There’s a new flower blossoming in Miami’s cultural bouquet, and its effect is far-reaching. Just how far? Economics professor Michael Connolly can tell you. He has conducted an economic impact analysis of the Miami Performing Arts Center, the nearly completed home of the Concert Association of Florida, Miami City Ballet, and Florida Grand Opera.

It has been 20 years since community leaders first planted the seed for a facility that would centralize Miami’s rapidly growing cultural arts endeavors in a downtown location. Opening this fall, the Miami Performing Arts Center is now the largest public-private partnership ever undertaken by Miami-Dade County. Executives at the center last year asked the University of Miami to recommend a faculty expert who could quantify the center’s direct and indirect benefits to the city and county in terms of generating employment, real estate development, commerce, and tax revenues. Connolly accepted the task.

“I have done a number of other large projects like this, and I think it’s my best effort yet,” says Connolly, who was a visiting professor at Duke University while on sabbatical from the School of Business Administration last semester.

Economic impact studies, often required by cities and counties for large-scale development, give these projects a “raison d’être—a reason for being,” Connolly explains. “But in the case of the Performing Arts Center, there’s a lot more it brings to the table than just economic impact. In some sense, it will be the soul of Miami.”

Coauthored by Duan Peng, an economics Ph.D. candidate in the UM School of Business Administration, the analysis demonstrates huge benefits to local government, businesses, and residents from the construction and ongoing operation of the Performing Arts Center. Among the data are an estimated $82 million in income and 636 jobs generated by the center every year. Most of this projected income and employment relates to increases in tourism, but new real estate development and increased property values in the downtown area are other anticipated pearls of the center.

Connolly is enthusiastic about the work he has done and the role he plays in community development. “I take great pride in being an academic economist, but I also think we have a duty to get our hands dirty with applied empirical work that helps the University and its partners.”