With Silicon Valley giving birth to new tech hubs across the country, from Austin to Dallas to Miami, Wall Street is also putting down roots elsewhere in a town most people don’t associate with finance: West Palm Beach, Florida.
The wealthy oceanside community is at the northern end of the Miami metro area, a place that is rapidly becoming the New York-centered financial industry’s home away from home. Finance job listings in the region shot up 122% over the past year, now sitting at a record 4,180 openings, according to Thinknum data.
Those posts include listings for companies like Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, Affirm, Barclays and Deutsche Bank. The metropolitan region where they are expanding includes what is known as the Gold Coast, encompassing West Palm Beach in the north all the way down to the city of Miami in the south.
Sunny weather, beautiful beaches and relatively low taxes are the main draws to the Miami area for financial firms such as banks and hedge funds. West Palm Beach has proven to be a particularly attractive location, given its suburban vibe, charming architecture and manicured country clubs.
Steve Cohen’s hedge fund, Point72 Asset Management, has 11 offices around the world, and is planning to open its twelfth in West Palm Beach Following on the heels of its clientele, Harry’s, the go-to restaurant for Wall Street’s finest, is opening a new location in the area as well.
The biggest name expanding in South Florida is Goldman Sachs, which is planning to open an office with 350 employees. While that’s only a fraction of its total workforce, it means a major influx of new workers to West Palm Beach, some of whom had already moved out of New York to work remotely in the area during the pandemic.
“Once Goldman signed a lease, I think that was a tremendous signal to others, to say it may not be a bad thing to have a presence,” West Palm Beach mayor Keith James told Bloomberg.
Real estate developers are cashing in on the migration too, with at least one company taking inspiration from New York’s West Village for its latest projects. In West Palm Beach, NDT Development and Place Projects are converting a block of commercial buildings into retail, housing, and office space, dubbing the new neighborhood NoRa, for its location on North Railroad Avenue. The idea behind the design is to make New York transplants feel a little less homesick, with repurposed 1920s-style warehouses and cobblestone streets.
Stephen Ross’s Related Companies is the firm behind 360 Rosemary, a 20-story office building at the geographic center of West Palm Beach’s corporate makeover. Goldman Sachs bought its office space in the building, and Harry’s is already setting up its second location there, which will open sometime next year.