The Related Group plans to build a 420-unit cluster of low-rise apartment buildings along a canal in Hollywood.
City commissioners last week unanimously approved a land-use plan amendment for the wooded, 26.7-acre development site with wetland areas and banks on the C-10 Canal.
Miami-based Related is leasing the land and holds an option to buy it, said Bill Shewalter, senior vice president of development in Related’s multifamily and mixed-use division.
The site is next to the Oakwood Plaza shopping center and near the Dania Pointe mixed-use retail development, both owned by New York-based Kimco Realty. A family owns the land through CF & A Hill Family Ltd.
“We have already entered into a long-term ground lease,” Shewalter said. “It’s structured so that the payments are modest for the first period [of the lease term], during which we are trying to get the entitlements done.”
Hollywood commissioners’ approval marks the first of multiple approvals that are necessary from county and state agencies to enact the land-use amendment. The project also hinges on a rezoning and site plan approval.
“If we never got the entitlements done, we would exit the ground lease,” Shewalter said. “Just about any agency you can imagine is involved,” he said, including the South Florida Water Management District, the Florida Department of Transportation, and the U.S. Coast Guard. But so far, “we’ve made a lot of progress with a lot of agencies,” he added.
A conceptual site plan for the Related development shows 15 three-story buildings, including five directly on the C-10 Canal, two clubhouses, two swimming pools, and a bridge over the canal for pedestrians and vehicles.
“It’s a spread-out, three-story walk-up building scenario,” Shewalter said. “A high-rise [development] costs a fortune .… To make economic sense out of a high-rise, the rents would have to be nearly double what you could expect to get in Hollywood.”
Related has shifted toward similar low-rise projects in other markets as well, due to the high cost of building skyscrapers, Shewalter said. “We have 20 like this” in various stages of development across the company’s three divisions, he said.
Related expects its Hollywood apartment project to attract people who work at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport, Port Everglades, Dania Pointe, Oakwood Plaza, and hotels in the U.S. 1 corridor.
MSA Architects is designing the project, and Kimley-Horn is providing engineering services.
Shewalter declined to say whether the Hollywood multifamily development would include marine-related infrastructure along the navigable C-10 Canal, which was absent from a conceptual site plan that commissioners saw during a presentation at their meeting Wednesday.
“I am disappointed that we’re not capitalizing on the navigable waterway and putting in dockage space,” Hollywood Vice Mayor Kevin Biederman said at the meeting.
Hollywood Mayor Josh Levy agreed that “the developer ought to embrace the waterway. “If the waterway is wide enough to allow for docks or slips, this is a great thing that could turn this into kind of a maritime-oriented community,” he said.