Showing posts with label real estate. Show all posts
Showing posts with label real estate. Show all posts

Saturday, December 1, 2018

Recent Development & Real Estate issues in Downtown Hollywood and in Hallandale Beach, per Whiskey Tango closing, the same empty storefronts year-after-year, and the proposed SLS resort at the Diplomat Golf Course

Recent Development/Real Estate and business issues in Downtown Hollywood and in Hallandale Beach... per Whiskey Tango closing, the same empty storefronts year-after-year, and the proposed SLS resort at the Diplomat Golf Course. What are the city's respective CRAs really doing? 



Updated Monday December 3rd, 2018 2:00 pm
My plan over the Thanksgiving Weekend, besides eating lots of turkey and fixings and catching up on a lot of films and TV shows on DVD while I'm out-of-town in Central Florida visiting my Mom, was to post some cogent and overdue thoughts to my blog about the increasing level of frustration and anxiety -and desperation.

I've been hearing since last year from many Downtown Hollywood Business owners and store managers I know and have gained the confidence of thru my various activities in the area, including writing this fact-filled blog.
Concerned people who have sought me out to listen to them in-person or over the phone or via emails so that they can vent about what they see -and aren't seeing but have been expecting: tangible positive results.
Or to be factual, MORE tangible positive results, and not so much back-sliding and one-step forward and two-steps backwards.

They talk to me in part because they think that the titular heads of various interest groups in the city are not listening to them or seeing things their way, even though the issues are self-evident.
That direct communication is one of the advantages that I've gained over the years of writing my blog and being so deeply involved in so many things going on locally and in the region... For having developed a solid reputation around here for being honest, well-informed, and not being one who'd settle for either mediocrity or top-down leadership "wisdom."

But then I heard this week about Brian Bandell's article in the South Florida Business Journal about the Whiskey Tango on Hollywood Blvd. and 19th Avenue and why it'll be closing, and I'm now sensing that something MUCH more substantial is going to be required than what I planned.
See the back-and-forth between Brian and myself on Twitter here: https://twitter.com/hbbtruth/status/1067513381110931456





Many people I speak with are very disappointed and frustrated with what they see and the general unwillingness of the people in charge to confront problems head-on.
The people I speak with think that some major changes may be needed in some places if the Downtown Hollywood area is ever going to get out of its current holding pattern.

 Specifically, this concerns the direction and effectiveness of the Downtown Hollywood CRA under Jorge Camejo and the various "business" groups in the Hollywood area who sometimes seem to lack a certain amount of hubris or dynamism, and who, to both me and many of the business owners I'm talking about, appear unnecessarily condescending or patronizing to the public and their own members when asked to honestly explain what's going on -or isn't. 

 And speaking of holding patterns, it's just as bad if not worse in Hallandale Beach, where so many residents and Small Business owners have bemoaned to me all the empty business parcels on US-1/Federal Highway and Hallandale Beach Blvd. that were once going concerns, if not exactly thriving businesses. 

 The best example of several? The site of the former Kelly Chevrolet dealership, on the west side of the street between N.E. 6th & 7th Streets, which is now south and across the street from the new Atlantic Village retail area that at least offers a hope that things there may turn around if people give the new retailers an opportunity. 
Above via Google Maps, looking south from US-1/Federal Highway and N.E. 7th Street. I've been taking photos of this large empty lot for the past 15 years... and thinking about all the missed opportunities that have come and gone while the City of Hallandale Beach and its CRA have watched from the sidelines.
Above via Google Maps, looking south from US-1/Federal Highway and N.E. 7th Street.   

This property, which is located within the Hallandale Beach CRA, has been empty for at least 15 years, despite its location just a few blocks south of what was the Hollywood Dog Track/the Mardi Gras Casino/The Big Easy Casino. Why? 
Why is this large property that could be re-imagined in any number of interesting ways that could be good for the city and its residents was never brought up at any of the hundreds of HB CRA meetings I've attended the past 15 years?
It's one of the largest elephants in the room that is HB, and yet nothing but silence from anyone at HB City Hall.It's grating!  

