A small rental project taking advantage of upzoning established a decade ago won site-plan approval in Hollywood, despite opposition from nearby residents.
The four-story, 22-unit apartment building would be built at 2101-2111 North 16th Avenue in the northwest corner of Hollywood Lakes, a residential area with a homeownership rate of 87 percent, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
The Hollywood City Commission on Wednesday unanimously approved the design and site plan for the apartment building, which would rise about two blocks east of Federal Highway, across the street from South Broward High School.
Boca Raton-based Giltor 36 LLC paid $1.5 million in 2022 to buy the 0.18-acre development site, according to county property records. The application for site-plan approval listed Gil Ovadia as the owner and developer of the property.
Ovadia told The Real Deal he is a Boca Raton-based lawyer with dual British and American citizenship who has worked the last 30 years in real estate projects as an adviser and an investor.
His planned four-story apartment building would replace a one-story apartment building in the western fringe of Hollywood Lakes, where single-family homes range from about $700,000 to over $1 million, listings show.
About a dozen local residents criticized the plan, saying four stories is too high and the project is too close to single-family homes.
But the height is allowed by right under a 2016 upzoning meant to encourage transit-oriented development in the Federal Highway corridor.
Hollywood-based architect Joseph Kaller designed the four-story multifamily project with 13 one-bedroom apartments, 9 two-bedroom apartments and 34 parking spaces. The units would average 625 square feet. The 29,000-square-foot project will have a second-floor amenity deck with a pool and fitness center.
The compact design of the market-rate apartments is meant to make them more affordable, said Keith Poliakoff, an attorney for Ovadia.
Construction could start by year-end, Ovadia said. If the apartments were on the market today, monthly rents would range from $1,800 for the one-bedrooms to $2,500 or $2,600 for the two-bedrooms, he said. Those prices align with the city’s average prices, according to RentCafe.
The four-story rental building could be converted to a condominium in the future, he said. But construction financing is easier to find for rental developments than for condo developments, he said.
Hollywood and its northern neighbor Dania Beach have been focal points of multifamily development in Broward County.
Developers completed 13 multifamily properties in Broward County with nearly 3,500 rental units last year, similar to the 10-year average, according to Cushman & Wakefield.
Most of those completions were in the Hollywood/Dania Beach submarket, where 1,245 units came onto the market last year. That represented a 13.6 percent increase over the previous year.