Coveting the cachet that they see associated with Miami and Palm Beach, leaders of the business community are a driving force behind a move to change Broward County’s name to Lauderdale County.
They believe the Broward name, in place for 110 years, is stunting the economy by impeding efforts to lure major businesses and even more tourists to the county.
Rebranding is the solution identified by key members of the Broward Workshop, the influential organization of top executives from businesses that operate in the county. The group’s leaders are so committed to the idea of moving away from the “Broward” name that the Workshop may change its own identity.
The business leaders’ efforts have largely been behind the scenes.
The out-front champions of county renaming are state Rep. Chip LaMarca, a Republican, and County Commissioner Michael Udine, a Democrat. LaMarca has supported such a move since 2011, his first full year on the County Commission where he used to serve.
The current push for the renaming is moving rapidly. It received its first major public attention two weeks ago and it is on the agendas for two government votes on Thursday.
LaMarca-sponsored legislation placing a name-change referendum on the Broward ballot next year is up for a hearing and vote before the county’s legislative delegation, which includes all senators and representatives whose districts include at least a part of the county.
And a Udine-sponsored resolution declaring the County Commission formally in support of LaMarca’s bill goes before the commission at about the same time the legislation goes before the delegation.
“Now is the time to do it,” Udine said. “You’re seeing what’s going on with understanding where we are in the region. Miami’s like the gateway to Latin America. Palm Beach County is Wall Street South. And we’re right in the middle.”
Champion of the idea
Perhaps the leading evangelist for changing the county’s name is Tim Petrillo, a prominent Fort Lauderdale restaurateur and developer who began a two-year term as Broward Workshop chair in May.
The county is “doing well as a community, but compared to our sister counties, we’re not doing as well,” he said.
In Broward, he said rent for Class A office space is less than in Palm Beach or Miami-Dade counties. Retail corridor rents are the lowest of the three counties. And condo sales per square foot are lower.
“You start to aggregate all this information and say, ‘Why is this?’” he said. “We are situated in the middle. People have to fly over us or go through us. Why are we lagging? Could it be the brand?”
Petrillo thinks that is a significant factor.
When traveling, he encounters people who don’t know where Broward is but they’ve heard of Fort Lauderdale. He lamented that national publications describe events in Broward as north of Miami or south of Palm Beach.
Even marketers of luxury condominium projects do the same thing, Petrillo said, pitching locations in Pompano Beach in relation to Palm Beach County and locations in Hollywood in relation to Miami.
“They’re not using our brand, they’re using Miami and Palm Beach,” he said.
Petrillo is CEO and founder of both The Restaurant People, which owns 16 restaurants, and of Urbanstreet Development. He also serves on the Tourist Development Council, which helps oversee the county’s tourism marketing agency, Visit Lauderdale. And he’s chair of Visit Lauderdale’s Marketing Advisory Committee.
Advertising agencies are periodically invited to make pitches for the business of promoting tourism, he said, and they consistently report that Lauderdale resonates but Broward doesn’t.
“Broward County is not known to people outside the county. Palm Beach is very well known. Miami is very well known, but Broward isn’t. Fort Lauderdale is,” Petrillo said.
The Restaurant People’s Tim Petrillo at his newest venture on the 26th floor at the rooftop restaurant-bar Nube’ at the Hilton Fort Lauderdale Beach Resort,on Thursday April 4, 2024. (Mike Stocker/South Florida Sun Sentinel)
Google Trends data show nationwide searches for “Lauderdale” are between two and three times the number of searches for “Broward.” Within Florida, searches for Lauderdale also outpace Broward, but by a much smaller margin than nationally.
Petrillo said he sees it dramatically in the businesses he’s involved in.
“What really changed my mind about this is we have real estate in Delray (Beach) on Atlantic Avenue,” Petrillo said. “The rental rates we get on Atlantic Avenue are 40% higher than what we get on Las Olas Boulevard” in Fort Lauderdale. And that’s even though there are more restaurants on Las Olas that do more than $10 million a year in business than on Atlantic Avenue, he said. “It doesn’t make any sense to me.”
Another leading champion of the idea is George Hanbury II, retired president and CEO of Nova Southeastern University, former city manager of Fort Lauderdale, and long proponent of the “Lauderdale” brand.
NSU is located in Davie, but on its website and in news releases it uses “Fort Lauderdale” as its location.
He authored a lengthy “white paper” in support of the name change, which Udine had distributed to his colleagues in advance of Thursday’s County Commission discussion of the issue.
The white paper described Petrillo, Hanbury and Walter Duke, CEO of Walter Duke + Partners, a commercial real estate appraisal firm, and former mayor of Dana Beach, as co-chairs of the “Why Lauderdale Committee.”
“At least we should have a conversation about why,” Petrillo said. “Will this be a silver bullet? I don’t know.”
Carline Jean / South Florida Sun Sentinel
Michael Udine, left, then the mayor of Broward County, reads a proclamation to Alan B. Levan of NSU Broward Center of Innovation, and George L. Hanbury, II, then the president & CEO of Nova Southeastern University on April, 27, 2022. Udine is advocating for a 2026 referendum to change Broward’s name to Lauderdale County. Hanbury is the author of a lengthy “white paper” arguing for the idea on behalf of county business leaders. (Carline Jean / South Florida Sun Sentinel)
Opposition
Until recently the idea had been bubbling below the surface.
Udine posted about it last month on social media, generating a few dozen mostly negative comments.
After an Oct. 30 news article about the plans published in the South Florida Sun Sentinel, the reaction on social media and in letters to the editor has been overwhelmingly negative.
“This is one of the worst ideas ever. If Broward County tourism is down it’s not because of name confusion. It’s because international visitors are staying home. I see no reason to change an important part of our history for a marketing move that will accomplish nothing,” wrote George Bishopric of Fort Lauderdale.
