Talk of big beach resort has Lauderdale buzzing
Some worry for fate of nearby Elbo Room
One of the most prominent corners in Broward County just hit the market — the block at Las Olas Boulevard and State Road A1A at Fort Lauderdale beach — with the potential for a gigantic high-rise resort development.
Landowners Lior Avidor, 49, and Aiton “AJ” Yaari, 51, spent the last 30 years buying properties, piece by piece, along Fort Lauderdale beach. They assembled 4.46 acres, with 500 feet of beach frontage, and now are selling it all for redevelopment. A project of large magnitude would have been impossible on the block until now, with it all under one ownership.
“It’s a life achievement,” Avidor said.
“This is the showcase block of Broward County, and probably one of the most beautiful and valuable blocks in the tri-county area,” Yaari said, declining to put a potential price on it.
The acreage is filled with bars, including Blondies, T-shirt shops and restaurants. The offer to potential buyers included a rendering of what’s possible on the choice property: a two-tower complex with hotel rooms, residential units and commercial space.
The project hasn’t been submitted to the city for approvals, and it’s impossible to predict whether a potential buyer of the acreage would bring the project forward, design something different, or leave the block as it is.
News of the potential megaproject, reported by the South Florida Sun Sentinel via Twitter late Thursday, immediately
brought concerns about the historic Elbo Room that stands on the corner there. Yaari said his property doesn’t include the ragtag two-story bar that dates to Fort Lauderdale’s spring break heyday.
“Elbo Room will remain open and a treasured landmark on Fort Lauderdale beach,” Fort Lauderdale Mayor Jack Seiler assured people in a tweet Friday, after someone tweeted, “Please don’t let this happen.”
Seiler added: “I never saw these plans before now.”
Avidor and Yaari’s property spans from just north of the Elbo Room to Poinsettia Street, and from State Road A1A all the way back to Seabreeze Boulevard. It doesn’t include the northeast corner of Las Olas Boulevard and Seabreeze, or the properties fronting Las Olas Boulevard up to the Elbo Room.
The project rendering, done by Jiro Yates and Joy Jasinski at FSMY Architects & Planners, shows two towers on top of a pedestal. Yaari, a Plantation resident, said the rendering shows what is possible with the property’s entitlements — the zoning, the traffic counts, the height potential, and adherence to the city shadow law that protects beach sunbathers from lying in shade. The design has open visual corridors, allowing ocean views from Seabreeze Boulevard, he said.
Development at the beach is restricted by a maximum number of cars that can be added to the roads.
That maximum — 3,200 “peak hour” car trips — is rapidly approaching. City development official Anthony Fajardo said 470 available car trips remain.
But Yaari said consultants Kimley-Horn studied the matter and found that the project would be possible using the trips already accounted for in the existing development on the block.
Avidor and Yaari, a city Beach Redevelopment Board member, have been best friends since age 15 in Haifa, Israel. They put the acreage on the market Thursday.
The offering said the “trophy” property can accommodate 1.6 million square feet of development “on one of South Florida’s most iconic and recognized intersections.”
Some observers panned it.
“It looks like a funky cruise ship that got stuck on land,” Kathy Silke tweeted.
Since the news broke on Twitter, Yaari said his “phone’s been going crazy.”
He wanted to ensure residents that he’ll handpick the developer, and won’t just sell to any “Tom, Dick or Harry.”
“I’m not the regular mercenary developer coming to Fort Lauderdale and trying to make a buck and run,” said Yaari, a married father of four. “This is my whole life here.”
The project, or anything like it, would be a test for the slow-growth candidates set to be sworn in Tuesday.
“We have to sit down as a community,” Yaari said, “as a city, as a private landowner, and look at each other in the eye and say, ‘Do we love it the way it is, or do we want to take it to the next level for the future?’ ”
Yaari said he didn’t show the rendering to incoming Mayor Dean Trantalis and Commissioners-elect Steve Glassman, Heather Moraitis and Ben Sorensen because it’s only hypothetical until someone buys the land and seeks city approvals.
“Let’s hope the new commission will honor their campaign promises,” civic activist Carolann Mazza tweeted.
Trantalis, Glassman and Sorensen campaigned on protecting the downtown and beach from overdevelopment. Yaari contributed to the campaign of Glassman, a beach resident, who said he had not seen the project drawing before now.
The city was rocked with controversy in recent months over development proposed at the Bahia Mar yachting center not far from the Yaari site. City commissioners approved seven high-rise rental apartments, a hotel and six small buildings. But Yaari noted that this land is private. Bahia Mar is owned by the city.