South Florida CEO Magazine - April 2003

Hollywood
2 0 0 3
P R E S E N T E D
B Y
The Business Magazine of Miami-Dade, Broward & The Palm Beaches
C I T Y
R E P O R T
HOLLYWOOD CITY REPORT
Introduction
M A G A Z I N E
Publisher
Richard N. Roffman
[email protected]
ne of the things that makes the City of Hollywood
stand out among its South Florida neighbors is its
appreciation for yesterday. Most municipalities are
determined to erase their past as they rush into
the future. But Hollywood is capitalizing on its rich history,
redeveloping its beach and downtown areas. Historic postcards, for example, provided the inspiration for new
balustrades and control towers on the Hollywood Boulevard
bridge (right). Private developers are also getting the message. The old Hollywood Beach Resort, which still stands
where that bridge meets AIA, may get new life: a Californiabased film and television museum wants to take up lodgings
in its attached OceanWalk retail center. Portions of downtown Hollywood are on the National Register of Historic
Places, and the beach’s bandshell and handball courts are
among the landmarks the city has protected. Those landmarks, as well as the beach, parks and other natural attractions that made Hollywood a destination in the first place, will remain at the heart of any future development. Says Hollywood Mayor
Mara Giulianti: “We know better than to kill the goose that laid the golden egg.”
O
Editor in Chief
J.P. Faber
[email protected]
Managing Editor
Rochelle Broder-Singer
[email protected]
Associate Editor
Johanna Marmon
[email protected]
Vice President, Business
Development
Marlene Otero
[email protected]
Vice President of Sales,
Broward & Palm Beach
Rosemary Shore
[email protected]
SouthFloridaCEO is published monthly by The Americas Publishing Group, at 200 S.E. First St., Suite 601,
Miami, Fla. 33131 (305) 379-1118. Copyright 2003
by The Americas Publishing Group. All rights reserved.
Reproduction in whole or in part of any text, photograph or illustration without written permission of the
publisher is strictly prohibited.
On The Cover: (clockwise, from top left) Hollywood at night, stretching westward from the beach; Hollywood’s beachfront; one of the
city’s many historic homes; downtown jazz spot O’Hara’s; dance students outside their downtown studio; one of many eateries along
Hollywood Beach’s Broadwalk; the Westin Diplomat Resort & Spa; diners outside a downtown cafe.
COVER PHOTOGRAPHY: SCOTT SINGER; MAYOR GIULIANTI: SCOTT SINGER
Since her first term in 1986, Hollywood Mayor
Mara Giulianti has worked to make economic development a city priority, while giving residents – who are
fiercely protective of their neighborhoods – a more
vibrant place to live.
SFCEO: Hollywood has so many different neighborhoods – does that
make it harder to govern?
Giulianti: Hollywood is a city. It’s all different kinds of housing. It’s all different
neighborhoods. The diversity for some
people is a strength, though not for
everyone. Those people who want every
single roof a red barrel-tiled roof aren’t
going to come here.
SouthFloridaCEO: What has changed
most about Hollywood since you’ve
been mayor?
Mayor Mara Giulianti: We’ve gotten
younger. We’ve gotten more diversified in
our population. When I was elected, I said
I wanted Hollywood to be a place for seniors, but I had children. I wanted a bit more
excitement. … I wanted the downtown to
offer things – it was very dead. I said the
beach also had to be more than a bathtub.
SFCEO: Are you concerned that rising
property values will push out middleand lower-income residents, who fill so
many of the tourism industry’s jobs?
Giulianti: I believe in Joseph Young’s
vision, and he said that Hollywood was
supposed to be the city of the future ... a
city that would be for everyone, from the
lowest worker to the highest on the social
ladder. We will never have a city …
where you have to bus in your workers
just because there’s not an appropriate
style of good housing at every price level.
SFCEO: The city is a leading voice in
opposition to a planned expansion of
Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport, particularly the lengthening of the south runway to nearly
9,000 feet. Why?
Giulianti: Every single report that has
come back from our consultants or the
county’s consultants have shown that it
is not necessary. It’s only the old planes
needed a longer runway. Over 95 percent of the planes that are in the mix
now can fly on a runway that is much
shorter. … And, there is no proof that
the destination would be less popular if
the runway were not extended to 9,000
feet.
SFCEO: So what do you hope to see
happen?
Giulianti: Our message has been, for
over a year, to update the master plan,
the over ten-year-old master plan. Then
we can move forward.
April 2003 / SouthFloridaCEO
5A
HOLLYWOOD CITY REPORT
Sun and Steel: Hollywood’s beach (far left) has always
been a draw, and the Intracoastal (above) offers plenty of
boating options. West of I-95, commercial developments
such as Presidential Circle (left) are filling up.
Eastward
Ho!
The Restoration of Hollywood
In terms of westward expansion, the City of Hollywood has
been built out for years. But the redevelopment of its eastern
downtown and beach area has just started to take off. What
makes it attractive for developers and new residents is a lowrise, low-stress coastal environment that retains its authentic
urban flavor. Plus location, location, location.
