Las Olas, the grand dame of streets nearing her 105th year, may be in line for a granddaddy of a makeover that will cost millions and take years to complete.
The historic Fort Lauderdale street — 2.4 miles of tree-lined beauty stretching from downtown all the way to the beach — needs modern-day tweaks and changes to make it prettier and safer, say those pushing for the extreme makeover. The transformation of Broward County’s most famous boulevard has been in the works for nearly three years and discussed for at least a decade.
Among the latest ideas: Adding a slight curve to the road. Widening the sidewalks. Removing street parking. And, maybe most dramatic of all, removing the tree-lined median.
“It could be so special,” said Charlie Ladd, a developer and member of an advisory group that’s been brainstorming ideas since the summer of 2018. “It could be one of the nicest streets in the country if we do this right.”
Las Olas, built in 1917, has five distinct neighborhoods: Downtown, the Shops District, the Colee Hammock neighborhood, the Isles and the beach.
Each segment has its own personality with varying needs and challenges, says Joe Corradino, president of the Corradino Group and one of the key players helping steer the design wish list.
A wavy idea
One controversial idea would add subtle serpentine curves to the street for a three-block section in the Shops District just east of the tunnel at Federal Highway.
“The road would subtly curve from one side to the other,” Corradino said. “It gives it a meandering festival-street feel. It slows the cars down. It makes it feel more like a street for a pedestrian and not an automobile.”
The idea is to add visual interest and help slow down traffic from Federal Highway to Southeast 10th Terrace. The width of the sidewalk would vary from 10 feet to 18 feet in the curvy zone, and about 68 street parking spaces would disappear.
Not everyone is sold on the wavy road concept.
“It’s a complicated street with lots of different challenges,” Mayor Dean Trantalis said. “I don’t see us realigning Las Olas to create a serpentine design. You eliminate over 60 parking spaces if you do that design. Why would we want to eliminate parking? We’re already stretched thin on parking.”
Bye-bye median
Whether the street goes wavy or not, people would have more space to walk on a boulevard known the world over for its elegant shops, upscale restaurants and bustling bars.
With the new design, the tree-lined median that defines the high-end retail section of Las Olas just east of the tunnel would disappear to make room for wider sidewalks.
The black olive trees that shade the median would be taken out and new trees planted along the wider sidewalks.
Talk of removing the median led to an outcry at first, but the idea has since gained favor, says Vice Mayor Steve Glassman.
“We’re removing the shade trees in the middle and moving it to the sidewalks so we shade the people and not the cars,” he said. “The black olives are gorgeous in terms of canopy, but the roots are really messing up the street.”
Two sections — downtown and the shopping district — would have one lane of traffic in each direction to encourage drivers to slow down, Corradino said.
“Traffic studies show the road can handle the congestion with one lane in each direction,” he said. “And if you need more lanes in the case of a hurricane or an emergency, you can switch it to both lanes in one direction.”
Benches would be added near the sidewalk in the Isles for people wanting to rest on their walk to and from the beach. And lanes would be narrowed from 12 feet to 11 feet for the outside lane and 10 feet wide for the inside lane in an effort to slow down traffic.
“We have speeding issues,” said Suzee Bailey, president of the Nurmi Isles homeowners association. “When the Las Olas bridge comes down it’s like the starting gate opens and it gets to be like a speedway. The police do send people out, but then after four days they’re gone and the problem starts up again.”
The idea of narrowing the lanes has some opposition.
“I don’t like any of it,” said Ken Cooper, a resident of the Isles who lost a race for mayor last year. “It’s insanity. The whole project is insane. They wanted to take out 72 royal palms from the median between 15th avenue and the Las Olas bridge. They want to take out the black olives. If you take out the median and the black olives, you’ve just lost all the charm of Las Olas.”
More battles ahead?
Sparks are also flying over a plan to close Southeast 16th Avenue to northbound traffic taking a short cut through Colee Hammock, one of Fort Lauderdale’s oldest neighborhoods.
That change would force more drivers onto Southeast 15th Avenue but also protect homes a block to the east from excessive traffic and speeding cars, Corradino says.
Mary Fertig, who lives near the Intracoastal Waterway and is fiercely opposed to the plan, helped brainstorm ideas for the redesign as president of the Idlewyld neighborhood association.
“The most controversial thing they are proposing is closing 16th Avenue to northbound traffic,” she said. “That is going to be a battle.”
Colee Hammock resident Clifford Cideko loathes the idea because it would only force more cars onto his street, 15th Avenue.
