What happens when cities fail to honor their signed commitments? The consequences are immediate and long-lasting — loss of credibility, reduced competitiveness for future investment, and long-term damage to civic reputation.
Detroit’s broken commitments fueled bankruptcy. Atlantic City’s missteps drove out casinos. Seattle’s abrupt policy reversals shook confidence among its largest employers. When trust is broken, cities not only lose investment today — they risk their reputation and competitiveness for years to come.
Jeff John is the CEO of Damn Good Hospitality. (courtesy, Jeff John)
In 2022, the city of Fort Lauderdale signed a contract for a public/private partnership to develop One Stop FTL, LLC, a 3.3-acre Arts and Entertainment Park downtown. The development, which has received funding, promises to reinvigorate the neighborhood, generate significant tax revenue for the city, and serve as a reliable ongoing source of jobs for the area. These benefits were confirmed by the city’s own two independent studies on the project prior to awarding its development to Damn Good Hospitality.
But the city is now going back on its signed agreement, a subversive attempt to put the project in default, due to shifting political agendas. Inconsistency, unreliability and back-tracking on signed commitments gives businesses looking to invest in any city great pause.
One Stop is being developed by Damn Good Hospitality, which has 23 years of business ownership in South Florida with five successful establishments and deep ties to the community.
The project is an attractive public/private partnership for the city, with two acres of dedicated green/park space and two buildings — an international marketplace featuring restaurants and private event space with terraces and balconies overlooking the park on each floor, and a cultural center featuring an approximately 3,000-capacity state-of-the-art concert and event space.
Recently, the city has demonstrated a lack of good faith in honoring its signed agreement on One Stop. This lack of transparency and due process included convening a meeting on the project — without notifying us — at which inaccurate and misleading information was presented to commissioners, and that subsequently proved the basis for city decisions.
Further, the city auditor sent out a memo that contradicts a previous letter regarding One Stop’s cooperation in providing requested information regarding the project’s funding. However, city staff never shared this new memo with One Stop or its representatives, depriving us of our ability to respond.
The city consistently imposes arbitrary and vague new benchmarks, including requests for added information under unreasonable timeframes, in a clear attempt to subvert progress. The city has also skirted its own standard chain of command of information submitted by project ownership. There is a repeated, seemingly deliberate, effort to process the One Stop development in a manner inconsistent with other projects in progress.
Damn Good Hospitality has invested years of time and engaged multiple business partners in creating the vision and securing the plans for One Stop. That’s time, effort and cost we would have otherwise spent on other business ventures had the city not signed the agreement to move forward with One Stop. For any business investor, that is a costly breech of trust.
If the city now has a different agenda, great, change the rules for businesses going forward. But don’t risk Fort Lauderdale’s reputation by reneging on signed contracts.
Jeff John is the CEO of Damn Good Hospitality, a restaurant and entertainment corporation based in Fort Lauderdale. For more than 25 years, he has established his businesses as strong and charitable contributing entities within the fabric of the community.