By Rochelle Broder-Singer
the changes in Hollywood on a more personal basis than most. As the CEO of Hollywood Medical Center, he’s in touch with
a constantly evolving – and increasing
– mix of patients. The hospital, which once
saw large volumes of seasonal residents,
has found itself busy year-round. Its private rooms, complex radiology capabilities
and orthopedics practices are seeing more
patients.
“Probably the largest growing population of our business are people who have
moved up from Miami-Dade County,” says
MacLauchlan. To keep pace, the 150-bed
hospital spent $6 million last year on renovations, and grew its staff from 450 to 500.
MacLauchlan is experiencing one of the
benefits touted by Hollywood founder
Joseph Young – albeit 80 years later – in his
6A
SouthFloridaCEO / April 2003
1920s-era advertising slogans, which invited
people to a paradise situated “on the coral
shore ’twixt Palm Beach and Miami,” and
even then attracted residents from the Gold
Coast’s more congested communities.
Today that sense of being a low-rise
oasis between muscular downtowns to the
north (Fort Lauderdale, Boca Raton) and
south (Aventura, Miami) is even more pronounced, and one reason Hollywood’s
increasingly youthful population (median
age: 39.2 years) grew from 125,000 in
1990 to 141,000 in 2000.
But city leaders and economic development officials want to attract more than
just a new crop of suburban families and
tourists to a city where “every outdoor
sport and recreation invites you,” as Young
also proclaimed in his ads. They are consciously directing efforts toward residential
redevelopment and new business opportunities, with a focus on the city’s eastern
downtown and beachfront neighborhoods.
Says Jacqueline Gonzalez, the city’s matter-of-fact director of economic development administration: “We’re going to
deepen the opportunities for commercial
development.” Adds Stuart Litvin, president of the public-private Hollywood Business Council, “I tell companies that the
city has two hearts – the downtown and the
beach – and lots of soul.”
All About Lifestyle
When it comes to competing with other
municipalities in South Florida, Hollywood
doesn’t have vast funds to offer businesses the
kind of gigantic tax incentives that some cities
do. Instead, it sells its quality of life – and relatively low cost of living and doing business.
SCOTT SINGER
■ Steve MacLauchlan has seen
SCOTT SINGER
HOLLYWOOD CITY REPORT
For example, Biscayne Productions – a
full-service creative, production and postproduction facility – moved to Hollywood
six years ago from North Miami. Owner
Wes Malkin, whose clients include
Curaçao’s tourism board and Sandals
Resorts, was attracted by Hollywood’s
low-rise downtown, which has undergone
a dramatic restoration and gentrification in
recent years. “I moved here because I
thought rents were affordable, there’s good
restaurants around, and there’s nice shops
down the street,” says Malkin.
Indeed, the core of Hollywood’s downtown is now an oak-lined, pedestrianfriendly promenade with brick sidewalks
and an array of boutique retail establishments that include some of South Florida’s
only year-round jazz clubs – not to mention a weekend green market and eateries
ranging from sushi bars to Argentine parilladas. It is linked to the city’s 5.25-mile
beachfront by palm-lined Hollywood
Boulevard with its elegant historic homes.
City officials are mindful of Hollywood’s unique, quaint physical ambiance,
and – unlike Miami Beach officials who
for years were blind to the lure of its historic Art Deco district – want to attract
new business and residential development
by enhancing the city’s pleasant sense of a
low-density “good life.”
Downtown Hollywood hopes to kick its
redevelopment into high gear with a new Arts
Park in Young Circle Park. Broward County
has committed $5 million, and the city $6
million, to build the complex inside the 10acre circular park that anchors downtown.
The building, which will replace an existing
outdoor amphitheater, will have one
amphitheater and one blackbox theater. The
park itself will have art display space, and
features such as fountains and light shows.
“People [will] come into the park and
not just go and see a show, but participate
in various activities that are not just arts
related, but also fun,” says Cynthia Miller,
executive director of the non-profit Art and
Culture Center of Hollywood, which was
instrumental in winning the county grant.
City officials believe the arts are crucial
to any redevelopment. “When we were
awarded the $5 million grant from the
county to do the arts park, the number of
investors that were interested in coming to
the city of Hollywood and doing development in the downtown increased overnight,”
says city manager Cameron Benson.
The Arts Park is one of a series of
planned private and public developments
in Hollywood. The Florida Department of
Transportation will be kicking in with
projects to landscape Federal Highway
and add a median south of Young Circle.
Also planned is an upcoming widening of
US-441 in western Hollywood, and
improvements to the intersection of
Florida’s Turnpike and Hollywood Boulevard. The city has hired a consultant to
revamp the zoning on the city’s four major
corridors – 441, Dixie Highway, Federal
Highway and Hollywood Boulevard –
with an eye toward creating large commercial or industrial parcels.
New Dynamics
The city administration itself is bracing
for change, and not merely in terms of
growth. “Our customer base is changing,
they’re younger residents, there are more
activities,” says Benson. To make the city
more desirable, and to service the more
demanding younger residents, Benson is
working to improve morale and implement
customer service enhancement programs
throughout the city’s 1,500-person workforce. “If our theme is economic development, then the types of services we provide should be geared toward economic
development,” he says.
