Fort Lauderdale mixed-use plan to provide more resi in Harbordale

UPDATED Feb. 28, 11:30 a.m.: A newly proposed five-story building looks to continue the slow but steady shift to a more residential iteration of Harbordale, the industrial neighborhood between Port Everglades and Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport.

Developer Eli Halali, president of Galleria Maintenance Inc. and a managing broker at Gala Real Estate Services, will go before Fort Lauderdale’s development review committee later this month with plans for a 12-unit condo development on Miami Road at the end of Southeast 21st Street. The first floor of the building will be dedicated to a lobby, office space and a conference room, according to the site plans.

Each of the condos will include about 1,500 square feet of living space, with three bedrooms, two-and-a-half baths and sliding glass doors opening onto sweeping balconies. Residents of the building will also have use of a rooftop amenity deck with a jacuzzi on the building’s western side and a fitness center on the eastern side rising an additional 13 feet off the roof deck. The varied heights, according to the proposal, are partly an effort to break up the shape and size of the building, which will top out at 59 feet.

Architect Gustavo J. Carbonell’s contemporary design calls for aluminum and ashlar veneer accents on a volume of varied stucco textures. Carbonell, whose other Fort Lauderdale projects include Flagler Village’s Bamboo Flats and the Venetian Landing townhomes in Beverly Heights, has concealed the new building’s parking in the back of the site and along the sides of a covered garage passing through the middle of the building.

The site, which is currently empty, abuts the Village East condominium complex, a 2002 development that shined a light on the residential possibilities in the heavily industrial district west of the Fort Lauderdale/Broward County Convention Center.

The area is still heavily industrial, with a vast field of fuel storage tanks to the east of the proposed building receiving over 12.5 million gallons of petroleum from Port Everglades every day. But developments like Village East and the 2004-built Harbor Shops plaza have helped flesh out a more residential identity for the neighborhood, even as it continues as a shipping and receiving hub just outside the busiest container port in the state.