Dania Beach looking for new nickname

Town wants to retire “Antique Capital of the South”

DANIA BEACH – Nicknames don’t last forever.

Just ask Dania Beach, a town that got its start in 1904 and now wants to retire the nickname that’s been around since the 1950s: “Antique Capital of the South.”

The city, Broward County’s first, wants your help coming up with a hip new one.

The new nickname will show up just about everywhere: “Welcome to the City” signs, official stationery, the city webpage, even the city seal.

“That’s an old catch phrase that we’re trying to modernize,” Commissioner Bill Harris says of the decades-old antique moniker. “We’re looking for a trendy new catch phrase. It will be part of our new brand.”

Longtime resident Mimi Donly says she’s coming up blank. But a friend of hers had a tongue-in-cheek suggestion: Cement Town, in a nod to the town’s building boom.

It’s not the first time Dania Beach has gone on the hunt for a new nickname.

The town, now home to 33,000 people, once billed itself as “Tomato Capital of the World.”

But when all those tomato fields began to vanish under the growing city, the town adopted the “Antique Capital” nickname. That was in the mid-1950s when several antique shops opened along the town’s stretch of U.S. 1.

“That’s not the image we want,” says Marco Salvino, a former mayor and commissioner. “It makes me think of an old dry relic. And we are the place to live it up.”

Mayor Lori Lewellen described the nickname campaign as a “lighthearted thing” meant to get residents talking.

The mayor says her city is known for its beach, fishing pier and popular ice cream shop, Jaxson’s. But Dania, sandwiched as it is between Fort Lauderdale and Hollywood, is also known for its gridlock, she admits.

The way resident Pat Chukerman sees it, it’s time to lose the dusty old “Antique Capital of the South” name.

“No longer relevant,” she says. “Whoever decided on that was not really thinking.”

Chukerman intends to submit her own slogan: “The Place You Want to BEach.”

But not everyone wants to switch things up.

“I don’t know why we have to keep changing these slogans,”

Donly said. “Nothing wrong with Tomato Capital.”

Here are the rules if you want to enter: The town is only taking ideas from residents 18 and older. Each person can only submit one entry and must do so by 5 p.m. Sept. 30. All entries must include a full name, phone number and email address.

The lucky winner — to be chosen by the city commission — will get two tickets to an invitation-only event Nov. 10 at Tropical Steakhouse, where the nickname will be disclosed and the winner identified.

Send ideas to this link or by email to DaniaBeachContest@DaniaBeachFL.Gov or submit a hard copy to Dania Beach City Hall.

SUSAN STOCKER/SOUTH FLORIDA SUN SENTINEL PHOTOS A handful of antique shops like Davidson Antiques still remain open along U.S. 1 in Dania Beach, which is looking to ditch the nickname “Antique Capital of the South.”

Dania Beach’s nickname has been around since the 1950s.