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 low-rise, low-stress coastal environment that retains its authentic urban flavor. Plus location, location, location - Hollywood City Report

South Florida CEO, April, 2003 by Rochelle Broder-Singer

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Whatever the rates are these days, says Berman, "New space is being leased as fast as it can be built."

On The Beach

All of the city's commercial ambitions notwithstanding, Holly-wood 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 Broad-walk into cafe, pedestrian and sports activity zones (through different colors and paving textures) and integrating the east-west 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 funding; 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 massive needs in infrastructure."

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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 homeowners who want to live in facilities that are first-class," he says.