South Florida Sun-Sentinel Palm Beach (Sunday)
Entertainment village set to rise in Fort Lauderdale
New complex on Sistrunk Boulevard to feature distillery, wine bar, Caribbean restaurant and more
Victory is coming to Sistrunk Boulevard. A sprawling entertainment complex packed with a distillery, Caribbean restaurant, cigar lounge and rooftop bar will break ground next February on the fast-growing neighborhood drag in Fort Lauderdale.
The city’s Community Development Agency on Nov. 16 awarded $2.45 million to developer Victor G. Harvey and partner Jay Adams to build the four-story lifestyle village on the empty wedge of land where Sistrunk meets Northwest 10th Terrace.
At 21,000 square feet, the project dubbed “Victory Building” will employ 151 workers — many from the surrounding Sistrunk area — and be anchored by the Old Sistrunk Distillery, whose spirits pay homage to historical Black pioneers. Its small-batch distillery will pour whiskey, gin, rum and Victor George Vodka, a premium brand owned by Harvey that’s already sold in 44 states and markets from Total Wine to Trader Joe’s.
Harvey says he’s already filled out the building with tenants, which include: Lorna’s Caribbean and American Grill, a 2,500-square-foot ground-floor restaurant;
Wine Down, a rare-whisky and wine bar specializing in Black-owned wines; Smoke on the Boulevard, a cigar lounge run by Ozzie Gomez (Downtown Cigar Bar); a co-working/event space called Sistrunk Social, and an unnamed rooftop patio and bar .
Fort Lauderdale commissioner Robert McKinzie, whose district includes Sistrunk, wasted no time voting yes on Harvey’s project during the meeting.
“It’s exciting what’s happening. It’s way overdue,” McKinzie says. “You look at all the other restaurants on the corridor, like Sistrunk Marketplace and Smitty’s Wings — they’re busting at the seams. It shows that the wave of redevelopment has tipped over to the west side of the city.”
The complex marks one of the biggest redevelopment projects to hit the Sistrunk corridor, as Fort Lauderdale continues doling out millions in public subsidies to fuel the building spree. Which means there are strings attached: Under the agreement, Harvey must first buy the CRA-owned land at 1017 Sistrunk Blvd. and 606 NW 10th Terrace for $450,000 to get the $2.45 million taxpayer-funded forgivable loan.
Harvey says he plans to do so by December. The total project will cost between $4.5 and $5 million and construction will last 14 months, with Victory Building debuting by late-summer 2023.
“It’s been a long time coming with this pandemic craziness, but we finally got there,” Harvey, of Fort Lauderdale, says of Victory Building. “We’re offering a more upscale dining and drinking experience with a focus on hiring within Sistrunk, while exposing people to Black-owned brands and businesses.”
Harvey describes the Sistrunk area as a neighborhood rich with Black history but still modernizing. Like new developments next-door in FAT Village, his food-and-drink hub can drive young people to the boulevard.
“There are people who grew up in Sistrunk and left the area for somewhere nicer, like Plantation or Davie,” says Harvey, a former Miami rapperturned-hotel entrepreneur. “But when we get these types of buildings done, they start to think, ‘Hey, these are nice over here, let’s move back.’ Sistrunk has an identity going back to the 1930s and 1940s. We need to show it in a modern light.”
The Old Sistrunk Distillery is not to be confused with Sistrunk Marketplace, an unrelated but no less ambitious food hall and distillery a half-mile east of Harvey’s planned complex. Nor should it be confused with “My House” rapper Flo Rida’s distillery partnership with Harvey that wound up falling apart during the pandemic, he says. That celebrity-fueled project, first proposed in 2019 on empty land Harvey owns across the street, never happened after Flo Rida pulled out as its “brand ambassador.”
“He got other opportunities come up, and that’s what it was,” Harvey says. Now that land will be transformed into a 24-space parking lot serving the Victory Building.
Along with bottling Victor George Vodka, Harvey’s 1,500-square-foot distillery will feature an American oak barrel-aged bourbon called Fort Mose (pronounced Mo-Zay), named after the first free Black town in the United States two miles north of St. Augustine. There is also a rye whiskey called Pullman Porters, named after freed slaves hired by railroad companies to work on sleeper cars following the American Civil War. Harvey, whose stills currently operate in New Port Richey, will be relocated when the distillery opens.
Harvey says the neighborhoods north and south of Sistrunk, such as Dorsey-Riverbend, fully support the lifestyle complex. But not everyone agrees: In a letter to city commissioners last March Tara Chadwick, president of the Home
Beautiful Park Civic Association, balked at the Victory Building, arguing that a neighborhood distillery “is not going to be good for us.”
“Do we not have enough shops that sell alcohol?” Chadwick wrote of her neighborhood, which she says consists mainly of elderly and disabled residents. “We need a movie theater to go to with the grandchildren and a place to go to socialize and listen to singers.”
Harvey, for his part, says locals are clamoring for food and drink. Victory Building also will be a family-run outfit. His son Victor Jr., a chef-intraining at Florida Atlantic University, will handle the building’s catering when he graduates in late 2022. His daughter Jolyn, who lives in Sistrunk, will manage Victory’s day-to-day operations.
The family element of Harvey’s project appealed to Matari Bodie, who’s adding a second location of his Miami Gardens restaurant Lorna’s Caribbean & American Grill. Named after his mother and featuring her Bahamian-Jamaican recipes, the restaurant serves brown stew chicken, chicken wings, oxtail and goat curry.
“[Victor’s] doing an amazing job highlighting Blackowned brands,” Bodie says. “They’re providing jobs for people in the neighborhood. That’s the key.”