Nonetheless, the city continues to run
into homeowner and condominium groups
that oppose its development plans. It has
tried to address their concerns with the aid
of a new Office of Public Communications, as well as a budget officer who now
crunches development numbers to make
sure projects make sense for the city
financially.
But, with the city determined to spread
its wings, change seems inevitable in Hollywood. Just as the population has become
more international, with increasing Hispanic, Asian and upwardly mobile
Caribbean residents, the city is also working to make its business scope more international. In late 2002, it launched a trade
agreement with the port city of Manaus,
Brazil, which will bring goods from that
country into South Florida, and use industrial space at Port Everglades and a showroom in downtown. The city is also working with sister city Herzliya, Israel,
encouraging companies based in that technology haven to establish US operations in
Hollywood. If they come, they will join
such high-tech firms as aircraft parts manufacturer Heico and Concord Camera,
The New “Old” Look: Developer Steve
Berman’s La Piazza, the city’s first major
public-private partnership, led the way for
new mixed-used projects in downtown.
April 2003 / SouthFloridaCEO
7A
HOLLYWOOD CITY REPORT
which manufactures Polaroid products.
One expanding industry that capitalizes
on the city’s beachfront, downtown and historic single-family home districts is the film
industry. “We refer to Hollywood quite
often because Hollywood has some incredibly unique locations with a lot of character,”
says Elizabeth Wentworth, vice president of
the Film and Television Commission of the
Broward Alliance. Among the films that
have used Hollywood as backdrop are “The
Hours,” “All About the Benjamins,” “Cape
Fear,” “Body Heat” and the upcoming Denzel Washington movie “Out of Time.”
Local firms that service the industry are
expanding as well. Music composition firm
Audacity is growing from 800 square feet
to 2,000, while talent agency Famous Faces
has upped its square footage to 3,500, from
1,100. The 19,000-square-foot Hollywood
Production Center houses tenants that range
from production company Tel-Air Studios
to PBS and Warner Brothers Music.
Even as it nurtures new industries, however, the city’s largest employers (besides
itself) remain in health care and tourism.
The Westin Diplomat Resort & Spa alone
employs 1,200, while Memorial Health
Care System employs some 4,000 in Hollywood. The 50-year-old Memorial
Regional Hospital, which is responsible
for southern Broward County’s indigent
care, has 680 beds. “The spectrum of services that you find here at this hospital are
comparable to what you would find in a
large academic facility. The only two
things that we don’t do at this hospital are
organ transplants and burns,” says administrator J. E. Piriz, who oversees Memorial
and the on-site Joe DiMaggio Children’s
Hospital. Both are in the process of
expanding to accommodate growing
patient loads. Piriz expects 90,000 emergency visits, 35,000 admissions and 4,400
baby deliveries this year. The hospital will
soon introduce robotic cardiac and urology
surgeries, and will be expanding its emergency department, cardiac and vascular
institute and oncology programs, while
adding more private rooms for younger,
more affluent patients.
SCOTT SINGER
Commercial Real
Estate Boom
Just as its appeal to residents is broadening, so is Hollywood’s appeal to businesses, for a variety of reasons. “We can
attract employees from North Dade, or
from Fort Lauderdale, or from western
Broward County,” says Laurence A. Greenberg, president of 27-employee patent law
firm Lerner & Greenberg. “We pay less
rent, are in a convenient area, and we’re
able to pass the savings on to our clients.”
Local Landmark:
A 300-bottle wine cellar
and cooking by son Fulvio Jr.
(right) keep customers coming
to Fulvio and Carmen Sardelli’s
downtown restaurant.
The Making Of A Village: Hollywood’s
“Funky” Retailers and Restaurateurs
■ When it comes to nightlife in Hollywood, you can take your pick: a café on the
Broadwalk, watching distant cruise ship lights on the dark ocean; wild music and a
belly dancer on your table at Taverna Opa on the Intracoastal; dinner at a sophisticated restaurant in the downtown followed by a jazz performance at O’Hara’s.
Hollywood’s eclectic mix of entertainment is part of its charm, and lately the mix
has been more diverse than ever, especially downtown. While eateries such as
Mama Mia’s and Christina Wan’s Mandarin House have been around long enough
to feel like institutions, the city’s changing population has brought in such tastes
as the Jamaican-inspired Ginger Bay Café and Calabash, and Argentine spots like
Argentango and Bakery Crocante Café. Harrison Street Wine Gallery’s wine bar
caters to an increasingly upscale crowd.
Soon to be added are two new eateries being built by Fulvio and Carmen Sardelli,
owners of Fulvio’s Nineteen Hundred: a 3,200-square-foot pizzeria in downtown, and
an intimate dining spot on the beach. When the couple sold a successful restaurant in
Davie and built their first Hollywood restaurant (which opened four years ago), says
Fulvio, “I saw no risk at all. I knew exactly what was going to happen.” Now, he is further convinced that Hollywood will return to its once-bustling past.