Bishopric said in a telephone interview that he is a native Floridian who moved to Broward from Miami-Dade County in 1999. He said the voters’ approval of a referendum to add the name Miami to Dade County in 1997 produced a “horrible gibberish name.”
“I can tell you not one tourist is going to go to Lauderdale-by-the-Sea because it’s in Lauderdale County and not in Broward County. That’s just insane. Please leave our history alone, and don’t waste our money on stupid ideas,” he said.
Others pilloried the idea even more strongly. One post called the proposal “trivial nonsense” and added a brief video of money being flushed down a toilet.
Some of colleagues of LaMarca and Udine are skeptical, though they didn’t declare opposition.
County Commissioner Steve Geller said he is skeptical that a new name would suddenly make Broward more appealing to major businesses seeking to locate in South Florida. Major financiers and CEOs are going to look at factors such as availability of new Class A office space and available spots at elite private schools, and won’t be swayed by the county’s name.
“No one has shown me the benefits,” he said.
State Rep. Robin Bartleman, a Democrat who is chair of the Broward Legislative Delegation, said she, too, isn’t convinced a name change would produce the benefits touted by proponents.
“I still don’t understand how it will help.”
Geller also said he needs to know much more about the potential costs of renaming. “If it’s $2 million, that’s one thing. If it’s $100 million, it’s another.”
The fiscal impact note for LaMarca’s legislation said there wouldn’t be a cost to a phased name change. Udine said it would be minimal, as things such as the identifying markings on Sheriff’s Office vehicles could be changed when they need to be replaced during the normal course of business.
Petrillo acknowledged that “there might be some costs associated with it. But if your GDP can grow at a greater rate and create more jobs” he said the costs could be well worth it.
Timing
The current attempt at renaming is advancing quickly — faster than its supporters in the workshop had originally envisioned.
Petrillo said he brought it up at a major conference in October. The plan was for the workshop to gather information to support the idea, and then pitch it quietly to government officials.
Though Hanbury produced the white paper advocating for the name change, Duke said the workshop was engaged in “a very thoughtful process where it’s inclusive and collaborative.” He said proponents weren’t quite ready to roll out the idea.
“We wanted to do a little more research and get our ducks in a row,” Duke said.
Petrillo also said it started moving fast.
“It went from a study to ‘Let’s act on it,’” Petrillo said. “We thought we were going to start putting a committee together to study this and the whole nine yards, and it just ramped up very, very fast.”
LaMarca, the longtime proponent of Lauderdale County, was operating on a different timetable.
He is entering his last year in Tallahassee, and will leave the state House after the 2026 elections because of term limits, and has said he saw the coming session as his last opportunity to advance something he’s long thought would be a good idea.
Deadlines for submitting and advancing so-called local bills for the upcoming legislative session didn’t fit with the workshop’s slower timetable.
The statue of Napoleon Bonaparte Broward on the third floor of the Broward County Courthouse was removed in 2017. (Mike Stocker/South Florida Sun Sentinel)
Broward vs. Lauderdale
Broward was named after Napoleon Bonaparte Broward, who served as the state’s 19th governor in the early part of the 20th Century.
Fort Lauderdale was named after Maj. William Lauderdale, who established a Fort at the New River in 1838 during the Second Seminole War.
Nationally, Broward County is the only one with that name. There are three other U.S. counties that use Lauderdale, in Alabama, Mississippi and Tennessee.
The Broward Workshop, established in 1981, has long been one of the most influential forces in the county’s business and civic affairs. Its membership is 100 and 125 top executives from the biggest and most prominent companies, law firms, nonprofits and government agencies in the county.
Petrillo said changing the name “has been put on the table. As soon as we gather our data we are willing to do that.”
Other entities already use Fort Lauderdale in their names, including the Fort Lauderdale Alliance, the public-private business development organization, the Greater Fort Lauderdale Chamber of Commerce, Visit Lauderdale, the county tourism promotion agency, and the county-owned Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport. (The airport is actually located in Dania Beach, between the two cities.)
One idea that’s been floated over the years, but hasn’t happened, is renaming the Port Everglades cruise and cargo port as “Port Lauderdale.” Geller said renaming the port warrants consideration.
State Rep. Chip LaMarca, a Broward Republican, at a hearing of the county legislative delegation on Oct. 27, 2025, at Memorial Regional Hospital in Hollywood. LaMarca is sponsoring legislation that would place a referendum on the ballot in 2026 asking Broward voters if they want to change the county’s name to Lauderdale. (Anthony Man/South Florida Sun Sentinel)
Outlook
Udine said he sees “a lot of positive momentum.”
In recent days a contingent from the workshop — usually Petrillo, Hanbury, Duke and the organization’s executive director Kareen Boutros — has been holding individual Zoom meetings with county commissioners, four Workshop members and commissioners said.
Petrillo said most have been noncommittal. “Some are very supportive. Some are very concerned,” he said. “Most are “keeping their cards close to the vest.”
He counted Udine as a strong supporter and Commissioner Nan Rich as not. Rich said in a recent interview that “it’s totally wrong to change the name of this county,” adding she saw “no reason for it.”
Geller said in an interview he has too many unanswered questions to vote in support of the resolution on Thursday.
As the county legislative delegation, the outlook is also unclear.
The outcome may depend on which lawmakers attend the hearing and vote on Thursday. At least half the 15 delegation members are required for a quorum. Attendance varies, with some lawmakers attending every meeting and others who rarely show up.
“I have no idea what to expect,” Bartleman said on Wednesday.
Political writer Anthony Man can be reached at aman@sunsentinel.com and can be found @browardpolitics on Bluesky, Threads, Facebook and Mastodon.