Corporate culture: while the safety, comfort and growth of its affluent residential population may seem like Coral Springs' only priority, the city has always kept an eye out for corporate concerns. Now it's pushing business development inside the city - City Report Coral Springs

South Florida CEO, Dec, 2003 by Rochelle Broder

Corporate. That's the word that best describes the City of Coral Springs. Although its original developers had plans that ranged from creating a retirement community to building a model city for the latest in electronic house wares (at one point, Westing-house owned the community's developer), Coral Springs emerged as a desirable place for young families--and especially for young executives. It became one of the first places where corporations looked to relocate high-level white-collar workers in Broward County. It had a reputation for quality executive housing and tough zoning standards; this is, after all, the city that is the answer to a question in the original Trivial Pursuit game: What US city would not let McDonald's put up their Golden Arches?

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In many ways, it's those famous zoning and appearance laws that have given the city its identity. As Sam Pinson, vice president and operations director of Rhon Ernest-Jones Consulting Engineers, puts it, "You can tell when something is built in the city of Coral Springs. There is plenty of landscaping to complement it." The firm has shepherded projects ranging from a recently opened Audi dealership to the just-completed Coral Baptist Church through the city's zoning requirements.

In recent years, Coral Springs has changed that focus, expanding its corporate reputation beyond executive residential enclaves to attracting the companies themselves, nurturing its commercial sector. In so doing, it has enhanced its reputation as a corporate destination. Now, as Broward County's fourth largest city (the population grew from just 37,000 in 1980 to more than 124,000 in 2003) approaches real estate buildout, it is looking ahead, contemplating how it can continue to attract high-end residents and keep the "new" feeling that has been its hallmark.

In a city populated by successful executives and professionals, it should not be entirely surprising that Coral Springs' way of governing the city is to treat it like a business. City manager Michael Levinson, who took the job eight years ago, picked up a system that his predecessor had already begun to mold, one that made use of business plans, strategic objectives and customer-satisfaction models. Levinson, a former managing director and vice president of a Dallas-based investment banking and financial advisory firm, took the corporate principles even further. "We've defined our core processes," he says. "What's not a core process, and can be more effectively administered on an outsource basis, we have outsourced."

The Coral Springs Economic Development Foundation, for example, was spun off as a public/private partnership. Community giving was moved to private foundation Coral Springs Community Chest, to which the city gives the money it would otherwise have granted to nonprofits. Community Chest uses it as seed money to help raise funds on its own. In the past year, the group gave $90,000 to worthy local organizations.

Management of the Coral Springs Center for the Arts was privatized, resulting in a decreased need for subsidies from the city. "Now, our theater is well-positioned in the marketplace for future growth in the entertainment business in South Florida," says the center's general manager Kevin Barrett. Annually, 200,000 people attend events at the center, ranging from Broadway musical "Rent" to performances by Tony Danza and Don Rickles.

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The city budget is also tightly run. During growth times, revenue from building permits and other one-time fees was banked instead of used for operating expenses. As a result, the city has a surplus, and an AAA credit rating on Wall Street. The city's management practices have earned Coral Springs two Governor's Sterling Awards for Performance Excellence--given by the State of Florida to its best-run corporations. Coral Springs was the first government entity to earn the award, and the first entity of any kind to win it twice.

Even the city's politicians come from the business sector. Its current mayor, John Sommerer, also runs a management consulting firm, and the rest of the city commission includes two lawyers, a CPA, a retailer and a paralegal. They work, says Sommerer, by consensus. "I can't remember the last time we didn't have a unanimous vote," he says.

CREATING DOWNTOWN IN THE SUBURBS

Even with its business acumen, however, Coral Springs has never lost its sense of residential mission. "My job description is to maximize the value of your house," says Sommerer. "The average three-bedroom, two-bath single-family home should sell for 20 percent more in Coral Springs than it does across the line in the rest of Broward County. If that happens, we are providing something tangible by having the kind of community that we have."

It is the very mission of maintaining high property values, however, that has led the city to its next goal: the redevelopment of the four corners of land at University Drive and Sample Road into a true Downtown Coral Springs. "Because needs change over time, the existing commercial downtown environment does not meet the needs and expectations of today's marketplace," says Levinson. Currently, those corners house retail strips, a Publix, a large office building, parking lots and the Coral Springs Charter School.