City ready to revive ‘blighted’ lots of vacant land with homes

FORT LAUDERDALE — More than 50 lots purchased by the city to spur redevelopment in some of its poorest neighborhoods still sit vacant a decade or two later.

The lots in the Sistrunk Boulevard area were supposed to get new houses to jump-start a neighborhood renaissance. Instead, they remain filled with more weeds and dirt than grass, with debris often piling up.

“The city of Fort Lauderdale has been the No. 1 contributor to vacant and underutilized property, which has perpetuated the decline ... and the continuance of slum and blight in these areas,” said Scott Strawbridge, a member of the area’s redevelopment advisory board.

The city hopes that’s about to change and new moderately priced singlefamily homes will start rising on the 56 lots sprinkled throughout the neighborhoods, often between existing homes. Once those homes go up, officials hope existing homeowners will do more to fix up their properties, too.

To achieve its goal, the city is preparing to turn the properties over to its redevelopment agency, a separate arm of city government. The agency can offer developers incentives and lower prices that the city cannot. It will be able to provide up to $45,000 in assistance to a contractor to offset construction costs, as long as those savings are passed on to the buyer.

It’s about time, said Commissioner Robert McKinzie, who represents the area.

“We have been doing nothing in terms of putting anything on the lots,” he said.

McKinzie, a contractor who has built homes in the city in the past, said he’d love to see three-bedroom, two-bathroom homes of about 1,500 square feet, that would cost $150,000 or less.

“No one’s looking for low-income. We’re looking for someone to maintain a house,” McKinzie said.

McKinzie is upset the city will charge the redevelopment agency about $615,000 for the properties, many that were purchased using federal grant money. Mayor Jack Seiler said the city needed to at least recoup the costs it incurred for the purchases. City staff recommended charging the agency the appraised value of the properties — $2.3 million — but commissioners said that would make it harder to move them.

Seiler said the Great Recession hampered city efforts to sell the properties.“I have been very frustrated by the fact that we have been owners of these properties for as long as we have,” he said.