‘Dania is going vertical’
City approves projects above its 7-story limit
DANIA BEACH — Things are looking up — literally — in Broward County’s oldest city, a quaint but sleepy burg between Hollywood and Fort Lauderdale.
City leaders are casting aside the seven-story height limit in place since 2012, giving approval to two new 14-story apartment towers along Dania Beach Boulevard. A new hotel coming to Federal Highway will be nine stories. And the mammoth 102-acre Dania Pointe project is expected to have 10-story twin office towers.
“The headline should say Dania Beach is going vertical,” said Mayor Marco Salvino. “The city commission has approved several buildings that exceed the sevenstory height limit. We’re looking to bring in more residents and bring the city into a more modern age.”
It’s part of an effort to update the look and feel of the city, he says. The projects, once built, will also boost the city’s tax base by millions, city officials say.
For the past decade, Dania Beach has been struggling to usher in a building renaissance. To help make that happen, creative zoning rules put in place three years ago allow builders to exceed the city’s sevenstory height limit if they agree to provide certain incentives, including constructing a green building, paying into the city’s parks fund or building workforce housing.
“We’re trying to create a sense of place,” said former mayor Anne Castro. “Dania Beach has challenges because we are such an older city. We have to go a little higher or we’re never going to get anything developed.”
City leaders have high hopes for creating a vibrant downtown — and it looks like that long-awaited renaissance is finally on the horizon.
The Place at Dania Beach, a seven-story apartment and retail project with a contemporary design, is already under construction
at 180 E. Dania Beach Blvd., just east of Federal Highway. The project, expected to open in mid-2016, has 144 apartments, a rooftop swimming pool, sun deck and two levels of shops and restaurants.
The Hotel Morrison, a traditional-style building with seven stories and 143 rooms, is being built near City Hall at 28 S. Federal Highway.
The following projects have won approvals and are waiting in the wings:
A nine-story hotel at 158 N. Federal Highway, next to Jimmie’s Chocolates. The design and hotel name are still up in the air, but city officials say Dania has traditionally not attracted resort hotels, but rather midpriced hotels that appeal to tourists and travelers looking to stay two or three days.
A 12-story, 352-unit apartment tower at 801 E. Dania Beach Blvd.
Two 14-story apartment towers east of King’s Head Pub at 500 E. Dania Beach Blvd. One tower won recent approvals for 293 units.
Dania Casino and JaiAlai has plans for a 500-room hotel, marina and renovated jai-alai facility.
Dania Pointe, a mixed-use project formerly known as DaniaLive, calls for two hotels, 1,000 luxury apartments, retail shops, restaurants and two 10-story office buildings just east of Interstate 95 at Stirling and Bryan roads. The abandoned wooden roller coaster that towers over Interstate 95 will be torn down early this year to make way for the openair shopping center, just north of Oakwood Plaza.
The height of the 300-room hotels has not yet been decided, said Paul Puma, president of the southern region for New York-based Kimco Realty. The project will break ground in 2016 and may take as long as five years to complete, he said.
The mid-rise apartment buildings and twin hotel towers will come in the second phase, he said.
Why build in Dania Beach?
“It has access to a tremendous market of 1 million people,” Puma said. “The demographic market, the proximity to the airport, the cruise port and I-95 make it an outstanding retail mixed-use site.”
But with progress comes the age-old complaint about traffic.
Jeff Hansen, a longtime resident who publishes the local Cahoots quarterly newspaper, says he’s worried about creating more congestion on crowded roads, especially Federal Highway.
“The traffic from Old Griffin Road to Sheridan is either going 60 mph or it’s bumper to bumper,” Hansen said. “They talk about how they want to fix up downtown Dania. But it’s all just going to be a traffic jam.”
There’s not much the city can do to ease the regionwide traffic crunch, Salvino said.
But he’s betting that most tourists won’t be renting cars. Instead, he thinks they’ll be taking shuttles into town from both airport and seaport — just like they do in any bustling metropolis.
Longtime resident Bill Harris is confident in the future.
“A rising tide lifts all boats,” Harris said. “Dania Beach is definitely becoming attractive to developers and tourists alike. They have a longrange vision of what this area has to offer, being so convenient to Miami and Fort Lauderdale. It’s part of the renaissance of the city of Dania Beach.”