By Skip Foster, Red Tape Florida
Neil Seeram just wanted to keep doing business.
Two years ago, his company, Everglades Door and Glass, moved into a 1,500-square-foot warehouse in the Lauderdale Lakes Business Park. He applied for the occupational license required to operate legally in the city. City staff let him use the space anyway while the application sat.
He’s still waiting.
“I couldn’t wait fast enough so I can get out of here,” Seeram told CBS News Miami. So he did. His company is relocating to Sunrise, where he says the city issued his new license within a week.
Two years versus one week. Same business, same paperwork, two Florida cities with entirely different ideas about what “timely” means.
Seeram isn’t an isolated case. Josh Levy, chief operating officer for Levy Realty Advisors and the landlord at the business park where Seeram’s company is based, says he’s watched this play out for years.
“We’ve had a number of businesses that have left the park…for this same reason,” Levy told CBS News Miami.
The business park itself sits in a prime location, between I-95 and the Florida Turnpike, the kind of spot that should be a magnet for growth rather than an exit ramp for tenants who’ve simply given up waiting on the city to do its job.
Another tenant in the same park, Varoon Welding, is caught in a separate but related fight. The city has issued more than $700,000 in liens over code violations tied to renovations the business says were done without a permit. Different dispute, same underlying theme: a city whose relationship with the businesses inside its own borders has gone sideways.
Cities exist, in part, to provide efficient services to those who choose to invest, build and hire within their borders. When a business owner can get the exact same license in a neighboring city in one week that takes two years and counting in another, that isn’t a paperwork problem. It’s a fundamental question about whether Lauderdale Lakes is actually open for business.
Lauderdale Lakes’ loss is Sunrise’s gain. Seeram is unlikely to be the last business owner to make that calculation.