West Palm Beach October 2026

O C T O B E R 2 0 2 6 | W E S T PA L M B E A C H 5 M ost people think economic development means landing the big announcement. Half our job is quieter than that. It is keeping the companies already here and assisting them with a myriad of resources to grow. Every year, my team sits down with 200 local employers and asks a simple question: what is standing in the way of your growth here? The answers are rarely dramatic. They need access to talent. They cannot find the right space. A permit is stuck. They do not know which person at the city or the college to call. Left alone, none of those problems make the news. MyFreightWorld is what it looks like when we catch one in time. The logistics company is expanding in West Palm Beach, adding 41 jobs at an average income of $94,000, taking 7,296 square feet of office space, and expecting to manage 25,000 shipments a year. We helped them work through expedited permitting with the City of West Palm Beach and connected them to CareerSource Palm Beach County for hiring. That growth stayed here. Retention work does not compete with recruiting the industries of the future. It pays for it. D-Wave Quantum is moving its corporate headquarters from Palo Alto to Boca Raton. Florida Atlantic University committed $20 million to acquire the company's Advantage2 quantum computing system. Palm Beach State College is standing up a new Quantum Innovation Center. Three separate institutions, one bet, placed here rather than in Massachusetts or California. Quantum computing will change how companies solve problems in logistics, medicine, financial services, manufacturing and national security. Building that capacity in the Palm Beaches does three things at once: it gives researchers a reason to come, it gives related companies a reason to follow, and it puts Palm Beach County students in front of careers that barely existed ten years ago. Over the past five years, this work has brought more than $1 billion in capital investment to Palm Beach County through retention, expansion, and relocation. The capital is the part that shows up in a report. What does not show up is what these executives do once they are here. They join boards, coach teams, fund scholarships, and write checks to the nonprofits that hold this county together. They are not passing through. Their children go to school here, and they have every reason to want this place to work. - Submitted by Kelly Smallridge, President and CEO, Business Development Board of Palm Beach County - - Photos provided by the Business Development Board - COMMUNITY OurMostValuable Client is the CompanyAlready Here Photo Credit: Jason Nuttle