Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Pier Sixty-Six unrecognizable once completed
Company plans to convert 22-acre site with hotel tower, homes, shops, offices
luxurious new community of yachts, homes, shops and offices is coming to the site of the Pier Sixty-Six Hotel and Marina in Fort Lauderdale.
Tavistock Development Co. of Orlando, which bought the resort in 2016, intends to convert the site’s 22-acre waterfront setting into a place where full-time residents and visitors will lounge in the lap of luxury, gaze at super yachts, shop and work in highend retail and offices, and dine at upscale restaurants.
The historic 17-story tower hoA tel, with its rotating Pier Top lounge, will remain, but a 10-story hotel building with two-story pool deck will rise behind it, replacing rooms in lower lanai buildings that once encircled the property. The new hotel structure will include a restaurant, spa and meeting rooms. It will be surrounded by the following.
■ Waterfront luxury condominiums and single-family homes, as well as 32,000 square feet of retail and office space and a public marina promenade.
■ Condos in two 11-story towers on the southwest portion of the site with 38 units each. The first and second floors of both buildings would have space for offices, shops and restaurants.
■ Thirty-nine villas in four buildings, which will rise four stories on the north side of the site.
A dozen single-family homes — four-story houses of 5,000 square feet each — with private yards.
Construction is expected to begin next month on the east side of the Intracoastal Waterway off the 17th Street Causeway. But already, the area’s neighborhood associations have voiced fears that the development will paralyze traffic on an already overloaded thoroughfare.
In an interview Wednesday, City Commissioner Ben Sorenson said the city is counting on a proposed bypass that would run through Port Everglades to help ease traffic.
Broward County envisions the bypass as part of its plans for a new convention center and hotel complex on the west side of the port.
“It will probably provide some form of relief,” Sorenson said of the proposed bypass, which is in its final design stages. The idea is to take motorists off Federal Highway and route them through the port to the base of the 17th Street bridge over the Intracoastal.
Tavistock agreed to reduce the number of residential units it planned for the north side of its property, according to Sorenson, whose district includes Pier Sixty-Six.
Another issue — Fort Lauderdale’s oft-fracturing water and sewer pipes — is less of a concern on the beach side because the pipes are newer than those in areas where breaks have occurred, Sorenson said.
“The main lines on beach side are relatively new and in relatively good shape,” he said. “There are some water pipes that are older, and we’re working on that. We’re doing some right now.”
Jessi Blakley, vice president of strategic communications for Tavistock, said Wednesday the company is spending sizable amounts for on-site water and sewer improvements.
“Tavistock has worked very closely with the city, and we have been proactive regarding the infrastructure issues that are being dealt with across Fort Lauderdale,” she said. “We are putting in all new water and sewer infrastructure on the property, plus going above and beyond what is required, spending an additional $2 million on rightof-way distribution improvements.”
Housing at the high end
No prices have been announced for dwellings in the new development. But would-be buyers should know that the resort neighbors Fort Lauderdale’s canal-laced Harbor Beach and Harbour Inlet sections, where home prices reach into the seven figures.
Zillow, the online real estate service, shows nearly 50 single-family homes and condos in Harbor Beach listed in the seven- and eight-figure range, with condos in the high six figures.
The project is critical to keep Fort Lauderdale competitive with Miami and West Palm Beach, Sorenson said.
“The importance of the boat show and top quality marine facilities is essential to our economic health and growth,” Sorenson said. “We’re constantly in competition with West Palm Beach and Miami. This helps to put us in a very strong position.”
The hotel tower is in the initial stages of renovation and is scheduled to reopen in 2022, the company has said. It was closed temporarily last June for the makeover. The Pier SixtySix Marina remains open to visiting yachts and other vessels during the construction.
Change has pervaded the resort since Tavistock bought the property in 2016. A year later, the company dropped its longtime affiliation with Hyatt Regency, whose name graced the tower for years.
The move came after Hurricane Irma damaged the tower and forced the resort to close for more than a month.
“Part of the roof of the tower [was] peeled up by the wind, and we had some driving rain that went into the top of the tower,” Jim Zboril, Tavistock’s president, said at the time. “That has probably taken maybe 70 rooms out.”
The rooms all suffered damage to drywall, carpeting and furnishings.
Redeveloping the tower
Last year, management laid off more than 200 employees as it prepared to close most of the resort for the redevelopment project.
In May 2019, the city’s zoning and planning board approved what Tavistock calls the first phase of development, which includes the northeast portion of the property, on the north side of 17th Street, where the existing hotel property sits today.
“Our first priority is get our storied hotel restored and rejuvenated as quickly as possible so that it can once again become the social harbor of Fort Lauderdale,” the resort’s website says.
While the tower is modernized, Pier Sixty-Six is saying goodbye to the Grille 66 and Bar, the resort’s iconic steakhouse.
Management announced it will close in May. The 225-seat restaurant occupies a standalone building near the water. The restaurant opened in 2003 and was known for its allAmerican menu of 28-day aged prime steak, inventive seafood and a raw bar.
There are no plans to reopen Grille 66 elsewhere.
The company also has no immediate development plans for the 8.5 waterfront acres on the south side of the causeway, land that Tavistock acquired in 2017. Tavistock paid $24 million for what was The Sails Hotel Marina & Shops site at 2040 SE 17th St.
“We knew it presented interesting opportunities to potentially align with our development at Pier SixtySix,” Zboril said in a statement at the time.
The deal gave the company control of nearly 36 acres in Fort Lauderdale.
But the company has arranged for a “superyacht village” of the annual Fort Lauderdale International Boat Show to occupy part of the tract over the next five years. The village can host vessels up to 400 feet long.
A central pavilion, which was at the epicenter of the show’s superyacht display last fall, remains intact while the company explores a permanent plan for the south property.