During the pandemic, Steve Ross took refuge in his historic Palm Beach estate, known as the Reef. But the now 84-year-old wasn’t just weathering the coronavirus nor relaxing on the two sprawling oceanfront acres in his golden years.
Ross — billionaire, developer, lawyer, philanthropist, and Miami Dolphins owner — was there to reimagine West Palm Beach, the city over the bridge from his island home. He found in West Palm an appeal few other areas possess, a canvas on which to do more than paint the skyline, where he can play a major role in sculpting the city’s future and community.
“This is more like city-building, and it’s complex and challenging,” he said last year to Bloomberg. “And I still love a challenge.”
The most talented creators are always world-builders. Done well, this is magic that has the potential to make the mind responsible for it fabulously wealthy. George Lucas dreamed up “Star Wars” and it made him a billionaire. Peter Jackson brought “The Lord of the Rings” to life and that, too, earned him a billion-dollar fortune. “Harry Potter” likewise rained money for J.K. Rowling.
These authors take their audiences on heroes’ journeys through immersive new universes. Though he works in glass and steel, not fantasy and science fiction, Ross has a similar gift for creation that made him ultra-rich. More than 50 years into his world-building career, his work has shaped skylines in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and now West Palm Beach.
But after completing the gargantuan, legacy-defining Hudson Yards in New York, he could have stopped. He was 80 years old, and Covid was ravaging the city and its office market.
Instead, he pressed on. In what is likely his last large-scale, Ross-ian, world-building endeavor, he has set out to make West Palm Beach a capital of power and commerce in America.
“I believe that all of Palm Beach County will become the most important county in this country,” he told the county commissioners at a meeting in August. “This whole county in the future will become what Silicon Valley is today.”
This would have been laughable five years ago. But Ross had an audience of believers that day, local leaders and residents compelled by what they’ve already seen him build and what more he has envisioned.
Just a month earlier, he launched Related Ross, a new development firm singularly focused on Palm Beach County. He is also behind the scenes working to bring schools, hospitals and Wall Street to the county.
“We are sitting in the prime location in this country,” he said at the August meeting. “We have an obligation to take advantage of it.”
Others in his generation move to South Florida to retire in God’s waiting room. Ross — along with a handful of other New York developers on similar journeys — has plans to remake it.
Once a Floridian
When Ross took refuge in his Palm Beach estate, it was a homecoming. He grew up in Miami Beach and has visited Palm Beach since childhood. He’s a longtime member of the Palm Beach Country Club, the island’s historically Jewish members club. He bought the Reef in 2012 for $31.9 million — comparable homes these days frequently sell for north of $100 million. In 2021, he made Palm Beach his full-time residence.
The move came in a season of change for Ross. He split from his wife of 18 years, jewelry designer Kara Gaffney, in 2021. The following year, Ross divested from Related Group, the South Florida-based development giant he helped start in 1979 with Jorge Pérez, one of his closest friends.
While he was settling into a new life in Palm Beach, he didn’t exactly take to its socialite lifestyle. Life for many of the island’s residents revolves around see-and-be-seen outings to lunches, dinners and galas, but not for Ross. He is not often seen about town, but when he does make appearances, they are usually tied to his work: groundbreakings, commission meetings and philanthropic events. He recently became engaged.
“I believe that all of Palm Beach County will become the most important county in this country. This whole county in the future will become what Silicon Valley is today.”
At other times, he can be elusive. In November, he canceled a planned appearance for an Urban Land Institute panel, sending his longtime partner Ken Himmel as surrogate. Unlike most South Florida real estate players, whose M.O. is flashy and media-hungry, bombarding reporters with a torrent of news releases regarding groundbreakings or financing deals, Ross has kept things low-key.
The Real Deal reached out to Related Ross’ media representatives for an interview in late November, but they said his schedule was too tight for an interview.
In July, Ross stepped down from his role as chairman of Related Companies, the national firm he founded 53 years ago, to focus on Related Ross, as well as his controlling stakes in the Miami Dolphins and Formula One Miami. (He remains nonexecutive chairman of Related Companies and its single largest shareholder.)
Related Ross’ central focus is West Palm Beach. Its portfolio in the city consists of roughly 18 buildings and a mixed-use complex collectively spanning more than 3.8 million square feet of offices, retail and restaurants, as well as about 1,500 condo, apartment and hotel units, according to TRD’s analysis of Related Ross’ portfolio, including acquired, completed, under construction and planned projects.
