Fort Lauderdale commissioners approved an 11-story, 65-unit condominium development along the Intracoastal Waterway in the Central Beach area of the city’s barrier island.
Coral Gables-based Location Ventures plans to develop the as-yet unnamed project at 551 Bayshore Drive, with completion expected in early 2025, said Rishi Kapoor, CEO of Location Ventures.
“We anticipate that slightly less than half of the building will be occupied by full-time residents … the remainder being second or third homes for snowbirds,” Kapoor said. Buyers are likely to come from Miami-Dade and Palm Beach counties as well as New York, New Jersey, Chicago, and Canada, he added.
The development will include 32 condos with three bedrooms and a den; 29 with three bedrooms or two bedrooms and a den; and four with two bedrooms. Four of the units will be ground-level villas, two facing the Intracoastal Waterway and two facing the front of the property.
“The proposed project enhances the existing housing stock of the Central Beach by providing amenities not currently available in the area,” according to a report by the staff of the Fort Lauderdale Planning and Zoning Board. “In addition, the project complies with the setback requirements and in some areas exceeds the requirements for the side yards.”
The two-building condo project will feature private resident dining service, meeting rooms, exercise rooms, a swimming pool, a garden, 151 vehicle parking spaces, and a dock on the Intracoastal Waterway.
Neighbors to the south of the development site objected to a proposed restaurant at the property, which was removed from the development application, according to the minutes of a planning and zoning board meeting July 21.
Earlier this year, Location Ventures raised $14.4 million of equity financing for the condo project. Jeffrey Donnelly and Dmitry Levkov of Colliers International arranged the equity financing from an unidentified New York-based investor.
The Fort Lauderdale City Commission unanimously voted Tuesday night to approve on second reading the site plan for the development and a related zoning proposal.
The 1.54-acre development site on Bayshore Drive is an assembly of four vacant parcels that touch the Intracoastal Waterway. The site’s land-use designation is “Central Beach Regional Activity Center,” and its zoning is “Intracoastal Overlook Area.”
A company called Bayshore Concepts LLC assembled the development site 10 years ago by acquiring four waterfront parcels on Bayshore Drive, including one without a street address, according to Broward County property records. Bayshore Concepts, managed by Par Sanda, acquired the parcel at 529 Bayshore Drive and the parcel without a street address in a purchase totaling $3.05 million in 2011, and that same year, the company took ownership of the other two parcels at 537 and 553 Bayshore Drive via foreclosure actions, property records show.
A spokesperson for Location Ventures said the developer is affiliated with Fort Lauderdale-based Bayshore Concepts.
Location Ventures and its partners are also planning a mixed-use co-living and hotel development in Miami Beach. In August, the firm won approval from the Miami Beach Historic Preservation Board, enabling it to tear down one of the buildings it bought in May. It had paid $20 million for the property, which includes a second building that will be renovated.