| |
Renaissance of Fort Lauderdale neighborhood aims to attract young, hip By Lisa J. Huriash
Staff Writer
Posted June 4 2004
FORT LAUDERDALE -- He's chomping on a cigar, reclining on the fourth-story deck of a downtown loft, the excitement of the city laid out for him below.
This eligible bachelor said it's worth the pretty penny to be one of the pioneer young professionals to move into the newly renamed Flagler Village neighborhood, just north of downtown between the Florida East Coast tracks and Federal Highway.
It's a renaissance that is being driven by the development or construction of nearly a dozen loft, apartment and townhouse projects.
"This is the place to be," said Curt Ray, 36, who works out of his one-bedroom, 1,200-square-foot loft-style home on North Andrews Avenue. "If you're a single person like I am, [this is the place] to meet new people. It's being in the middle of it all." It wasn't always so.
For years, residents and landowners complained that the neighborhood was riddled with small lots, absent owners, lack of funds and political indifference. Records from a Downtown Development Authority workshop in 1989 say the area was "characterized by a transient population, lack of property maintenance, code violations."
By 1993, the neighborhood was still nothing more than a hodgepodge of new office buildings and downtown workers mixed with heavy crime, empty lots, and rundown homes and apartment buildings, but residents were starting to push for a modern "urban village" in the 160-acre neighborhood.
Years ago "you didn't have people who were willing to come into the downtown area," said Jeff Kahn, manager of Davie Ledbetter Inc. Real Estate in Fort Lauderdale. "Developers were afraid to build there because they thought no one would come. What's happening is the people who are moving into the neighborhood are no longer looking into the neighborhood that was, but the neighborhood that will be. You may still have to drive by an auto repair place, but once you pull in the door, it gives you an environment that you feel comfortable in, that you feel safe in, that you can call home."
Ray, who earns $225,000 a year as a mortgage broker, is renting his unit at Avenue Lofts from a friend, but he is mulling the idea of putting himself on the waiting list for the next available home to buy.
"Everyone who comes over here loves it," he said. "They're, like, `Wow, this is awesome.'"
Avenue Lofts is one of a handful of projects appealing to high-end consumers and changing the face of the Flagler area.
Developers in the area who took the financial gamble are now selling half-million dollar homes. They are being sold from artist renderings. Many projects don't even have model units to walk through.
"It was a gamble, more of an educated gamble," said Alan Hooper, president of Hooper Construction, which is building Avenue Lofts. "Flagler Village had tons of potential. The place had been overlooked by developers. It's cool, hip."
This year the community association renamed Flagler Heights as Flagler Village, hoping that "village" denotes a more upscale destination. Last year the city's Community Redevelopment Agency passed an $18.5 million redevelopment bond for the neighborhood and surrounding communities. "It was the first funding of real dollars for the improvements being made in the area," said Peter Feldman, a landowner who has been instrumental in the redevelopment efforts and is a member of the city's Downtown Development Authority.
And last week, the city's Community Redevelopment Agency advisory board approved a $100,000 marketing campaign for the area's new residential projects.
The money for the promotional advertisements, which will encourage young people to move into the area and feature slogans such as "Lives in Overdrive" or "Lives with Vision," is expected to be approved by city commissioners. That action will happen later this summer.
Michael Ferber, president of the Flagler Village Civic Association, said that since 1990, the population of the area has been steady at about 1,500. Once it's built out in 10 years, he estimated, it could peak at 8,000 to 9,000. "Our mission here is to repopulate the area," he said.
"It took all these years to convince people in the business community to invest," Feldman said. "We are finally on our way. We finally started the process. It took 20 years to get the stars, moon and planets lined up to create this neighborhood."
"It's always a gamble coming into a neighborhood that's a little blighted," said Brien Mastriana, developer of the proposed Bamboo Flats complex on Northeast Seventh Street. "We have great hopes it's going to become something. I think this is going to be one of the hottest neighborhoods in Fort Lauderdale."
"We want a 24-7 environment, where people can live, work and play," said Doug McCraw, a developer of a proposed project called Seasons on Northwest Fifth Street. Construction will start next year. "I want it done yesterday," McCraw said. The idea is to create "townhouses next to mid-rise, next to row houses next to lofts next to live/work next to garden apartments," Feldman said. "It's the beauty of creating a neighborhood that has a diversity of product type." Residents said they are relieved at the change, even though some renters of some older single- and multi-family homes are expected to lose their homes as the properties are bought and torn down by developers for new projects.
Ferber, the civic association president, has lived in the neighborhood for nine years and owned property for about 20. He said the shift from "slum and blight" to new development housing "urban sophisticates" is a renaissance.
"For folks like myself, we believed ultimately you'd have a unique neighborhood here," he said. "It's taken many years to see it come to pass. We've always had a vision of an authentic urban neighborhood.
"The desire amongst folks who find the suburbs boring and sterile, ... these are folks who can afford to live almost anywhere and are choosing to live here. ... There's no substitute."
| |
