Lauderdale’s Bahia Mar makeover to take a decade

Seven high-rise residences, a hotel tower, a parking garage, boating amenities and a marine village with a public promenade. Those are just some of the features set to rise on the beachfront site under a plan approved Wednesday by city leaders.

Ten years from now, the publicly owned Bahia Mar acreage at Fort Lauderdale beach will be unrecognizable, with apartment towers, a new hotel, restaurants, stores and marine space.

After years of controversy and debate, developers early Wednesday won approval for a complete remake of the land. Proposals to build more on the former Coast Guard station have divided the community for nearly a decade.

“There are good people on both sides of this issue,” Mayor Jack Seiler said before the first of two votes, at a hearing that spanned eight and a half hours and concluded at 3:30 a.m. “I think there’s a huge public purpose involved. Right now, there no public use of the property. … You pull up and there’s a gate, and if you get back there, you can basically hang out on asphalt. I think we can make better use of this property.”

The plans call for seven highrises with 651 rental apartments, one high-rise hotel with 256 rooms, one five-story grocery-parking-office building, an above-ground parking garage, a yachting amenities complex, a small building that serves as a parking garage entrance, a twostory restaurant, a strip of oneand two-story buildings that serve as a marina village with kiosks and outdoor eating and a 1,900-space underground, twolevel parking garage. A public promenade will wrap around the peninsular property. The work is projis