Residents Sue Over Related Group’s Hollywood Live Local Tower

Hollywood residents are jumping into the brawl over Florida’s developer-friendly Live Local Act with a lawsuit to block a planned beachfront tower.

Kathleen DiBona and the newly formed nonprofit Keep Public Lands Public is suing the City of Hollywood and an affiliate of Related Group over the proposed project at 1301 South Ocean Boulevard, claiming it violates a deed restriction on the site and should go before a public referendum, the South Florida Business Journal reported.

Related Group has a 99-year lease on the 4-acre site fronting a public beach, with plans to build a luxury condo and community center. City officials, who agreed to lease the property to Related in 2022, were slow to approve rezoning, partly because they couldn’t agree with the county’s planning council on whether the land was zoned community or multifamily.

In May, they voted to allow the developer to move forward with the project through the Live Local Act, which permitted Related to bypass rezoning in exchange for the development of below market-rate housing for people making up to 120 percent of the area median income. The current proposal is for 201 residences with 84 workforce housing units.

The lawsuit, filed June 23 in Broward County Circuit Court, called for the deal with Related to be invalidated, citing a city charter rule and deed restriction. According to the lawsuit, if the city wants to sell or lease a park or recreational property east of the Intracoastal Waterway for 50 years or longer, it must first get approval from a majority of voters.

The lawsuit also said the property has a deed restriction requiring the land to be used for public or municipal purposes. It claims DiBona, a Hollywood resident, would be especially impacted by the development, which would obstruct her view of the park and ocean.

She and the nonprofit are represented by Fort Lauderdale attorneys Ryan Abrams, Sydney Satz and Rainier Regueiro. Neither the city nor the developer have filed a response in court to the lawsuit.

Keith Poliakoff, who represents Related Group in the project, told the publication he is confident the case will be dismissed.

—Grace McClung