Live where the mayor works? Fort Lauderdale might add workforce housing to new City Hall
Affordable apartments are hard to come by in Fort Lauderdale, where the median rent is
$3,000, according to Zillow. With that in mind, residents have asked for affordable and workforce housing to be added to construction plans for
Fort Lauderdale’s new City Hall.
A year ago, the Fort Lauderdale City Commission agreed to relocate government operations after heavy storms last spring caused extensive damage to the existing City Hall at 100 N. Andrews Ave. The building, built in the 1960s, had extensive damage to the electrical and HVAC systems, the Miami Herald reported.
Since then, city employees have been spread across two buildings downtown, with the City Commission working out of a building at the corner of Andrews Street and East Broward Boulevard and city workers in the former Uniform Advantage building on Northeast Third Avenue.
For the past five months, the city’s Infrastructure Task Force Advisory Committee has solicited feedback from city employees and residents on what they envision for the new City Hall, which has a proposed budget of $200 million. The sessions yielded various recommendations, including wanting City Hall to stay downtown and to include an affordable-housing component.
While it would be a new concept in South Florida, other municipalities in the state and elsewhere have discussed or moved forward with plans to build housing for government workers on site. Last week, Sarasota approved a $7 million land purchase across from City Hall to build two, 12-story towers with 192 workforce units, WFLA reported.
Other cities outside of Florida have taken similar steps. In Georgia, developers are building workforce housing near Atlanta City Hall, according to the Atlanta Business Chronicle. Last year, residents in Rossland, British Columbia, moved
THE CHAIR OF AN INFRASTRUCTURE ADVISORY COMMITTEE SAID THERE IS A ‘GENERAL THIRST’ FOR AFFORDABLE HOUSING, BUT BUILDING IT AS PART OF CITY HALL WON’T FILL THE OVERALL NEED.