Sim city Miami: from clicks to bricks

South Florida CEO, May, 2003 by Rochelle Broder-Singer

Jim Clark and Tom Jermoluk are legendary players in the world of high technology, best known for their groundbraking computer and Internet companies -- names such as Silicon Graphics, Netscape, WebMD, Excite@Home. Now they have picked South Florida as the place to play, and builder Paul Murphy as their local partner. The game is to build a new city on the "palette" of the Biscayne Corridor. Things may never be the same.

The streets of the Miami Design District are literally alive with pedestrian traffic on a Thursday night in April. Floors & Closets and the Paul Carrasco showroom are holding openings, the FIU School of Architecture is unveiling its senior projects, Editopia has a trade show and the AIGA Fashion Show fundraiser is underway.

Many of the people end up at the hot event of the night, a cocktail party for Blue, a new condominium scheduled to rise a few blocks away on a sliver of land where the Julia Tuttle Causeway hits the Miami side of Biscayne Bay. The party is replete with chic urban types, dressed in black and gray, sipping martinis and nibbling on sushi. Mingling among them are a bevy of nearly totally naked women (they are wearing only bikini bottoms) who are painted blue from head to foot.

The A-list guests include the likes of developer Marty Margulies, Arquitectonica principals Bernardo Fort-Brescia and Laurinda Spear, advertising mavens Elaine Silverstein and Rick Barrow, condo sales gurus Craig Studnicky and Phil Spiegel-man, BridgeHouse CEO Amy Turkel and the master of the Design District, Craig Robins. But the guests of honor are two lanky gentlemen who names are legendary in the world of computing and the Internet: Jim Clark and Tom "T.J." Jermoluk.

Clark is the founder of Silicon Graphics, the company that launched the 3-D animation revolution (think all those Dinosaurs on Jurassic Park) way back in the 1980s; Jermoluk ran the company. Thirteen years later Clark helped found Netscape Communications, which commercialized the browser system that helped create the modem World Wide Web (Netscape was sold to AOL in 1999 for $10 billion).

Clark and Jermoluk are here to tout Blue, the sinewy Arquitectonica-designed building that will rise between the two legs -- eastbound and westbound -- of 1-195 as it turns into the Tuttle. Call it coming down to earth, or the ultimate clicks-to-bricks: Blue is the opening salvo in what Clark and Jermoluk promise will be a long campaign to create a new city in the urban "palette" of Miami, as their mission statement reads.

The two men, slender and tanned, have the rugged look of southern California surfers. They mingle easily with Miami's design and building elite, surprisingly laid-back and affable considering their enormous wealth and importance vis-a-vis the history of modem computers and the Internet. After a brief introduction, Jermoluk takes the microphone and begins to joke. "Jim Clark and I have been in business for 20 years, which is amazing since I'm only 28," he says, to which Clark chimes in "And I'm his younger brother." Well, even billionaires can't help being swayed by the culture of youth, especially with naked blue women parading through the crowd.

Jermoluk tells everybody that Blue will be their first project here, but that four or five more projects are coming right behind it. He then hands the microphone to Arquitectonica's Fort-Brescia, who tells the audience how excited his firm is with the design of the project, especially in such a landmark location. "Seldom do I have a site like this, which is a gateway between two cities!" he says. Then the boys from California pose with Fort-Brescia and the brick-and-mortar brains of their operation -- local builder Paul Murphy; Jermoluk, clearly enjoying himself, hams it up. These two former Silicon Valley legends are now celebrities of sorts, and enjoying every minute of it.

From Silicon Valley to South Florida

So how did two Internet giants end up in South Florida, partnering with a quiet local builder? Actually, Jermoluk, having moved on from Silicon Graphics and a later stint running broadband Internet service/content provider Excite@Home, has been in New York for a couple of years now, working as a general partner of venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caulfield & Byers. Like a lot of New Yorkers, he feels at home here, maybe more so. "Miami to me is very reminiscent of where I grew up, in Hawaii," he says. "It's very multicultural. Also, Hawaii is the gateway to the Pacific," in much the same way Miami is the gateway to Latin America.

And Clark, though still an investor in a number of tech-related startups, has been spending most of his time lately on philanthropic and other pursuits. "I have plenty to do that's not about work," he says. With homes in several cities, he established his main base in Palm Beach a few years ago. He's happy to be doing something different somewhere else than California. "Silicon Valley is depressing right now," he says. "Miami is really one of the most dynamic places in the country."