Fort Lauderdale, Florida, has benefited from projects completed using unsolicited proposals for public-private partnerships and will keep targeting their use as a major water project for the city progresses under a P3, Mayor Dean Trantalis told Infralogic. 

The city has seen "exponential growth" this century and has been able to sustain growth in part because it's used its high credit rating and P3s to leverage infrastructure improvements, Trantalis said in a recent interview. The city's population has grown more than 20% since 2000, to an estimated 183,000 in 2022. 

"If you're going to be a city of the 21st century, like Fort Lauderdale, that continues to see exponential growth, young people moving there, a lot of new construction taking place--well, if you don't have the infrastructure to sustain that growth, you're never going to have a sustainable city," Trantalis said. "The city will come to a grinding halt because all the systems will be insufficient to accommodate all the new growth." 

Aside from the much-publicized and ongoing Prospect Lake Clean Water Center P3, which originated from four separate unsolicited proposals, the city has seen a number of other unsolicited proposals bear fruit, according to city officials.  

"We have multiple projects… over a dozen projects that we have used the unsolicited proposal P3 approach, and they've been very, very successful," Tarantalis said. "And so, we continue down this path because the success… is remarkable." 

Some, such as the development of a USD 164m movie studio on city land and the recently approved International Swimming Hall of Fame Project, as well as the DRV PNK Stadium are largely real-estate deals, but provide economic development benefits and make use of city land. But there are other P3 opportunities, Trantalis said.  

Right now, there "are two projects that that would likely be candidates for unsolicited proposals" for P3s, the mayor said. 

Last year, Fort Lauderdale decided not to pursue a shared government center with Broward County but is looking at building its own city hall. The city's Community Infrastructure Task Force is looking at what the needs are for a city hall, and that would be a "likely candidate [for a P3]," Trantalis said. 

The other would be a tunneling projects needed to extend a proposed commuter rail line that the Florida Department of Transportation has been studying, the Broward Commuter Rail South line, Trantalis said. 

"In order to go through the City of Fort Lauderdale, we're going to need to build a tunnel under the New River and also under part under part of our downtown," he said. "So that too might be a candidate for an unsolicited proposal from a contracting firm to be able to build that project." 

After some neglect of infrastructure in past decades, P3s and other infrastructure projects flourished in Fort Lauderdale partly because the city has been aggressive in recent years about evaluating its needs and going forward with plans to address them, Trantalis said. 

"We recognize the need. The community understands the need. And so, we're fortunate that we have a ‘AAA’ bond rating," he said. "I'm glad to be able to borrow at lower rates and we'll continue to make Fort Lauderdale a long-term sustainable city." 

Even when it's not using P3s, the city has been aggressive in using outside sources of financing and alternatives, including the federal Water Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act (WIFIA), from which Fort Lauderdale is receiving a USD 104m loan for flood mitigation projects. 

The city is "Investing significant amounts of money in order to catch up with years and years of neglect, where many neighborhoods continue to get flooded because of heavy rains as climate change continues to impact our communities."