"In the private sector, projects under way or recently completed include the $255 million performing arts center going up in downtown Miami and the $800 million Westin Diplomat Resort and Spa in Hollywood, which opened last month. The demand is such that just about anyone who can pound a nail can find work in the construction industry.
''There is demand for labor and it is getting thin,'' said William J. Delgado, executive vice president of the Latin Builders Association in Miami. ''That's good news.''
South Florida and the rest of the state have not altogether escaped the effects of the recession and slowdown after Sept. 11.
''There are some particularly hard-hit sectors,'' said Dave Denslow, an economist at the University of Florida, ''with tourism and air travel being notable ones.''
An overbuilt condominium market is not the only risk. Developers may soon find that the region cannot sustain so many new hotels, Mr. Fishe, the economist, said. ''Those folks anticipated an upswing in the high-end clientele, and that happened, but there is only so much to go around, and when that occurs, prices adjust to fix it,'' he said.
Even so, Florida has had the fastest-growing economy in the United States in the last year, and developers here seem to have little concern that the pace may slow. Overwhelmingly, they point first to the business in Latin America in justifying the condominiums and hotels that they are putting up on nearly any available patch of land, financed mostly by American banks.
''Eighty percent of all business with Latin America comes through Miami at some point,'' said Ford Gibson, president of the Codina Group, a local development company that is nearing completion on an office complex in Weston, west of Fort Lauderdale, and has just completed a $35 million, 200,000-square-foot office building in Boca Raton for the I.B.M. Corporation. ''That attracts growth.''
What is more, developers see no end to the ''flight capital'' coming from Latin America, said Richard Neve, senior vice president of the Hogan Group, a development firm in Miami that is building the Waterford at Blue Lagoon, a $400 million office building near the Miami airport. ''When things look bad, bring your money north,'' Mr. Neve said the thinking goes.
Though Argentina and other struggling Latin countries restricted money leaving the country, these limits have not significantly affected the South Florida real estate market, economists and developers say. The main reason, they say, is that many foreign investors anticipated the instability in their countries and moved their money early.
Those who did not divert money then have found ways around the new regulations, area developers say. Some, for instance, have been converting their currencies to dollars by using stock brokers in one country to buy shares in publicly traded American companies and then transferring the accounts to American brokerage firms and selling the stock for dollars, says an international developer whose clients have used the technique.
''The stock game is to pull out $100,000 or $200,000 and turn it into cash,'' said the developer, who refused to be named for fear of risking his relations with foreign buyers.
Regardless of how they come up with the cash, the combination of Latin investors, retirees and the occasional U.P.S. millionaire moving into South Florida with money to spend has transformed the region, said Michael Dezer, who is developing Sunny Isles Beach. ''It is an unstoppable market,'' he said. ''All of the major players are here.'' "