More fun than The Villages
Ross finds stimulation in difficult and demanding undertakings, as evidenced by his decades-long career building in Manhattan. While Hudson Yards is his best-known project in recent memory, his investment in West Palm in some ways mirrors his 1996 bid to redevelop One Columbus Circle in New York.
At the time, New York wasn’t exactly a hub for yuppies and financiers. But the city was on the precipice of change, and Ross took the plunge on the 2.8-million-square-foot project, which included offices, condos, retail, a Mandarin Oriental hotel and Jazz at Lincoln Center. He was mid-development when the real estate market came to a standstill after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Financing froze, fearful would-be condo buyers backed out and some developers scrapped planned projects.
Ross persisted, and Related completed One Columbus Circle in 2003.
Similarly, when the pandemic struck, real estate again found itself in a quandary, and some developers stepped back from the office market, queasy over its viability in a moment of upheaval. Again, Ross pushed forward, building the 20-story 360 Rosemary office tower in downtown West Palm Beach. It was completed and fully leased by 2021.
For Ross, the city offered an antithesis to New York, where he for decades competed in the sharp-elbowed world of real estate titans, a job further complicated by requirements for union labor and rent-stabilization policies.
Florida is a right-to-work state that bans rent regulation and has no personal income tax. West Palm Beach in particular has a lower barrier to entry and more developable sites than New York. It also has pro-growth leaders who for decades have set the stage for exactly the type of bonanza Ross is bringing.
New York, in comparison, is overcrowded with both real estate moguls and marquee towers, prompting some to seek “greener pastures,” author Steven Gaines, who has profiled the city’s market and players, said.
“It used to be with these great czars like Steve Ross, there were properties to build and skyscrapers to take pride in,” Gaines said. But New York “is kind of used up and built up and overbuilt. … New York is no fun anymore.”
Ross’ decision to come home to South Florida after leaving his mark on the New York skyline puts him in some good company. Other long-time Big Apple real estate titans in their 70s and 80s are also flocking to the tri-county region, which saw an unprecedented wealth migration and real estate boom in 2020 and the years following, making it only natural that developers — of any age — would follow.
In recent years, Ian Bruce Eichner, 78, amassed 4.5 developable acres in waterfront North Bay Village, where he also is developing the 198-unit Continuum Club & Residences condo. In Bay Harbor Islands, his Continuum Company is developing the 68-unit La Baia South and the 57-unit La Baia North. Shaya Boymelgreen, 73, is working on the 50-unit 42 Pine boutique condominium in Miami Beach’s Mid-Beach neighborhood, while 87-year-old Harry Macklowe has been making bulk condo unit purchases at aging North Bay Village buildings expected to be redeveloped.
Other developers who are slightly younger have come south too, including Steve Witkoff and Aby Rosen.
In his image
World-builder Ross started his latest round in South Florida with office development.
In 2020 and early 2021, he started construction on 360 Rosemary and dropped $282 million for the pair of Phillips Point office towers. That was before West Palm emerged as a magnet for corporate firms, though the writing was on the wall: Well-heeled business executives had started snapping up South Florida mansions, foreshadowing the office leasing spree that ensued.
In the months and years that followed, he leaned further into West Palm office assets, buying CityPlace Tower and Esperanté Corporate Center, as well as starting construction on the 20-story One Flagler. Next on tap are the 25-story 515 Fern, as well as the 10 CityPlace and 15 CityPlace towers.
With Ross investing heavily in West Palm Beach, he started leveraging his New York network to lease up his new office towers. He aligned with the Business Development Board of Palm Beach County’s “Wall Street South” vision, recruiting hedge funds, private equity and investment management firms to open offices in the city.
The financial industry has emerged as a top economic driver, replacing the county’s previous top industries of tourism, agriculture and construction, according to Kelly Smallridge, the board’s CEO. The county is now home to 2,602 hedge funds and private equity firms, and 483 asset managers, according to the business board.
One Flagler is 80 percent pre-leased, with new-to-market tenants including billionaire John Paulson’s Paulson Capital and New York-based Baron Funds. JP Morgan Chase, Goldman Sachs and Point72 Asset Management each have a spot at 360 Rosemary, which is 105 percent leased after Related Ross converted a garage to offices to meet the demand. Next, Related Ross is vying to woo tech firms in a bid to turn West Palm into the new Silicon Valley.
who have moved to booming South Florida and started new chapters in their careers
This year, Ross also won the bid to build a 20-story, 404-key Hilton Insignia next to the city’s convention center and the 12-story, 400-key Hilton West Palm Beach, which he also owns.