 For those Hollywood Small Business owners and managers I've been speaking with, especially the ones who listen to a lot of NPR in South Florida via WLRN-FM, there's a certain amount of frustration and more than a little incredulous irony when they continually hear the paid promos for the Hollywood CRA on that station airs during their newscasts, talking about the wonders of locating a business to Downtown Hollywood. 
They wonder to themselves, "But where are the tangible results for me? Why, years later, do I STILL have so many empty storefronts near me? What's going on?" 

The SW corner of the intersection of Hollywood Blvd. and 19th Avenue with the re-imagined Mona Lisa mural has been vacant for over... ten years!

Real question: How can the Hollywood CRA keep promoting this iconic mural above which has not had a paying tenant below it longer than many people I know have lived in Hollywood? Do they not appreciate the irony of what they're saying?

And across the street from the mural on the NW corner, above, Via Google Maps, the front of Whiskey Tango, probably taken in the morning before they opened, since the east side bar area was always half-full anytime I walked by or walked in.
And now that it will be closing, what will be there and when will THAT open? And will it be even one-third as successful? 
Draw even one-third the number of people to Downtown Hollywood that it consistently did?

Instead of posting those thoughts of mine today, I'm going to delay those for a few days to add some more useful context, since if there's anything that seems to be lacking in the larger public discussion about what is going on in Downtown Hollywood and the Young Circle area, now and in the immediate future, it's informed context based on facts.
People who DO know things who are either afraid to speak publicly now about what they know or fear for various reasons -including the collective pressure that exits right now for Small Business owners in the Downtown Hollywood area to stay on the same page and sing from the same hymnal.
That includes, of course, NOT wanting to break away from the herd and make themselves future targets of retribution.
But in this as in so many issues in Broward County, especially in Hollywood and Hallandale Beach, we've seen that this adherence to conventional wisdom that is clearly NOT working most of the time, is actually chafing lots of people, most notably, the actual stakeholders actually employing people and paying taxes to the city who thought and think that they ought to have a little more say-so about what's going on -or isn't.

I will have a more complete post on development issues in Hollywood and Hallandale Beach the coming week.

Looking east towards Young Circle from Hollywood Blvd., July 2018.

As an aside, some of you who have not heard from me in a bit should expect to be hearing from me over the next few days about another matter that I've spoken to many of you about already over the past few weeks, namely, following-up with various businesses, companies, medical groups, legal practices, restaurants and hotels' interest in advertising on my blog for a very reasonable price, starting at just $90 a month.
That's a clear bargain relative to what the market is currently charging hereabouts, especially those platforms that charge a lot more and do not have audited numbers, no less.

For the record, for 2018, I'm averaging between 25,000 and 30,000 page views a month. :-)

Obviously, I'm always interested in talking to anyone in the area who'd be interested in advertising on my popular blog to reach the army of well-informed consumers, civic activists and Small Business owners who read it, like so many you, to say nothing of those of you who are actually #influencers, and can't go an hour without posting 
something original and compelling to Social Media that gets people talking.

IF you or someone you know might be interested in exploring this opportunity to differentiate your business from your competition, check out this link and drop me a line and I'll be happy to follow-up with you or them right away so that ad can be up ASAP.

Let's do some business this week and get your product or service in front of the tens of thousands of eyeballs that come to my blog every month!






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Per the article below, in case you can't get your bearings, the aerial POV of the rendering below is of what was the Diplomat Golf Course is looking southwest from roughly Atlantic Shores Blvd.

Naturally, me being me, influencer extraordinaire, :-)  I got tagged in Brian Bandell's tweet, since he usually tags me in most Hollywood and Hallandale Beach development and real estate stories he writes for the South Florida Business Journal. Brian knows from experience that I know what's what fact-wise, know where the bodies are buried, and what other facts and context can and should be added to the public conversation before everything is done.

