Lon Tabatchnick wins approval for Dania Beach apartment project

Margaritaville developer Lon Tabatchnick won approval for Atlantica at Dania Beach, a low-rise multifamily complex with 124 garden apartments.

Tabatchnick, founder and president of Hollywood-based Lojeta Group, told The Real Deal that he leased the development site in eastern Dania Beach for 99 years. The vacant 4.67-acre development site, located south of Northeast Second Street and west of Northeast Sixth Court, is within two miles of the ocean.

The Dania Beach City Commission approved a site plan for Atlantica at its meeting Tuesday night, together with a plat proposal for the site. Commissioners also approved a request for 46 “flex” units for the 124-unit project, in addition to the maximum of 78 permitted by zoning.

Construction of Atlantica is expected to start in the first quarter of 2022 and take 14 months to finish, said Tabatchnick, one of the developers of the 369-key Margaritaville Hollywood Beach Resort, an oceanfront hotel in Hollywood that opened in 2015.

Atlantica at Dania Beach will be a cluster of six three-story buildings with a clubhouse and swimming pool. Open common areas will span 56,500 square feet, or about a quarter of the site.

The site plan includes 48 one-bedroom, one-bathroom units, and 76 two-bedroom, two-bathroom units. The apartments would range in size from 650 square feet to 1,080 square feet.

The Atlantica development team said monthly rents will average in the $1,500-$1,800 range, according to a summary of an April 26 meeting with the owners’ association at the Danians condominium, next to the Atlantica site.

Leigh Robinson Kerr & Associates applied for the city approvals on behalf of the Atlantica site owner, East Side Five, LLC, which is managed by Jeanine L. Hill of Dania Beach, according to state records.

Hill is also one of four directors of a company that controls CF & A Hill Family Ltd., which leased a nearby 26.7-acre site near the border between Dania Beach and Hollywood to Miami-based Related Group for a multifamily development with 420 apartments in 15 three-story buildings.

Tabatchnick once proposed a 200-room hotel development just east of the Atlantica development site on the Hollywood side of the barrier island. But in October 2019, the Hollywood Planning and Development Board rejected his proposed land use change for the 1.9-acre site on North Ocean Boulevard.