On the residential front, Related Ross this year completed the 322-unit Laurel apartment tower and started construction of the two-tower South Flagler House condominium with 108 units. It also plans the 199-unit Shorecrest condo tower, and a nearby 190-unit, two-tower condo project.
The pandemic-induced influx brought $39 billion of net-income migration to Florida, with about a quarter of that going to Palm Beach County, according to the county’s business development board. That was in 2020 and 2021, meaning the wealth migration is by now substantially higher.
Through it all, South Florida real estate players have remained giddy over Ross’ work in West Palm, calling him a “leader” in the city’s redevelopment.
Stephen [Ross] is always at the table with us, talking about developing vibrant, mixed-use properties and modernizing urban spaces and building communities,” Smallridge said.
Ross wasn’t new to developing in West Palm Beach when he embarked on this run. CityPlace, the downtown district now central to his broader development plans, wrapped up in 2000.
The area then wasn’t so much a blank slate as a “war zone,” according to Palm Beach Post reporting. Before Related’s bulldozers came along, it was a collection of aging, dilapidated buildings, dominated by drug dealers and rife with crime. HBO filmed its Oscar-nominated documentary “Crack USA: County Under Siege” in 1989 in the neighborhood.
This time around, Ross’ ambition goes beyond creating a shopping destination. He is constructing an urban ecosystem from the ground up.
He has fundraised and advocated for Vanderbilt University to bring a graduate business school campus to West Palm Beach. The university won approval for the $520 million proposed campus in the fall. Related Ross has also teased plans for a new $600 million hospital coming to the city, and his Related Together grantmaking nonprofit is targeting economic mobility for underserved communities.
Beyond West Palm Beach, Related Ross is bidding to redevelop the 30-acre Boca Raton government campus, proposing a massive mixed-use project, including mixed-income housing and offices. On Wellington’s long-overlooked K-Park site, he proposes a mixed-use development including a private school, retail and housing.
“It’s a value add for something we don’t have,” Wellington Mayor Michael Napoleone said. With a project like this, “you’ve got to make sure you’re doing it with a developer who has the wherewithal to deliver on the project and the vision. … We think Related is that group.”
He is also focusing on his Miami Dolphins and Formula One at the Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens, which he also owns. Last month, Ross sold a 10 percent stake in the National Football League franchise, stadium and his other sports holdings to Ares Management funds and Brooklyn Nets owners Joe Tsai and Oliver Weisberg. Ross had paid only about $1 billion for the team in 2009, but now-fizzled talks to sell a stake to billionaire hedge fund manager Ken Griffin put an updated value on the franchise of about $7.5 billion, according to the Palm Beach Post.
“He actually really pays attention” to the football games, Arquitectonica co-founder Bernardo Fort-Brescia, who was the architect of record on Ross’ 2016 overhaul of Hard Rock, said. “At half-time, he goes out to talk to the players. He just is there to support, moral support. He is a real person involved in the game.”
Fort-Brescia recalled the planning process: At the stadium, as Ross described his vision for renovations, Fort-Brescia sketched.
“He was saying a lot of people are in the lowest levels, they want to be next to the game and he was saying those people also deserve to have a club no different from those at the top at the boxes,” Fort-Brescia said, adding that he sometimes joins Ross in box seats, most recently at the August inaugural game.
Head of the line
Some people like to work even on vacation.
Every year for more than a decade, a group of couples that includes Edgardo Defortuna, CEO of Fortune International Group, and his wife, Ana Christina, as well as Jorge and Darlene Pérez and Ross — now with his fiancée — has traveled together to what Defortuna called “an interesting place in the world” for at least a week.
But when they get there, true to form, they don’t laze around. They spend the days cycling.
Ross and his fellow non-retirees — Eichner, Boymelgreen and Macklowe — are hardly the only developers who can’t seem to call it a day. A developer needs hustle. And once world-builders get going, why would they stop? Larry Silverstein, at age 93, says he’s looking for his next project.
Eichner, who returned to Miami about seven years ago to find sites for his next project, said he doesn’t believe in planning too far in advance. His firm has six projects either under construction or in the planning stage.
“I have no current plans to do anything other than what I’m doing,” he said, when asked about succession and retirement.
Boymelgreen, who was temporarily banned from New York real estate following a 2013 investigation into his business practices, developed the 67-story, 292-unit Marquis condo tower in downtown Miami in the early 2000s in partnership with diamond billionaire Lev Leviev. He had all but disappeared from real estate until he popped up again in South Florida for 42 Pine.
