Builder sues over rejected Margate plans

Developers have filed a lawsuit alleging Margate city commissioners stopped an already agreedupon development plan that would have created a downtown.

The suit, filed in Broward Circuit Court, names the city’s Community Redevelopment Agency, but attorneys said City Hall will be added later.

New Urban Communities’ lawsuit says the city didn’t allow the plan to go forward once new commissioners, who also serve as the board of the Community Redevelopment Agency, were elected in November 2016.

“They solicited us,” said New Urban lawyer Michael Moskowitz. “This is solely a result of different people getting elected who want to go with a different path with their own ideas. Government changes all the time; that doesn’t mean contracts change. The CRA entered into a contract. We have complied, They have not.”

The Margate Community Redevelopment Agency owns the 36 acres off State Road 7 that could have become a downtown of shops, restaurants, housing, a boat launch and amphitheater.

The city picked New Urban Communities to develop Margate City Center in 2016. The plans repeatedly changed, including how many apartments would be built. In May 2017, the plan was scrapped completely.

The city commission complained there were too many apartments — the original plan called for 968 apartments, and the number went up to more than 1,000, then the number went down again — and they complained about the traffic it would bring.

“There were going to be 11 buildings on the east side and the idea it was going to be used for millennials to work and shop and eat and walk everywhere, and my question is walk where?” Margate Mayor Arlene Schwartz said this week.

Schwartz said the downtown project is on hold.

For now, Margate plans to use the land for events with food trucks, art vendors and arts and crafts. The events will happen twice a month — on Sundays, starting in April.

“The city does not want an apartment complex,” Schwartz said. “We could have done that a million years ago. The vision is to have a destination.”

She said the city wants to do better than the project on the table that was approved by former commissioners: “Margate is a pass through to someplace else. That has not changed.”

But she has no regrets about pulling the plug: “Now unfortunately the people who make money are the lawyers.”