South Florida Sun-Sentinel Palm Beach (Sunday)
Towers will be tallest in beach zone
Twin condos measuring at 300 feet each coming to Fort Lauderdale
FORT LAUDERDALE – A sleek new set of ultramodern twin condo towers will rise 300 feet above sea level, making them the tallest skyscrapers on Fort Lauderdale’s busiest slice of beach. And, oddly, it’s what neighbors prefer.
The towers, at 3000 Alhambra Street, will sit just south of the Casablanca Café, transforming an entire city block now being used as a metered parking lot.
The $100 million project calls for 215 luxury condos and 5,150 square feet of restaurant and retail space.
Projects built in the central beach zone have a height cap of 200 feet. If it’s a hotel, the height cap goes to 240 feet.
But this week, commissioners signed off on special zoning that allows KT Seabreeze Atlantic — an affiliate of Delray Beach-based developer Kolter Group — to build higher.
When it comes to oceanfront development, neighboring buildings usually gripe about new towers being too tall.
Not this time.
Nearby condos actually urged the developer to make the towers as tall as possible in order to preserve their ocean views.
An earlier design called for a shorter and blockier set of twin towers that would have stood 200 feet tall, with 310 condo units and three times the space for restaurants and shops.
The taller, the better is not a refrain usually heard when talking about new construction on Fort Lauderdale’s gridlocked beach. And yet one man told commissioners the new towers could be 600 feet tall and it wouldn’t matter.
That man, Jim Novick, lives at Alhambra Place on Birch Road, a 190-foot condo directly west of the proposed towers.
“If they build a big giant box in front of us, it’s the end of our universe,” said Novick, president his building’s condo association. “We were dead-set against it. We had one unit owner say, ‘We’ll never see the sun if they build this.’”
And so began work on a redesign that would allow for taller, skinnier buildings to preserve the views and create more space — 68 feet and 7 inches — between the two towers.
“Going up 300 feet added the open space and the light,” Novick said. “It improved the view corridors. You can see through the two buildings or around them.”
The old design was square and fat, said Stephanie Toothaker, attorney for the developer.
“We really rolled up our sleeves to figure out how we can make this a better project,” she told commissioners. This is a high high-end luxury product. We took out almost 100 units [to make it work].”
The builder is planning 497 parking spaces for unit owners,