mayor and staff didn’t go over there for free. You and I paid for it. It’s a hard pill to swallow. With the economy, people are paying so much for food and rent. The timing is off.”

UAE doing big business in Florida

But the United Arab Emirates, of which Dubai is a part, has been doing business in Florida for a number of years, according

to Enterprise Florida, the state’s economic development arm. In an email, a spokeswoman, citing the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, outlined the ways:

There are 13 UAE-owned establishments in Florida employing 400 Floridians as of 2019. That ranks the UAE as 27th among foreign investors in Florida.

Florida’s bilateral trade with the UAE has averaged more than $1.3 billion in the past five years. Last year, Florida had a record total trade year hitting over $160 billion in total merchandise trade overall.

Looking in the opposite direction, there are 33 Florida-headquartered companies operating 103 subsidiaries in the UAE.

“They have a lot of money and I guess there are limited opportunities in that area, so they’re reaching out to other parts of the world,” Trantalis said “We want to make sure that Fort Lauderdale is on their radar.”

None of the public officials came home with freshly signed contracts that reflect new deals. But all of them, including John Wensveen, executive director of the Alan B. Levan | NSU Broward Center of Innovation, said everyone made plenty of fresh contacts that could well lead to new business later.

Here is a quick look at where officials see potential deals and business ties from the region:

Broward County

Mayor Michael Udine said he met with “quite a few” sovereign wealth funds in Dubai that are looking to place their money as investments in the U.S., including Florida.

“They see what’s gong on in South Florida with technology and what’s gong on with the desirability of South Florida,” he said. “There is a lot of interest in properties. There’s a lot of stuff with Port Everglades that has a lot of potential to develop partnerships.”

Both Udine and Jonathan Daniels, the port CEO and executive director who did not make the trip, say Dubai is in the market for finding ways to access the Caribbean and Latin American shipping markets, using the local Broward port as a conduit.

“It’s a way for us to do import-export using Port Everglades as a hub and spoke port business,” Udine said. “That was really one of the interesting ones.”

The mayor said discussions have also emerged for the return of Emirates Airlines to Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport. The airline started service between South Florida and Dubai from Broward in 2016. But it departed at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, only to start service later at Miami International Airport.

Fort Lauderdale

Trantalis said he talked up the proposed beach tunnel project, which would run from downtown to State Road A1A, to interested investors and government officials in Dubai.

“At least one of the ministers is traveling to the U.S. in June and they’re going to stop into Fort Lauderdale to discuss further the proposals we made while we were there,” he said in an interview.

In his newsletter, the mayor said ramped up the Fort Lauderdale sales pitch. “Businesses worldwide are waking up to that reality and want to be part of our incredible success story,” he wrote in his newsletter. “I know. I just returned from leading a business delegation to Dubai for discussions where we met government ministers about expanded trade possibilities and spoke to investment bankers about how they can take part in our growth. Dubai sits at the crossroads of the world and was a great place for us to foster business exchange.”

Miramar

Mayor Wayne Messam said he, too, is interested in keeping his city of 143,000 people, the state’s 13th most populous, on the radars of UAE investors.

“Miramar has more Fortune 500 companies that have headquarters or have a presence than any other city in South Florida,” he said. “There is a big interest.”

“My goal was to position Miramar as an option for Middle Eastern companies that may be looking to either use South Florida as an access point to the emerging markets of the Caribbean or Latin America or South Florida itself,” he said.

Messam said he understands the minister of commerce and other ministers from Dubai will be visiting the U.S. this year “and they do plan to include South Florida as one of their stops. We will further the discussion. Our collective visit definitely piqued their interest to learn more.”

Alan B. Levan | NSU Broward Center of Innovation

The center, based on the Davie campus of Nova Southeastern University, conducted its formal grand opening last week even though it has been in operation since late last year.

It evolved as a public-private partnership between Nova and Broward County, which each contributed $7.5 million, while Alan B. Levan, a long-time Broward-based financial entrepreneur, contributed $2.5 million. Its goal is to promote and support innovation, technology and entrepreneurship in the region.

The center’s CEO Wensveen, and Udine, suggested there are models to be replicated for the center from what they saw in Dubai. Udine said they had visited the Dubai Future Foundation at the Museum the Future and saw things that could be replicated for the center.

“This amazing model reimagines, inspires, and designs Dubai’s future in partnership with public and private sectors with the aim of making Dubai one of the world’s foremost future cities,” he wrote in a Facebook post. “Imagine a ‘shopping mall’ with storefronts housing #incubators, #accelerators, #innovative nations, service providers, and more.”

Wensveen said he envisions establishing “country desks” at the Levan center where governments could use the facility to help launch new businesses, or expand existing ones.

He is currently in talks with the Netherlands to start such an arrangements, and has drawn interest from several Latin American nations.