Before his Florida ventures, Macklowe left his mark on the New York skyline with the 50-story One Wall Street, a conversion from offices to condos that took nine years; and the 1,400-foot 432 Park trash can-inspired tower.
“He always wants to be at the head of the line.”
“All these people have huge egos. They have egos as big as the buildings they build. And none of those egos are going to allow them to stop working,” Gaines said. “They will die at their desks. They will die on their way to their banks to check their balances.”
Add to that, for Ross, the quality of being “extremely competitive,” as Defortuna said.
Road bikers tend to cycle in single file, the leader diffusing the wind for the riders behind.
On their trips, Defortuna said, “He always wants to be at the head of the line.”
For his part, Ross does seem to be balancing work and personal life a little bit more than he used to, Defortuna said.
Not a fantasy world
Yet, Ross’ endeavors come against the backdrop of persistent challenges for West Palm and the rest of South Florida: a lack of affordable housing for the service workers supporting the new projects, a crunch on private schools the well-heeled newcomers demand and questions over the success of a Vanderbilt campus. And, doubts remain whether South Florida’s fortunes will hold up, with some experts saying a repeat of the leasing spree of the past four years is unlikely.
Not all of his South Florida ambitions have panned out. In 2022, Miami Beach voters rejected a referendum that would have allowed him to upzone the site of the historic Deauville Beach Resort to build a two-tower condo. Ross had pumped nearly $2 million into a political action committee promoting the initiative.
Neil Merin, chairman of NAI Merin Hunter Codman in West Palm, said it’s important to parse through the puff.
Ross’ efforts are really focused on a “six square-block area” of downtown, pointing out that he is not touching other growth city areas such as Nora District and Northwood and hardly plays a role countywide, Merin said. And the notion that Related Ross has a hand in reshaping West Palm is also wrong.
“They are a hype machine, so they hype it up,” Merin said. “He is aiming at millionaires and billionaires. They are his users and that’s what he is concerned about. … The one thing Ross is not quite yet addressing is all the people who work in these buildings who serve you lunch and so on. Where are they going to live?”
Indeed, data show that Palm Beach County’s demographics are changing. In 2020 and 2021, the average income of newcomers was over $242,000, while that of those leaving the county was over $96,000, according to the Economic Innovation Group.
The issue is not lost on Ross, who started Related Companies as an affordable housing development firm and now sits on the Florida Council of 100’s Attainable Housing Committee.
“Right now, the biggest need in this county and this state is the kind of workforce housing that is required,” he told county commissioners during their August meeting. “We are coming up with initiatives and working with the state so we can provide workforce housing.”
The Laurel includes workforce units, and Related Companies also has invested in and preserved at least three senior affordable housing complexes in Palm Beach County. This includes the Saint Andrews and Saint James with 330 units, combined, in West Palm, and the 195-unit Lake Worth Towers in Lake Worth Beach.
Related Ross executives have alluded to Palm Beach County’s transformation as being holistic, pointing to the planned $520 million, 1,000-student Vanderbilt campus in the city that will offer graduate programs in business, tech, artificial intelligence, quantum computing and data analytics, as well as a Wond’ry resource center for entrepreneurs.
Frank Schnidman, a retired economic development and urban planning professor at Florida Atlantic University, said questions remain over the feasibility and success of the school. Vanderbilt would be starting from scratch and face competition from existing universities.
“FAU is just down the block. [Its] engineering and computer science program is pretty highly rated,” he said, adding that the University of Florida also has campuses statewide. “Where are they going to attract the students from and are they going to stay in [West Palm]? … You have to recruit the faculty, get it built and get the students. They also need the housing for the Vanderbilt faculty.”
Vanderbilt has been fundraising for its campus. But a new school is costly, Schnidman said.
“To assume Vanderbilt has lying around dozens of millions of dollars on this venture at this moment might not be accurate,” he said. “You may talk about a $1 billion endowment by Harvard or Penn, but I am not sure right now Vanderbilt actually has the financial resources to build the campus.”
It’s not just the campus: No one can know how the imagined world will intersect with reality, with money and demand and the South Florida boom that might not last forever.
Lucas, Jackson and Rowling all built worlds in books and movies, without this unpredictability. Ross is making a real-life community, tying together real estate, finance, tech, dining and entertainment, education and advancement of the disadvantaged. Its success would be his legacy. How could work like this have an end?
“Just because you have the money to stop working, doesn’t mean you should,” Gaines, the author, said.