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Announcing the 2023 Vision Awards Project of the Year Finalists
ULI Southeast Florida / Caribbean names five finalists for its 2023 Project of the Year Award.
Huizenga Park Reimagined: a New Model for Public Spaces in Downtown Fort Lauderdale
July 17, 2023
In 2019, the Fort Lauderdale DDA engaged ULI’s Advisory Services to provide recommendations on how to enhance downtown Fort Lauderdale’s parks and open spaces. These recommendations became the guiding principles behind the DDA’s efforts to reimagine Huizenga Park.
World-class public spaces are essential infrastructure for vibrant, healthy, and inclusive cities. With initial support from a 2019 Urban Land Institute Advisory Services Panel examining the city’s parks and open spaces, it was this thinking that prompted the Fort Lauderdale Downtown Development Authority (DDA) to move forward with the reimagining of Huizenga Park.
Huizenga Park is Downtown Fort Lauderdale’s signature gathering space, a centrally connected hub at the intersection of Las Olas Boulevard, Andrews Avenue, and the New River. The DDA originally built the park in the late 1990s at a time when the county seat was primarily an employment center with virtually no residents.
To help nurture a growing downtown, the DDA built a large festival park to keep employees in the urban core on nights and weekends. While this model for Huizenga Park was successful at first, Downtown Fort Lauderdale has since transformed into a lively urban center and dynamic 18-hour city.
Downtown Fort Lauderdale’s population has increased by 80% in just over a decade and the city has emerged as a destination of choice for young professionals and families. Close to 50 new residential and mixed-use developments are planned for Fort Lauderdale’s urban core, more than doubling the existing 13,000 units already built. With so much growth in the pipeline, high-quality public spaces will be essential for building a compact, walkable, and livable urban center.
This sustained momentum led the DDA to engage ULI’s National Advisory Services panel in 2019 to provide recommendations on how to enhance downtown parks and open spaces. A panel of national thought leaders spent one week in Fort Lauderdale touring the city and interviewing more than 150 community leaders.
Key recommendations made by the panel included:
- Implement a public-private partnership to manage and activate the public realm.
- Develop additional resources to sustain existing public spaces.
- Strengthen and connect the existing network of downtown parks.
ULI’s recommendations became the guiding principles supporting the DDA’s vision to reimagine Huizenga Park. Armed with the panel’s guidance, the DDA conducted a deep dive into the most successful urban parks in the country. Park leaders from Dallas to Detroit, Tampa to Sarasota, Houston to Minneapolis, and beyond shared best practices on what it takes to build and manage a highly activated downtown park.
After learning from the best, the DDA selected globally renowned design firm Perkins&Will to create a new vision for the riverfront park: transforming from a one-dimensional open space to an elegant series of outdoor rooms seamlessly connecting Las Olas Boulevard with the New River. When the park reopens, Huizenga Park will become Downtown Fort Lauderdale’s outdoor living room, office, dining room, and backyard all in one.
A major programming addition to Huizenga Park will be a newly constructed restaurant along the water to be funded, built, and operated by Specialty Restaurants Corporation, a national restauranteur best known locally for the Rusty Pelican on Key Biscayne. In addition to activating the park daily, the restaurant lease revenue will fund a portion of park construction costs and will ultimately help sustain the high level of operations and maintenance needed for a best-in-class urban park.
The $15 million reimagining of Huizenga Park is an example of a public-private-philanthropic partnership (P4) with one-third of the funding coming from the public sector, one-third from the private sector, and one-third from private donors. Support from public sector partners like the City of Fort Lauderdale and the State of Florida will ensure that Huizenga Park remains a park in perpetuity.
The non-profit Huizenga Park Foundation was formed to raise $5 million to support construction of this special gathering space. Many community leaders and organizations, including prominent real estate developers in DowntownFTL, have contributed more than $3 million to the capital campaign to date, demonstrating the value they believe this park will have on the community and their investments.
As the park reaches completion, the Foundation will transition into the organization that will operate, maintain, and program the park to ensure it is managed as a world-class destination for decades to come. The DDA envisions that this P4 approach and the success of the new Huizenga Park will become a model for future public space improvements throughout Downtown Fort Lauderdale.
Fort Lauderdale is committed to building a world-class network of public spaces that all great urban centers have. ULI’s guidance set in motion the framework for Huizenga Park Reimagined to move forward as the centerpiece of more than $100 million in park investments planned for Downtown Fort Lauderdale. The DDA is expecting to break ground on Huizenga Park this year. Learn more about the transformation of Huizenga Park and ways you can support this project at www.huizengapark.org. To learn more about Downtown Fort Lauderdale visit www.ddaftl.org.