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Sun Sentinel Fort Lauderdale backs $217 million plan for new City Hall over downtown tower renovations
Fort Lauderdale is forging ahead with its original plan to build a new City Hall, rejecting the idea of spending millions to renovate a downtown office tower built decades ago.
The new City Hall will not come cheap, but the mayor and two commissioners argued it might end up costing less than buying an older building.
Mayor Dean Trantalis and Commissioners Steve Glassman and Pamela Beasley-Pittman voted in favor of the plan last Thursday.
Vice Mayor Ben Sorensen and Commissioner John Herbst voted no after arguing the new City Hall would end up costing more than buying a used building.
The interim agreement approved Thursday night between the city and FTL City Hall Partners cut the estimated cost of the new government building from $267.7 million to $217 million.
“I think our city is at a point in time where we are able to handle the expense,” Glassman said before the vote. “If the city of Oakland Park, if the city of Sunrise, if the city of Pompano Beach, if the city of Miami can all figure out a way to afford a brand-new civil structure that is something the city can take pride in, that the city can say, ‘Yes that is our City Hall.’ Great cities have City Halls.”
Fort Lauderdale officials were forced to come up with a new vision for City Hall after a record-breaking flood hit in April 2023. The former City Hall building, damaged beyond repair, was declared a total loss and has since been demolished.
The new City Hall tower will rise in the same spot at 100 N. Andrews Ave. and is expected to open in 2029 or 2030.
Critics have blasted the futuristic design, comparing it to a spaceship.
To help cut costs, the developer has come up with two more designs to choose from.
Over objections from Herbst, commissioners agreed to choose the design at a later date. Herbst told the commission that was one reason he rejected the deal.
Herbst and Sorensen both argued that buying an existing office tower would save taxpayer dollars.
The owners of two downtown towers have offered to sell their buildings to the city.
The Tower 101 building at 101 NE Third Ave. has a sales price of $86 million. The owner of the 1 East Broward building has set the sale price at $122.5 million.
A city-hired consultant came up with estimated renovation costs for each tower.
Renovating Tower 101 would cost $157.9 million, according to the consultant, Jacobs Project Management. Renovating the tower at 1 East Broward would cost $208.5 million.
Herbst questioned those numbers.
“Why do we have to replace the windows?” he asked. “And by the way, these windows made it through Wilma and Katrina and every other hurricane when all the windows in the school board’s Crystal Palace blew out. Nothing happened over here. So tell me why we have to replace windows that are perfectly good.”
The buildings were both built decades ago and need to be brought up to current hurricane code, replied
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