City chooses frills over frugality in $21M beach parking garage

FORT LAUDERDALE — An eye-catching parking garage planned on the beach comes with an equally eyecatching price.

The five-level structure at the base of the Las Olas Boulevard bridge will cost almost $21 million, or $31,460 per parking space. That’s almost double the 2016 Miami-area average of $16,600 per space, according to national parking consultant Carl Walker Inc.

By comparison, the Broward County Courthouse garage came in at around $18,487 per space and a 1,000-space Rick Case dealership garage cost about $17,155 per space, said Paul Kissinger, who heads up the EDSA architectural team that designed the new beach garage.

Kissinger said the city’s garage, which will begin construction in March, will be dramatically different than those two. It will be part of a growing urban trend of turning traditionally drab parking places into stunning architectural statements.

“This is going to be a legacy project,” Kissinger said.

It will feature a $6 million wavelike wrap, including $1 million in exterior LED lighting to make it pop. There will be event space on the top floor overlooking the Intracoastal Waterway, and trams will take visitors from the garage to a new plaza across from the beach.

The goal is to create a signature entranceway to the beach and spur upscale redevelopment. The garage is part of a larger $49.4 million beach project that when completed in two years will create a festival street and two new parks along Las Olas Boulevard.

While some critics have lambasted the cost, Commissioner Bruce Roberts said it’s worth the money to give the building a wow factor.

“We want to make it aesthetically pleasing to the immediate neighborhood, but also to people who visit the beach,” Roberts said. “I think the lighting is going to set it apart from everything else, quite frankly.”

Miami Beach already has made a name for itself with its “starchitectural” mixeduse garages —including the $65 million, 300-space, 1111 Lincoln Road garage designed by Herzog & de Meuron.

Another is the $40 million, 500-space Park@420 garage complex and the more modest, $15 million, 572-space Pennsylvania Avenue municipal garage connected to the New World Symphony. That garage, similar to the design in Fort Lauderdale, is wrapped with a metal mesh panel and has integrated LED lighting.

Pompano Beach last year completed a $19.9 million beach garage, featuring LED-lit sails around its exterior, a three-story fish mural and a glass elevator overlooking the ocean. It cost $32,705 per space — more than what Fort Lauderdale is planning.

Kissinger said Fort Lauderdale’s top-floor event deck contributes to its high cost. It needs extra structural support and takes away room for at least 40 parking spaces that could have further reduced the per space cost, he said.

Beach resident Abby Laughlin said the city is doing the right thing.

“I think we’re going to have a beautiful structure. Architecturally pleasing is something that’s been missing from our vocabulary for a long, long time,” she said.

The garage, which should take about a year to complete, is being paid for with beach improvement tax dollars that cannot be used for routine repairs or to simply replace aging pipes.

But Larry Burnette, president of the beachside Venetian condominium, said he’d rather see the money used on infrastructure improvements that will also make it easier to promote beach redevelopment.

The beach has real needs, he said, including fixing aging roads, pipes, storm drainage, traffic and more. He pointed out that an improvement project on State Road A1A that uses the same funds includes a new water main.

“Your priorities are very, very messed up,” Burnette wrote to commissioners. He said it was “folly” for the city to spend so much money on a garage.

While the city will have fewer beach parking spaces than it does today when the project is complete, commissioners are planning to add parking to other areas of the beach to spread out availability.