‘Worry about Denver’

Five or so years ago, there was a similar outcry when black olive trees were removed from the median along A1A south of Oakland Park Boulevard, Glassman told the Sun Sentinel.

“But now people love the newly landscaped medians,” he said. “That’s going to happen on Las Olas. We’re going to keep the charm. It just makes more sense. The pedestrians need to be shaded, not the cars in the middle of the street.”

Glassman had this advice for the out-of-towner offering input all the way from Denver: “Worry about Denver.”

The loss of the tree-lined median isn’t the only change that has folks wound up.

The downtown district on the west end of Las Olas was initially supposed to have bike lanes from Andrews Avenue east to the U.S. 1 tunnel. Now those proposed bike lanes are gone.

“The commission decided they wanted two things in the western corridor: Two lanes of travel in each direction and parking on both sides,” Corradino said. “There’s no room for bike lanes as we envisioned. They got squeezed out.”

Another last-minute change to bring back on-street parking in the downtown section also riled residents, said Melinda Bowker, president of the Downtown Fort Lauderdale Civic Association.

The neighborhood, with more than 7,000 parking spots within 1.5 blocks, has no need for on-street parking, Bowker said.

“Within a few seconds, we lost bike lanes and added back on-street parking to the first six blocks of the road going east from Andrews, which is the section in our neighborhood,” Bowker said in an email. “But it’s not just the bike lanes AND the on-street parking- it’s about the process, respecting our voice, and good-faith. We were not given a heads up that these changes were being discussed seriously.”

Commissioners did make a few concessions after hearing impassioned pleas from residents during a spirited meeting two weeks ago. The city will:

„ ■ Agree not to seize any property along Southeast

15th Avenue to add more turn lanes.

„ ■ Commission a traffic study before moving forward with a controversial plan to block off Southeast

16th Avenue from northbound traffic using it as a cut-through to Broward Boulevard.

„ ■ Add up to two crosswalks in the Isles neighborhood in the coming months rather than waiting on the redesign to move along.

Some residents in the Isles were alarmed at the possibility of losing their own palm-lined median.

Initial plans would have narrowed the median or eliminated it altogether, prompting removal of the royal palms that give that stretch of the boulevard its own special ambience, said Mary Fertig, president of the Idlewyld neighborhood association on the east end of Las Olas.

“In the 1920s they planted those palm trees in the median as a WWI memorial,” Fertig said. “Right now they are planning to leave it alone.”