Downtown’s entertainment scene, too, is evolving. Although dance club Deco
Drive has closed, O’Hara’s, Sushi Blues, Pazzo and other venues have created a
music scene that draws crowds from outside the immediate area. More of downtown’s retailers, too, are open late, hoping to catch the foot traffic that hasn’t yet
materialized in daylight. And such events as a green market in Anniversary Park
and a Saturday appearance of Miami Beach’s Lincoln Road Antiques and Collectibles Market on Harrison Street should boost daytime traffic.
Working in the downtown’s favor is the image that distinguishes it from South
Florida’s other shopping destinations. “Funky” is the word used by most merchants, who hope to attract shoppers looking for something more affordable,
offered in a less-harried environment. “We would like to be moderate to moderateupscale … a comfortable shopping destination, with good quality things,” says
Barry Kaye, president of the Downtown Hollywood Business Association, and
owner of optical store Hollywood Eyes.
Entrepreneurs, particularly minority ones, hear that message loud and clear, and have
flocked to the small-town feel of Broward’s second-largest city. “Those businesses
probably would get lost in the Fort Lauderdale or Miami market,” says city manager
Cameron Benson. “In Hollywood, they can find their niche. They still stand out.” And
that, in turn, means a better retail mix. As Stuart Litvin, president of the Hollywood Business Council, says, “We don’t look at retailers as just a part of the tax base. They are
amenities … that make the area more cosmopolitan.” – RB
April 2003 / SouthFloridaCEO
9A
HOLLYWOOD CITY REPORT
From the Largest to the Smallest:
Hollywood Hospitality
BOUCHER: SCOTT SINGER
Prepping For A New Customer: City Manager
Cameron Benson is revamping Hollywood’s services to better serve local businesses and
younger, more demanding citizens.
Hollywood’s funkier-than-most atmosphere is
also a draw. “The geographic location was our
first thought, but what’s happened is we’re making a point of difference by being here,” says Barbara Goldberg of public relations firm O’Connell
& Goldberg, which has been in western Hollywood since its founding 10 years ago.
Now, downtown Hollywood is getting its first
Class A office building: Harrison Executive Center, a joint project between Hollywood-based
developers Jerry Mintz (who owns the land) and
Steve Berman of FIRM Realty (which will manage the building). The six-story, 55,000-squarefoot office building is already rising on Harrison
Street, across from the recently refurbished
Ramada Plaza Inn, and should be complete by
year end. “In Fort Lauderdale, for the same product, the rents would be far higher,” notes Mintz.
If anyone understands the dynamics of downtown Hollywood, it’s Mintz. Eight years ago, he
purchased some 15 buildings, mainly on Harrison
Street. “When I came here eight years ago, there
was nobody on the street,” he says. “My lawyer
said to me, ‘You’re out of your mind.’” He looked
ahead, however, and began bringing life to the
downtown with tenants that included mostly
retailers and restaurants. “To change a downtown
is really an evolutionary process – it takes up to
fifteen years,” he says. “We’re probably only
about 25-percent of the way.” Among his tenants
are noted restaurant Try My Thai; Sushi Blues, a
restaurant and club, will soon relocate from its
space by the Great Southern Hotel into far larger
quarters in one of Mintz’s buildings.
Mintz also recently finished a 50,000-squarefoot showroom/warehouse office project on Dixie
Highway at Taylor Street, not far from downtown’s retail district. Among the tenants in that
90-percent occupied building, where rents top $10
per square foot, are a fabric workshop, a ceramics
importer, several distributors, and some smallscale manufacturers. Outside of downtown,
Berman is in the design phase for a two-story,
10,000-square-foot office building on Stirling
Road, west of I-95. That building is next door to
Emerald Lakes Plaza, which he completed last
year – and which is 100-percent leased.
The city hopes that Harrison Executive Center
is an augur of things to (continued on page 15A)
■ Hollywood’s hospitality industry is concentrated at two opposite ends
of the spectrum: the south end of its beach houses Broward County’s
largest hotel, the 1,058-room Westin Diplomat Resort & Spa, while the
mid-beach area houses dozens of 10- to 20-room “mom and pop” inns.
Both are vital to the city’s market.
“The Diplomat has given a boost for Hollywood like nothing else could,”
says Donna Boucher, who owns the 12-room beachfront Manta Ray Inn
with husband Dwayne. “It has brought one million people into Hollywood
in one year.”
Boucher, past president of Superior Small Lodgings, says that while
the Diplomat markets to meetings, conventions and large groups, Manta
Ray’s guests are leisure travelers; many stay for four to eight weeks. “We
attract a certain clientele from within the United States, Canada and
Europe, who are looking for that low-density feeling,” she says.
The Diplomat, meanwhile, has 209,000 square feet of function space,
five restaurants, a nearby golf course and spa – everything except a beach.
Erosion has depleted most of its sand. Nonetheless, the resort (which
replaced the original Diplomat hotel, closed in the early 1990s) has
exceeded its projections since opening in January 2002. Occupancy was
more than 90 percent during February 2003.