In general I feel that if something is going to be there with that large a footprint, esp. cars on already#FDOT F-rated #HallandaleBeach Blvd., part of why the Broward County Commission nixed an even larger un-related plan there 9 years ago -the Diplomat LAC plan- that was rushed to approval by the HB City Commission just days before Christmas at a meeting where it did not come up on the public agenda until nearly 10 pm on purpose to cause residents to leave and NOT speak against it -when I was one of the persons leading the effort to fight it- it's a real plus that a firm like @SLSHotels, with a very good reputation for promotion and marketing savvy is going to be running it.
I've stayed at other SLS properties and they are sublime in many cases, my favorite adjective.
They especially know how to promote and advertise stylish places, a word that hasn't accurately described this property since I returned to South Florida in late 2003 from Washington, D.C..
The lack of attention to marketing basics was actually one of my principal arguments against that previous  plan, to the dismay of the Diplomat Hotel's general manager at the time, when I mentioned in very pointed comments before the Broward County Commission -with him sitting directly behind me- how weird it was that the people who owned and managed it did such a piss-poor job of promoting it.
Even now, you can't find a single directional street sign for it anywhere between I-95 or US-1 or A1A and the property itself.
You know that I'm a big believer in showing effort and doggedness, so the fact that the Diplomat couldn't or wouldn't do something so easy speaks volumes for why I've wanted them out
for years.
 🏖️🌴🌊⛳️


The owner of the Diplomat Hotel wants to build three hotel towers and one residential tower on its golf course in Hallandale Beach.
https://www.bizjournals.com/southflorida/news/2018/11/06/broward-to-get-its-first-sls-resort.html

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Thursday, October 11, 2018

Over a year later, where are the positive results of the City of Hollywood's new Vacation Rental ordinance? How's the compliance rate? About what WE expected and less than the city promised.


Over a year later, where are the positive results of the City of Hollywood's new Vacation Rental ordinance? How's the compliance rate? 
About what WE expected and less than the city promised.

 Because I am the way that I am and interested in the sorts of myriad things that I am, and write and Tweet about a LOT, including the #GigEconomy and #Airbnb and public policy, I mention this in case you are interested in some things that touch on all of these things.

 Just got this in the mail today:
Rebecca Stone, Skift Research: The Roadblocks Airbnb Must Tackle on Its Way to Possible IPO: Skift’s Latest Research

As of today I plan on doing an updated blog post sometime in the next few weeks that'll seriously examine and re-examine what I believe to have been the completely ineffective changes the City of Hollywood made last summer to their Vacation Rental ordinance.

Those of you among the public and the press who attended that afternoon might recall that I spoke towards the very end of that Hollywood City Commission meeting on whether to give the city more aggressive (regressive!) tools to enforce the city's new changes to the existing ordinance, after many representatives of the Vacation Rental, real estate and Small Business industry spoke, including Tom Martinelli, Airbnb's Florida Government Relations Director based out of Miami.

 I spoke after people from Airbnb, individual Airbnb or VR hosts and other industry members spoke had the chance to articulate their frustration with the city's refusal to work in good faith with them, to say nothing of many of the City Commissioners NOT understanding that they could NOT simply go back on contracts and MOU's with individual hosts and give the city personal confidential information.

 Among other things I said that it was, sad to say, yet another example of a South Florida municipality putting its faith in the power of a govt. bureaucracy rather than empowering responsible Vacation Rental hosts, in this case, in Hollywood -where I live and know many such hosts- and trusting human behavior, and actually making it easier for Vacation Rental hosts to comply.
A win-win scenario for everyone.

BUT to do so on terms that did NOT open hosts up to what could be unlimited and unwarranted intrusion by city officials (or their hired hands) looking to play gold prospector and recoup money for the city's coffers for its own past failure to have adequate code compliance in place and be able to catch additions made to houses at the time they took place 20, 30 or 40 years ago, rather than try to go after current owners or renters.

