Oakland Park planning new City Hall, downtown

Development also to include retail space, 98 apartments and parking

Oakland Park could build a new City Hall in an area it has designated as a downtown.

Comparable with Coral Springs, which built a new City Hall to kickstart an area envisioned to soar with mixed-use retail and rental apartments, Oakland Park is in talks with a developer to sell land to make it happen here, too.

City Manager David Hebert said the city is still negotiating with developer Integra Investments of Miami on the $2.55 million land deal. Once the papers are signed, it would mark the beginning of a $30 million to $50 million redevelopment project on 2 acres of vacant land along North Dixie Highway, west of the railroad tracks, at 38th Street/Park Lane East.

The project, dubbed Oakland Park Square, would include two buildings, one at five stories and the other at six stories, Hebert said. The ground floors in each building would include retail shops. The larger building would house the City Hall chamber for public meetings on the ground floor, and new City Hall office space in the floor above. The building would also have 343 parking spaces and 11 rental apartments.

The smaller building would be an 87-unit rental apartment building.

Between the two buildings, it would mean nearly 35,000 square feet of retail space — the first new construction for shopping anywhere in the designated downtown and anywhere in the city “in recent memory,” Hebert said. “Everything has been renovated, rehabbed. This is going to establish a new standard for our downtown.”

The project is a “stone’s throw” across the street and north from the