Small hotelier Boucher says Hollywood needs a couple more large hotels at
key points on the beach. Among other things, the Diplomat’s advertising has
raised the city’s profile. “It has already changed our image in the industry, but I
think we’ve only scratched the surface,” says Rozeta Rad, director of the HollySeaside Quiet: Donna Boucher’s
clients love the Manta Ray Inn’s
location right on the sand, and the
European feel of its low-rise neighborhood.
wood Chamber of Commerce’s
Office of Tourism.
Mayor Mara Giulianti is confident the empty “casino property”
parcel at Johnson Street will one
day boast a landmark hotel, but
that is a few years away. In the
meantime, the former Ambassador/Clarion hotel, currently an
eyesore on the Intracoastal, is
closed for a $10 million to $15
million renovation. It will reopen in
December as the Crowne Plaza
Hollywood Beach Hotel, absorbing
the overflow from the Diplomat that now goes to the Sheraton Bal Harbour.
The Diplomat is certainly not Hollywood’s only attraction. Cruise traffic at
Port Everglades hit a record 3.4 million passengers in 2002, and, as trade
development director Carlos Bucheros points out, “any passenger that
rents a car here literally drives three yards and they’re in Hollywood.” And
on the west side of town, the Seminole Indian Tribe has its own attraction
under construction: a $200 million, 500-room Hard Rock Hotel & Casino,
scheduled to open in spring 2004.
Ultimately, though, the key to the city’s tourism future are the features
that made its reputation in the 1920s. “We need to push our assets like
the Intracoastal, the beach, the Broadwalk, and the activities and ecotourism that they lend themselves to,” says beach CRA director Richard
Sala. Hollywood will distinguish itself, says Rad, as an “eco-heritage, historical niche market.” – RB
April 2003 / SouthFloridaCEO
11A
HOLLYWOOD CITY REPORT
La Piazza II
Anniversary Park
(Green Market) O'Hara's
Christina Wan's
Bakery Crocante
Ramada
Plaza Inn
Sushi Blues
Pazzo
Try My Thai
Harrison
Executive
Center
Van Buren Municipal
Parking Garage
12A
SouthFloridaCEO / April 2003
La Piazza
Sushi
Blues
Fulvio's Young Circle
Commons
Young Circle
Arts Park
Mama Mia's
Jefferson At Young Circle
595
595
Ft. Lauderdale
Hollywood
International
Airport
GRIFFI N RD
441
95
Atlan
tic
STIRLING RD
35th AVE
Florida's Turnpike
SHERIDAN
HOLLYWOOD
95
MOFFET ST
N 21St Ave
HOLLYWOOD BLVD
A1A
N OCEAN DR
IVE/A1A
Inset: East Hollywood
"Casino property"
Hollywood Stats:
Hollywood Beach Resort
OceanWalk
Size:
28.8 square miles
S OCEAN D
RIVE/A1A
Total Population:
141,000
Median Age:
39.2
Tax base:
Ha
Isla rbor
nd
s
The Hallmark
Presidential
Tower
Ocean Palms
$7.3 billion
Source: City of Hollywood
April 2003 / SouthFloridaCEO
13A
HOLLYWOOD CITY REPORT
to relocate out of the
more congested submarkets such as Miami
Lakes, Aventura and even
downtown Fort Lauderdale,” Pope says. Average leases runs $25 to
$26 per square foot.
Whatever the rates are
these days, says Berman,
“New space is being
leased as fast as it can be
built.”
On The Beach
(continued from page 11A) come. Trammel
Crow associate Shay Pope says that activity is now picking up at Presidential Circle
on Hollywood Boulevard west of I-95,
where 15 years ago Hollywood made its
first major foray into glass-and-steel office
towers with two 7-story Class A office
buildings. Occupancy is now around 80
percent, and growing. “Tenants are looking
The work week is over.
What’s next?
You work hard, so we’ve made the shopping easy.
Relax in the latest laid back styles from Ann Taylor Loft,
Candies, The Children’s Place, GAP and Victoria’s Secret.
Coming in 2003 — California Pizza Kitchen, Guess,
Rampage and Whitehall Jewelers.
With Burdines, Dillard’s, JCPenney, Sears
and 170 stores, anything could happen next.
Corner of Pines Boulevard and Flamingo Road. 954.436.3520.
SCOTT SINGER
MICHAEL McELROY
Meeting Medical Needs: Hospital Administrator J.E. Piriz is overseeing a $38-million
expansion of Hollywood Memorial Hospital.
All of the city’s commercial ambitions
notwithstanding, Hollywood is still best known for its beach, a
favorite for wintering Canadian and European tourists. It is home to the two-mile
paved Broadwalk, bordered on one side by
the sandy beach and on the other by restaurants, ice cream parlors, t-shirt shops and –
what else? – a miniature golf course. Even
here, however, change is afoot.
Perhaps nothing to-date has altered the
face of Hollywood Beach more than the
$800-million Westin Diplomat Resort &
Spa, which opened in 2002. The 1,058-
room convention hotel sits on the beach at
Hollywood’s southern end; across the
street on A1A is the just-completed Diplomat Landings retail center. The resort gave
Hollywood Beach a jolt of upscale luster,
and a breathtaking entrance point; its
developers also widened major portions of
A1A and set up a new traffic pattern.