 Many of the latter have invested in their future by renting houses in Hollywood that would otherwise be empty if not dowdy, but which are now much-improved by their interest in making it as attractive as possible.

 In many cases, better taken care of than if the city itself owned them, as hearings I attended earlier this year regarding the city's attempt to sell some city-owned parcels proved 
conclusively, when a mirror was held up to the city's owned homes and the eyesores many of them have remained in many neighborhoods.

 It was also hard not to notice that there seemed to be a very lackluster effort shown by the city to go after the repeat offenders that cause a majority of the complaints that are both valid and intrusive to their neighbor's Quality of Life. 

The fact that the city and the person running the program for it, Lorie Mertens-Black, seemed to fail to invite several responsible and articulate Airbnb hosts who were in compliance to speak at their July dog-and-pony show weeks before,

 

Updated: A veritable trainwreck of a public meeting. Wednesday's embarrassing 

Vacation Rental Ordinance Amendment presentation at Hollywood City Hall was 

not a pretty sight by any stretch of the imagination


 gave me plenty of angst and ammo for what happened when the City Commission voted. 

 As we all saw to our exasperation when we saw how my logic and common sense was received last summer. Badly.
After all, there was money to be made!

 I predicted that the compliance rate would be much less than what they expected or had been led to believe by vendors, and would... well, to quote myself:
"As long as the city makes it about meting out individual and collective punishment
and making money via fees, based on what I have personally seen and heard at city
meetings and in conversations with many successful Airbnb and Vacation Rental
hosts in Hollywood, I see little prospect that the city's compliance rate will ever get
much over 40% with the proposed changes."

That's still my perspective as I start cobbling together that new post, and no facts or
evidence I have seen or received from the city of late shows me that I'm wrong.
The fact that this was so predictable doesn't bring me any joy. 

Let me leave you with a sweet teaser of things to come: The city's VR licensing program
is now so inaccurate that it shows properties on its site that may not even be in compliance
any more, since it is accurate as of... Sept. 30th.
"The map illustrates all approved Vacation Rental Licenses that will expire on September 30, 2018."

Why should it even be more than a week inaccurate if the whole point of it is to BE accurate? Also, HOW and WHY would any out-of-town traveler go to the city's website, a site that they wouldn't even know exists? They wouldn't. 

But the city acts like people would do that.

Yet again, completely ignoring human behavior when it comes to this subject.



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Tuesday, August 21, 2018

City of Hollywood's Park Avenue RFP has potential to transform southern Hollywood & SE Broward County, adding a truly dynamic element to area's multi-use real estate devlopements . SFBJ's Brian Bandell asks the question best: "What will the city prioritize, the most money possible from a real estate transaction, or a project that will generate the most economic activity or community benefit?"

City of Hollywood's Park Avenue RFP has potential to transform southern Hollywood & SE Broward County, adding a truly dynamic element to area's multi-use real estate developments. SFBJ's Brian Bandell asks the question best: 
"What will the city prioritize, the most money possible from a real estate transaction, or a project that will generate the most economic activity or community benefit?"

South Florida Business Journal Real Estate reporter Brian Bandell's article is at: https://www.bizjournals.com/southflorida/news/2018/08/15/four-developers-have-different-visions-hollywood.html

 Today's blog post is below the two follow-up tweets to Brian's initial tweet.





This past weekend, while out-of-town, I finalized my, ahem, analysis of the City of Hollywood's five-member Evaluation Committee's initial comments and concerns regarding its very important Park Road site that sits off of very busy Pembroke Road, which is less than a mile from 1-95. 
The four proposals ran the gamut from Alpha to Omega in terms of painting a pretty picture on what could emerge on that city-owned site, a parcel that many of you longtime readers of this blog know from numerous conversations I've had with you over the years, or via lots of fact-filled emails, that I've long believed that it, if done correctly, quite literally, transform that part of southern Hollywood and southern Broward County.
As you can tell, though, I did not get this blog post up by Noon yesterday as I'd planned. :-(

 Also, a few pages of my comments got lost on a memory card that somehow got corrupted -no seriously- so I'm afraid this is necessarily much shorter than I'd originally planned.

