January groundbreaking set for Las Olas Place

Real estate firm Las Olas Company expects to start construction of a 31,500-square-foot office and retail building in downtown Fort Lauderdale in January.

The firm will build Las Olas Place, with 16,000 square feet of retail stores and 15,500 square feet of office space, at the corner of Southeast 8 Avenue and East Las Olas Boulevard.

Las Olas Company, owner of the nearby Riverside Hotel at 620 East Las Olas Boulevard, expects to finish the new building in the spring of 2017.

Vann Padgett, senior vice president and director of real estate at Las Olas Company, said the development is a boutique project that will match the Mediterranean building designs on Las Olas Boulevard.

Padgett also told the Sun-Sentinel office occupancy rates are high because of economic improvement and a long pause in office construction.

Las Olas Company’s founders, brothers John and Preston Wells, first came to Fort Lauderdale as tourists in the 1920s, then bought property in the city and opened the hotel now known as the Riverside. [Sun-Sentinel] — Mike Seemuth