Picking up the mantle is Beach Community Redevelopment Area director Richard
Sala, charged with using tax revenues
from the development district to finance
streetscape and other improvements. Taking inspiration from historic photos and
postcards to develop a Spanish-Mediterranean vision for the Broadwalk’s future,
Sala’s plans include moving utilities
underground, visually dividing the Broadwalk into café, pedestrian and sports activity zones (through different colors and
paving textures) and integrating the eastwest street dead-ends into the Broadwalk.
Development is scheduled to begin by
year-end.
The plans are bringing a sigh of relief to
the city. The CRA, in existence for just
over two years, has not yet completed any
substantial projects, to the frustration of
many area residents and businesses. The
principal culprit has been a lack of fund-
www.pembrokelakesmall.com
April 2003 / SouthFloridaCEO
15A
HOLLYWOOD CITY REPORT
ing; the Diplomat, located in the CRA district, opened some two years behind schedule, leaving the CRA with no major revenue source until this year. “We couldn’t
redo the beach because we had a lot of
ideas and no money,” says Hollywood
Mayor Mara Giulianti. “And the beach,
being the oldest part of the city, had mas-
homeowners who want to live in facilities that are first-class,” he says.
The Diplomat is spurring other development as well. At the Hallmark, a
mixed-used retail/office/condominium
located across the street from the hotel,
management company Amicon Development Group is seeing its tenants grow
younger – and its commercial vacancy
rate drop below 5 percent. “There’s been a
lot of attrition over the past five or six
years, which has caused a lot of the apartments in the area to be gathered up by
young people because it was a very
affordable thing,” says Amicon vice president Ross Adickman.
In response, many property owners are
making upgrades and raising rents.
Charles E. Smith Residential spent some
$106 million to acquire about 1,800
rental apartments at OceanCrest Beach
and OceanCrest Club, and is pumping
$37 million into improving the buildings.
At nearby Presidential Tower, Bainbridge principals Sheila Mead and
Richard Schechter are looking towards
Hollywood’s past to reclaim what was
(when built in 1968) the state’s most luxurious rental property. The company purchased the 551-unit beachfront complex
in 2001 and renamed it 2501 Ocean
THE HALLMARK
BUSINESS CENTER
The Diplomat
HALLMARK
Hallandale Beach Blvd.
South Ocean Drive
SCOTT SINGER
Urban Pioneer: Developer Jerry Mintz’s
gamble on downtown Hollywood’s renaissance is paying off, as exciting stores and
weekend events draw more shoppers to his
properties on Harrison Street.
sive needs in infrastructure.”
Other delays have also frustrated the city.
A planned centerpiece of beach redevelopment, known as “the casino property,”
encountered obstacles ranging from resident
opposition over its size to the untimely death
of restaurateur/developer Gus Boulis, who
held the lease (in partnership with developer
Don Peebles) on the project’s city-owned
land. The five-acre parcel, next to the
beach’s historic bandshell, stretches from
Johnson Street to Michigan Street, and from
the Intracoastal to the ocean. The city hopes
to see a mixed-use development that combines a hotel with commercial spaces, and
recently reached a settlement that returned
the property to the city and paved the way
for new proposals.
Indeed, the freeze on Hollywood
Beach’s development is beginning to thaw.
The Diplomat is planning to expand with a
135-unit condo-hotel. Just to the north of
that, The Plaza Group and Avatar Properties have opened the sales center for their
$200 million Ocean Palms, a 38-story luxury condominium on five acres. Neil Fairman, president of Plaza Group, says the
location is perfect for his target market –
full-time residents. “People from Broward
do not like to move south to [Miami-]
Dade, and there is a pent-up demand of
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17A
SCOTT SINGER
HOLLYWOOD CITY REPORT
Drive. They’re spending $25 million on
renovations, and rents will rise significantly. “Bainbridge feels very bullish about
the future of Hollywood,” Schechter says.
“It has the beachfront, it has the Intracoastal, it has this fabulous downtown
that’s being redeveloped.”
In some ways, newer entrants are following in the footsteps of Hollywood-based
Premier Developers, which built Renaissance on the Ocean at the north end of Hollywood Beach. When the two 18-story condominiums were completed in 1999, says
Premier CEO Gordon Deckelbaum, the
average price for a unit was around
$600,000; they have appreciated some 30
percent to 50 percent since then.
Deckelbaum, who’s lived in Hollywood
since 1978, says many of Renaissance’s
owners moved there from other places in
the city, and nearly all of them are fulltime residents. “I’ve developed in a bunch
of other municipalities in South Florida,
and there is something more hometown
about Hollywood than anywhere else,”
says Deckelbaum. “Hollywood is uniquely
situated to blend a new vibrancy while
maintaining a more suburban, easier
lifestyle.”