 The developer's oral presentations start at 8 am tomorrow morning in Room 215 at the City of Hollywood City Hall.

 For reasons not worth getting into here, I will not be at the meeting. :-( 
But expect that quite a few well-informed friends and civic activists I know will be sending me reports during the meeting and during breaks.
As of the other day, the idea was that each developer would get roughly 90 minutes to present their view of the future.

Each respondent developer's proposal was several hundred pages and it was slow slogging at times, but on the other hand, many pages were extended pubic relations-friendly versions of the developer's own website, variations of previous RFP propsals to other cities or govt. entities throughout the U.S., or lots and lots of commercial real estate-style photos.

 So, I did NOT read every page, especially if the page or section was not really that germane to this proposal, per se, or seemed like extended schmoozing by other means, like copies of newspaper aticles for projects completed in other cities and patting-themselves on the back.

 There is an awful lot to think about and talk about in considering if the City of Hollywood is going to get the interesting dynamic change which I think it needs there, or will accept something considerably less!

 On Friday, via a tweet to me that I didn't respond to because I'd already logged off by then, Brian actually asked the most important question that I believe is actually hanging over this project, and asking it in such a clear way that I'm going to say it again here:

 "I'm interested to see what you think. Two developers proposed zero payment for the land. What will the city prioritize, the most money possible from a real estate transaction, or a project that will generate the most economic activity or community benefit?

 I tweeted a thread of some early thoughts of mine about this project a few weeks ago at:
https://twitter.com/hbbtruth/status/1025080697332097025

 On the morning of Thursday July 19th I attended an often-fascinating, often-slow-moving five-and-a-half hour public meeting at the City of Hollywood City Hall regarding what the City is calling their Park Road Redevelopment RFD. 
Located at a city-owned site at 1600 S. Park Road, it’s better known by most of us living in southern Broward County as the northwest corner of Park Road and Pembroke Road, across the street from the city-owned Orangebrook Golf Course on the north side, and right near the very large local Coca-Cola Bottling plant on the south side, with its longtime huge replica of an iconic Coca Cola-filled glass bottle near its entrance. 
Conveniently that intersection is also less than a mile to 1-95, which is both its blessing and its curse.

The south side of the street is actually the City of Pembroke Park, not Hollywood, and in either direction, is home to lots of nondescript commercial development but very little of the sort that would ever cause anyone from immediately outside the area to ever swing by and see what’s new: i.e. a large number of gas stations and lots of smaller warehouses that are home to all manner of auto and mechanical repair shops, small manufacturing, offices or retail storage units.

 To be honest, there's nothing very exciting on the south side of the street and the north side of the street is nothing to brag about either, going in both directions for a bit. There is almost no pedestrian activity to be found there because the sorts of larger retail stores like Target or dine-in or fast food restaurants in the immediate area are located farther north on Hollywood Blvd. in the Hollywood Hills neighborhood of the city.

The city’s current Police Dept. HQ occupies a pretty nice tract on the southeast corner of Park and Hollywood Blvd., opposite all that busy retail and upscale professional office activity I spoke of, with a good amount of pedestrian activity, so as the city is hoping to get voter’s to approve a bond issue this Fall that might fund the construction of a new Police HQ, if the city relocates the Police HQ, that good-sized corner tract suddenly becomes one of the most desirable pieces of real estate in Hollywood.

I say that because besides the high amount of passing automobile traffic, there’s also nearby neighborhoods with a large number of upper middle-class apt. and condo complexes within a ten minute walk that could make that a good investment IF it’s something unique or, dare I say it, original.