“This is not a gated community,” he said of Colee Hammock. “If you want a gated community move out to Plantation. I don’t believe letting cars drive through that street [16th Avenue] is destroying the neighborhood.”
But Jacquelyn Scott, director of the Colee Hammock Homeowners Association, pushed for the closure.
“People use 16th Avenue as a cut-through and it’s truly a neighborhood street,” Scott said. “They want to speed down Las Olas and use any road they can to get where they want to go. If you want a curvy street, have a curvy street. If you want benches on Las Olas, have benches on Las Olas. My only issue is to protect Colee Hammock.”
Commissioners will have the final say.
It won’t come cheap
No one knows yet just how much the redesign would cost or how long it would take to complete, city officials say. That’s because the plan is still in flux, with commission approval expected in April.
One early estimate put the cost at $120 million, but Glassman says the final figure will likely be much higher.
“That’s not going to be a cheap ticket, just so you know,” he said. “We are going to have to explore federal money, state money, transportation money, grant money. Whatever is out there we’re going to have to go after.”
When all is said and done, city officials say the new design will lead to fewer accidents and make the boulevard safer for all who use it, whether they’re walking, riding their bikes or behind the wheel.
The Las Olas Mobility working group — co-chaired by Glassman and Commissioner Ben Sorensen — has met 25 times or so since mid-2018 to brainstorm ideas, but needed help from a team of experts.
In 2019, Fort Lauderdale turned to Corradino Group, agreeing to pay the company $765,000 to work with the Las Olas advisory group and come up with a concrete plan for the high-profile street.
Mike Weymouth, president of The Las Olas Co., the shopping district’s largest property owner, had a seat at the table.
“We discussed how to change Las Olas Boulevard for the next 50 years, from Andrews Avenue all the way to the beach,” he said. “Whatever we do, we need to do for the next 50 years. The Las Olas Boulevard area needs to be iconic and it needs to be done first class. Don’t cut any corners.”
Neighborhood leaders weren’t shy about panning some of Corradino’s more far-out recommendations.
One unorthodox idea would have sent cyclists riding high on an elevated concrete flyover 18 feet high and 12 feet wide that would have been built above the median in the Isles section. So many people hated the proposal, it got nixed early on.
So did a plan for curbless streets and a roundabout circle at Southeast 15th Avenue and Las Olas that would have been difficult for fire-rescue vehicles and delivery trucks to navigate.
Bickering and squabbling
Critics complain that many residents don’t have a clue that a major redesign is in the works. But even those who do don’t all agree, according to several members of the Las Olas working group who admit to tempers flaring and personalities clashing during some of their more heated discussions.
“It got ugly,” Bailey said. “A lot of these meetings got heated.”
At this point, most everyone agrees city leaders are unlikely to halt the redesign after spending nearly $1 million on planning alone.
It’s still too early to say when the project would get underway or how long it would take, city officials say.
The work likely would be done in phases, with crews tackling one section at a time.
The redesign of the Isles section would have to wait until underground utility work to help prevent flooding is completed. The $25 million project is expected to take three years, city officials say.
Critics like Cooper have dire predictions for how businesses will fare during construction.
“This will bankrupt Las Olas,” Cooper said. “If you do that much construction, it will take three or four years. No one is going to shop on Las Olas. And it will bankrupt every business. It appears to me they are trying to destroy the charm of Las Olas. None of it makes sense.”
But fans of the redesign say it makes perfect sense and is long overdue.
“That will be a short-term disruption for a long-term gain,” said Dan Lindblade, president of the Greater Fort Lauderdale Chamber of Commerce. “They’ll do the construction in stages to minimize disruption. We’ll just work around it.”
In the meantime, Commissioner Robert McKinzie has reservations about just what the Las Olas makeover will cost.
“We keep hearing figures,” he said. “We have this astronomical number, and I don’t know what it is. Who’s going to pay for it? Where are we going to get that money?”
Even now, after nearly three years of brainstorming, there’s still plenty of disagreement over what should change and what should be left alone, McKinzie noted.
“I don’t think everyone is on the same page,” he said. “Something needs to be done, but I don’t think it needs to be this extreme.”
Glassman and Sorensen argue that after years of delay, the time is now to move forward.
“Las Olas is our crown jewel,” Sorensen said. “It’s really not what it should be right now. We’ve got to fix that. I’d like it done yesterday.”
Susannah Bryan can be reached at sbryan@sunsentinel.com or on Twitter @Susannah_Bryan