That mix of old and new is just what
development firm LOETA is seeking with a
proposed project just south of Sheridan
Street, on a city block that runs from A1A
to the ocean. Its plan for a 72-unit, ninestory blend of retail outlets, restaurants,
townhouses and condominium apartments
is structured like a wedding cake, and
inspired by Salas’ vision. “The CRA had
some design workshops as to what to do
with the Broadwalk, but never had any way
of implementing the beginnings of them,”
says project architect Derek Vander Ploeg.
“We’re creating a sort-of prototype for the
Broadwalk. … As other projects develop,
they can connect to us.”
Smaller deals, too, are adding to the mix.
Attorney Matthew Zifroni, head of the real
estate department at Tripp Scott, recently
brokered a $1.8 million deal for an undisclosed client to purchase a small hotel on
Ocean Drive, near the bandshell at Johnson
Street. “My client views the city of Hollywood, especially the beach, as a great
opportunity,” Zifroni says. He’s negotiating
a larger hotel buy for the same client.
Ironically, the beach’s biggest challenge
may come from the sand itself. The sand
in portions of Broward County erodes
quite rapidly, and a renourishment project
that has been talked about since 1986 is
finally slated to begin this August. “From
a pure property preservation standpoint …
our foundations are actually being washed
out on one of our garages, and the Diplomat is having seawall erosion,” says
The Water Lifestyle
■ Although much of the excitement in Hollywood today is focused on multi-family housing, the area has plenty to offer in single-family living as well. Communities such as Emerald Hills and the historic Lakes districts (between the beach
and downtown) are complimented by the gated Harbor Islands. Its 481 singlefamily homes and townhouses are situated on a peninsula that juts into the Intracoastal. Homes in the 200-acre development sold for prices ranging from
$300,000 to $1.2 million when it was started in the early 1990s, but the 40
remaining houses are now selling for $800,000 to $1.8 milBoating Bonanza: lion. With a marina, as well as private docks on many of the
Harbor Islands gave properties, residents have just a 25-minute boat ride to the
Hollywood a much- ocean via Haulover Cut to the south, or even less time to
needed boost of
Dania Cut near downtown Fort Lauderdale. “It’s the enjoyhigh-end single-fam- ment of the water lifestyle,” says Harbor Islands’ director of
ily construction,
operations Steve Knott. “The beach is right here, boating is
says Steve Knott.
right there, everything is in the area.” – RB
Charles E. Smith development director
Steve Sorensen. Mayor Giulianti says that,
one way or another, the sand will be
replenished.
And Now For Trade
Perhaps least known of Hollywood’s
assets are two aces it has up its sleeve: Fort
Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport, which abuts the city, and Port Everglades, 80 percent of which lies within city
limits.
Port Everglades is a major gateway for
petroleum imports and vehicles, and its
Foreign Trade Zone No. 25 offers space for
companies to repackage, sort and otherwise
manipulate imported merchandise, without
paying US duties. The port recently added
45 new acres of container terminal space,
and is considering an intermodal rail yard.
“One of the advantages that we have is that
we do have property and room for expansion,” says port director Ken Krauter.
Most of the city’s industrial space is
concentrated at Port 95 Commerce Center,
just west of I-95 on SW 30th Avenue.
The development contains 2.5 million
square feet of buildings. Building owners
include Pro Logis Trust, with 1.2 million
square feet on 50 acres of land; The Easton Group, with 400,000 square feet of
buildings; Kelsey, with three buildings
totaling 276,000 square feet; and Principal Capital Management, which in February paid $9.65 million for 151,389
square feet of buildings on 8.77 acres.
Port 95 offers a good vantage point for
Miami-Dade companies to expand northward, says Chuck Sullivan, senior vice
president of Pro Logis Trust. “It’s an
opportunity for companies which are
moving north not to make as much of a
leap as they may have to otherwise,” he
says. The real estate investment trust
(REIT) is finishing its eighth, and final
building, which will add 164,511 square
feet to the center. Among Pro Logis’ tenants are BrandsMart USA, ZF Marine,
ABX Logistics, Gambro and Pride Outdoor Furniture.
April 2003 / SouthFloridaCEO
19A
Electronics and appliance retailer
BrandsMart, with 550,000 square feet of
space, became Pro Logis’ first tenant when
it relocated its headquarters and distribution facility from Miami. “We took a map
and we sat down and tried to figure out the
equidistant point to all [South Florida]
areas, and I-595 is pretty much the dividing line,” says CEO Michael Perlman. “It’s
truly perfect geography.” For The Easton
Group – which owns three buildings in
Port 95, including a 190,000-square-foot
property occupied by FedEx – proximity
to the airport has been the key, says CEO
Ed Easton.
In fact, demand for industrial space in
Hollywood is outstripping supply. “The
good news is that we are virtually 100-percent leased [in industrial space]. The bad
news is we have very little land available
for any future building,” says Christopher
Metzger, senior director at real estate firm
Cushman & Wakefield of Florida.
