When a billionaire financial guru and philanthropist talks, you can bet that local government leaders are going to listen.
Recent Miami transplant Ken Griffin, founder of the Citadel hedge fund, recently moved his company to South Florida from Chicago. Griffin was the featured speaker at Monday's meeting of the Miami-Dade League of Cities, representing all 34 municipal governments in the county as well as the county government itself.
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WATCH HEREGriffin told the gathering about his childhood living in Boca Raton.
“And it’s taken me a long time, but I finally ended up in the right part of Florida down here in Miami!” he said to applause.
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Griffin said his public school education at Boca Raton High School prepared him well for college at Harvard. He spent years in Chicago building his firm before moving Citadel to South Florida in 2022, and he is bullish on Miami.
“The quality of life here is extraordinary, great restaurants, we have a vibrant cultural scene,” Griffin said, praising Miami’s diversity.
“What I’m leaving with is everybody should want to move to Miami-Dade County, I think part of his conversation was extremely exciting, visionary,” said League of Cities president, Mayor Karyn Cunningham of Palmetto Bay.
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She interviewed Griffin in a room full of mayors and city managers. At times, Griffin simply stated the obvious, but he also offered his unique perspective and analysis.
“The message that I heard today was we need more affordable housing,” Cunningham said.
Indeed, at one point, Griffin said simply, “We need to make housing more affordable.”
How should that be accomplished? After all, the county government has been focused on that issue for several years. Griffin said more incentives can be created to get developers to build more workforce housing, and he said by simply increasing the volume of housing, prices will fall. A skyline full of construction cranes is a very good thing, Griffin said, but it’s just as crucial for the economy that Miami-Dade tackles the traffic problem.
“Public transportation’s gonna have to be a real focus over the next 20 years,” Griffin said.
No one can argue with that. Griffin also advised the local government leaders at the forum today at the Biltmore Hotel to streamline the permitting process for builders and for homeowners.
“How do we make sure they minimize the time that people spend in lines?” Griffin said, arguing that when people see things working smoothly, it increases their confidence in government.
The mayor of Miami agreed.
“We want to make sure that what we’re doing facilitates private sector success, we’re not here for our own existence, we’re here to make sure that our residents can thrive and succeed in our ecosystem,” said Miami mayor Francis Suarez.
Griffin is also a major donor to Miami-Dade College, which he said provides students with more “on-ramps for success” than almost any other institution in the nation. The quality K-12 education, coupled with secondary options such as FIU and the University of Miami, is absolutely vital, Griffin said, for the future economic success and growth of Miami-Dade County.
