Down the road, an ocean view
FORT LAUDERDALE — Wanted: a bridge with a view.
Sun-starved tourists come to Fort Lauderdale for the sand and surf — and that’s what city officials want to make sure they see as soon as they come over the Las Olas Boulevard Bridge, the city’s main beach gateway.
Officials are considering reconfiguring the boulevard east of the bridge to create a
more dramatic vista. Palm trees and traffic lights currently obscure the view as the road heading toward the ocean curves to the left.
“If we do this, coming over the Las Olas bridge, the views of the ocean will be spectacular,” said Bradley Deckelbaum, chairman of the city’s beach redevelopment board. “You’ll get that sense of arrival at the beach that we don’t quite have now.”
City officials came up with the realignment idea after commissioners shot down plans for a four-story parking garage at Las Olas and State Road A1A that some residents complained would ruin the view.
Under the new proposal, vehicles heading east on Las Olas would proceed on a straightened road extending out to the beach, accomplished by cutting into the city parking lot on the south side of Las Olas at A1A. Westbound traffic would stay in the current alignment, with a large median created to separate the traffic flows.
“When you come off the bridge, you would have this huge, grand concourse,” City Manager Lee Feldman said.
The plan also calls for twin three-story parking garages on either side of the bridge, extra-wide sidewalks along Las Olas from the Intracoastal to the ocean, and a plaza-style open space for special events at the eastern end of a redesigned ocean parking lot.
Feldman suggested the city could run a Disney-world-style tram between the parking garages and the beach to make visitors more inclined to park in them.
The changes would be part of an $86 million overall beach plan that also includes an expanded marina, streetscape improvements for Almond Avenue, reworked sidewalks, lighting and bicycle lanes along A1A, and surface parking at Sebastian Street. Commissioners have generally supported the other parts of the plan.
Mayor Jack Seiler thinks the Las Olas proposal has possibilities, but that the view from the bridge is already pretty spectacular.
“If the realignment significantly enhances the overall experience as you come over the bridge, then I’m going to support it,” Seiler said. “If there’s not a substantial enhancement, I don’t want to spend money just to realign the road.”
Planning is in the early stages. Officials don’t have cost estimates, and don’t expect to hire a firm to perform a more detailed analysis until the spring, city spokesman Chaz Adams said. Officials are hoping the realignment can be done within the current budget. Las Olas is a state road maintained by the Florida Department of Transportation, but officials would seek to have the barrier island portion of the road turned over to the city to maintain.
The city ’s Community Redevelopment Agency expects to spend $34 million in property taxes it receives over the next eight years on central beach projects. The remaining money needed for the projects would be covered through grants from other agencies and bond financing.
Feldman anticipates any changes to Las Olas would probably have to get started by 2016. Commissioners and the beach board say they’ll need more information and public input before making a commitment to the plan.
Nearby resident Jack Newton, who lives at the Venetian Condominiums to the west of the city parking lot, doesn’t want the open space proposed for future events to become a venue for loud music attracting hundreds of visitors at a time.
“I’m afraid it would turn our beach into a Spring Break every weekend,” Newton said.
He’s also not sure there need to be parking garages on both sides of the bridge. If two garages are built, Newton would like to see one in another area of the beach, because he said the Las Olas area is already crowded enough.