Fort Lauderdale to give $3M subsidy to hotel developer

Fort Lauderdale – Hoping to spark more development in northwest Fort Lauderdale, the city will give a developer $3 million in public funds to help build a Comfort Suites hotel.

The forgivable loan will allow developer Minesh Patel to build his proposed Hotel d’Arts on the northwest corner of Northwest 3rd Street and Northwest Seventh Avenue, also named Avenue of the Arts.

The five-story hotel will be walking distance from the Brightline-Virgin train station downtown, and a few blocks south of Sistrunk Boulevard.

Hotel development has picked up downtown, but this is the first one proposed west of the FEC tracks, in the historically black community.

“We think it will begin to catalyze development on Avenue of the Arts,” Fort Lauderdale Community Redevelopment Agency Director Clarence Woods said.

Already on that avenue is a U.S. Post Office and Broward Health’s Cora E. Braynon Family Health Center.

Patel, a medical doctor based in Lake City, is just the latest to benefit from a public subsidy from Fort Lauderdale’s Community Redevelopment Agency.

Nearby, the once-lively Sistrunk corridor is experiencing a rebirth, also aided almost entirely by CRA subsidies. Coming to Sistrunk are a brewery, a housing development, a video gaming center, a wings restaurant and a new YMCA. Also in the works: a blues club, an office-commercial building, and a senior living complex.

Though Patel’s $3 million is one of the city CRA’s larger subsidies, two other projects in northwest Fort Lauderdale will be built with larger public contributions: A YMCA was granted $10 million in city funds, and a housing complex, Six13, was granted a $7 million forgivable loan.

Lawyer-lobbyist Robert Lochrie said Hotel d’Arts will cost $17 million to build, including $355,000 to buy three pieces of city-owned land adjacent to the developer’s land.

Commissioner Robert McKinzie said the hotel has been in the works for three years.

“It’s a nice looking building,” Mayor Dean Trantalis said. “Not your typical cookie cutter.”

It will bring 27 jobs to the community, Wood said, and at least seven of them will be taken by residents in the redevelopment area.

An analysis by Walter Duke and Partners pegged the local economic impact at $27 million.

“A successful hotel operation will increase the confidence of other operators in the area and spur additional development,” a city memo argues.

In other action, Fort Lauderdale commissioners Tuesday:

Cigarettes: Directed the city attorney to draft a law that would raise the age of customers who legally could be sold tobacco products and electronic cigarettes within city limits. A vote will be held at a future meeting. The proposed new legal age would be 21.

Beach Boys Plaza Hotel: Delayed for the second time a vote on a 16-story hotel at 401 S. Fort Lauderdale Beach Blvd./State Road A1A. The 205-room hotel and 381-space parking garage could be one of the last big projects approved before a trafficbased moratorium sets in. The vote will be held June 4.

Settlement: Agreed to pay Paula DeVegh $175,000 to settle her workers compensation claim. She was setting up for an event when a piece of heavy equipment, a scissor lift, fell on her, city records say.

Wave Streetcar:

Signed off on an increase

in payments to outside law firm Greenberg Traurig for work extricating the city from the planned Wave Streetcar light rail project, which the City Commission killed a year ago.

Courthouse: Agreed to look into options for declaring the federal courthouse historic. The courthouse, at 299 E. Broward Blvd., will eventually be vacated. A new courthouse is planned downtown. The federal government is reviewing potential sites soon.