South Florida getting a Holocaust museum

The Holocaust Documentation and Education Center has picked a vacant 26,000-square-foot warehouse in Dania Beach to house the first Holocaust museum in South Florida, the Sun-Sentinel reported.

The $2.2 billion building at 303 North Federal Highway will also hold the center’s offices. The first phase of the 20,000-square-foot museum will have a boxcar that led Jews to concentration camps, and a Sherman tank. The second phase will rely on electronic displays. Mark Issenman of Boca Raton is developing the museum and Maryland firm Gallagher & Associates is designing it, the newspaper said.

The nonprofit bought its former home in Hollywood from the community redevelopment agency in 2004. Structural defects in the building at 2031 Harrison Street prevented the construction of a museum. Hollywood then foreclosed on the property last year, though its fate is unknown.

“We’re working on final details,” Steven Geller, chairman of the Holocaust Center’s board of directors told the Sun Sentinel. “It probably will end up going back to the city.”

The building in Broward County’s Dania Beach was on the market for more than a year before the center threw its hat in the ring, the report said. [Sun Sentinel] — Mark Maurer