Currently, Hollywood’s last large undeveloped industrial parcel lies inside Port
Everglades, at Port Everglades Commerce
Center. Florida East Coast Industries took
over the 97-acre lease on the Broward
County-owned land in 2000, completing
one 84,000-square-foot building in January 2002. FECI had agreed to build out
facilities that will benefit the port, says
spokesman Husein Cumber, but is running
into obstacles; heightened security is scaring off tenants, while FECI and the port
have squared off over which tenants are
appropriate for the space.
In the end, says economic development
director Gonzalez, industrial growth will
depend on new zoning and the city assembling large parcels to attract developers –
both in the works.
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Finally, Residential
Despite the flurry of commercial developments along the beach and around the
port, Hollywood still remains largely a residential community. In a telling sign, the
tax base remains 70-percent residential.
And with its western suburbs built out, the
only place for growth is to the east, particularly in downtown.
Steve Berman of FIRM Realty, whose
family has been developing in Hollywood
since the 1970s, was the first to build an
upscale project in downtown. His mixeduse La Piazza – 25,000 square feet of
retail space, topped with 21 luxury rental
apartments – opened in January of 2000
on city-owned land across from Young
Circle Park. “People thought that I was
either daring or crazy by trying to do new
construction in downtown Hollywood,”
Berman says. Today, the retail portion of
the development is nearly full; the residential portion has been full since before it
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April 2003 / SouthFloridaCEO
21A
HOLLYWOOD CITY REPORT
opened. “We’ve had a waiting list for three
years,” he says.
La Piazza was followed by Hollywood’s
first large-scale downtown residential project, Texas-based JPI’s Jefferson at Young
Circle apartment complex, which opened
in November 2002. Partially built on cityowned land, the project includes 256 luxury apartments in buildings ranging from
three to seven stories, as well as a 650space municipal parking garage that offers
much-needed public parking downtown.
The city invested some $3.3 million in the
public-private partnership.
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or email
[email protected].
Visit our website: www.broward.org/port
Now Berman is back with another
mixed-use project downtown: La Piazza II,
set to break ground in 2004. The project,
on 2.5 acres of FIRM-owned land, will
have a far larger scope than La Piazza, but
with the same Mediterranean Revival
architecture. “The idea was to take the
streetscape theme that I created with La
Piazza and carry it further along the circle,”
Berman says. La Piazza II will be a series
of tiered-height buildings, the tallest reaching 15 stories. The development will house
45,000 square feet of restaurant and retail
space and 300 condominiums. Berman will
Any way you arrive,
you’ll leave happy.
We’re the only port with an
airport literally next door,
which means fast ship-toplane connections from our
11 cruise terminals. In fact, Ft.
L a u d e rd a l e - Hol lywood
International Airport has more
flights tailored to cruise guests
than any other in South
Florida and is the fastest
growing airport in the U.S.
Our port also happens to be
at the hub of a network of
interstate highways.
Simply A Step Above
22A
SouthFloridaCEO / April 2003
also build an 800-space parking garage for
the city on city-owned land; he will lease
around 500 spaces for his development.
La Piazza II is also a public-private venture, with the city providing incentives that
include a $2 million upfront payment from
the downtown CRA; $8.1 million for FIRM
to build and manage the parking garage; and
a guarantee that if La Piazza II doesn’t make
money, the CRA will pay FIRM $200,000 a
year for up to five years.
Berman doesn’t expect to get those payments, though. He’s convinced Hollywood
is a desirable destination – and he should
be, with his company in control of more
than 1.5 million square feet of FIRMdeveloped and managed properties in the
city, including a 250-unit apartment complex overlooking the Emerald Hills Golf
Course. “When you just look at statistics
and see the development that has occurred,
south in Aventura and north in Fort Lauderdale, people are starting to look at Hollywood and see it as the best bargain
around,” says Berman.
Concurring with that conclusion is
Southern Facilities Development, which is
working on a mixed-use project, Young
Circle Commons, that will front Young
Circle from Harrison Street to Hollywood
Boulevard. Chip Abele and Jose Boschetti,
SFD’s principals, are in the process of purchasing the land, where there is now a
Subway restaurant, Sushi Blues and the
façade of the historic Great Southern
Hotel. They hope to build an 18- to 20story, 240-unit condominium with 25,000
square feet of ground-floor retail and
restaurants. Prices will average around
$250,000 for 1,300-square-foot condos.
“We’re comfortable with demand, and
we’re comfortable that we’ve got a price
point at which supply could work,” Abele
says. “It’s the perfect location to do that.”
The project will preserve the façade of the
Great Southern Hotel, which will contain
six residential lofts.
Meanwhile, just north of Young Circle
on Federal Highway, Becker and Poliakoff attorney Alan Koslow (who also
represents FIRM and SFD) is working on
a development deal for United Trust Fund,
which hopes to build a $70 million condominium and retail complex. Nearby, Gordon Deckelbaum says he has an idea for
“an intriguing mixed-used project on
Young Circle.” Both are eyeing the
expected Arts Park as a focal point for
downtown, and looking ahead.
“I think we are a unique market,” says
city economic development director Gonzalez. “We are not going to be the super
high-rise market. I think that our downtown can support a certain density level,
but maintain our village atmosphere.”