 Those same existing apt. and condo complexes and their well-heeled residents are also the same people who’d be the nearest neighbors of any new project built at the city’s RFP at Park Road and Pembroke Road. That central fact, good access to I-95 and plenty of upper middle-class consumers within a short distance makes me think that it’s hard to conceive of a situation where the Hollywood City Commission would prefer an industrial park, however functional and attractive, to a fun and consumer-friendly multi-use complex that not only draws local residents to it, but also draws consumer dollars from other cities within a 10-20 mile radius, something not currently true of any place I can think of on Pembroke or Hollywood Blvd.

Also, there is currently on the books approval for 600-plus new homes  will be built nearby at what is a former golf course.

 There are a few nice restaurants in the immediate area, a place I know very well, but are they truly special, unique, or something that genuinely causes a degree of excitement? Well, not so much.

 Think about that as you read my description of the developer proposals an the city’s five-member evaluation Committee that has people on it from various city departments and with an array of disciplines to try to give the Hollywood City Commission two very good proposals for them to decide between in the coming months.


For people who live in the area or just west of there in Miramar or Pembroke Pines, it's also well-known for being the home of some hellacious traffic jams because so many people use it to get to 
I-95 

The site is currently the headquarters for the city’s Dept. of Public Works (DPW) and is more accurately known by most longtime area residents as a brownfield that once was home of the city’s incinerator. So, the first thing you need to know is that there's residual waste in the soil that means that some degree of remediation will be necessary to make it suitable for more general public purposes.

 I have long been personally interested in that site because of all the places in Hollywood that were not on the beach, near Young Circle or Downtown, that was the site that I thought was best suited for being the hoe of a #tech village, but that seems unlikely to materialize as I once hoped.
So, on with the show, including some selected pages from the four proposals, including cover pages.

The first proposal discussed and analyzed by Eval Comm. -but with no scoring yet- was from @Prologis, which was quite impressive, obviously, given their size, global marketing capabilities, experience in dealing with environmental challenges, an important consideration given that the site is the former site of Hollywood DPW's incinerator.







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 The second bid was from a team comprised of (Louis) Birdman Real Estate Development of Hallandale Beach, Collarmele Partners of Fort Lauderdale and Meyers Real Estate Group. The group contact person is, I believe, the same guy who was VP at the Diplomat Golf Course in Hallandale Beach.










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The third proposal came from ImmoCorp Ventures of Aventura, i.e. Gilbert Benhamou, who has been involved in developing many upscale retail areas throughout the U.S. I'm personally familiar with, including in Charlottesville, VA, home of UVA, where one of my nieces went to college.
To be honest, their proposal is the one that I liked best in the early-going because their team includes many people that I am familiar with, including architect Kobi Karp, who has had some projects in Hallandale beach.
To me, frankly, it seems the most creative, transformative, and shows the most potential to draw consumer dollars to that area of Broward. 
But will that be what most appeals to the Hollywood City Commission long-term vs short-term benefits? 
I hope so, but who can really say months in advance?

















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The fourth proposal came from Bridge Development Partners of Miami, who proposed two Class A office buildings. There seemed to be a consensus within the Evaluation Committee that the firm has managed to consistently have a "quite compelling" tenant mix in their past projects that came to fruition. 
But the one thing that stood out most to me from the many comments made during the Evaluation Committee's discussion of this group's proposal, one voiced from the rep from DPW and echoed by others on the Comm. as well, was that this proposal seems to NOT have really come to term in their first effort to address the problem/solution to the city's DPW facility there. Keep facility, build a new one there or relocate and build new HQ elsewhere in the city?















I should mention that I thought that Paul Bassar, the Director of Procurement & Contract Compliance for the City of Hollywood, who ran/moderated the July 19th meeting I attended, did a very good job of keeping some very smart and very opinionated people on-track, like a good railroad conductor, so that the meeting didn't run even longer than the five-and-half hours it actually took from beginning to end, counting breaks after each discussion.





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