Travel Blog

Yesterday I wrote a letter to the mayor:

When I was the travel editor of the Sun-Sentinel, a job I held from 1989-2008, I wrote a column about the then disputed Hyde Park Market site (now home to Icon Las Olas). I suggested that, because Fort Lauderdale had no public gathering spot – outside of the beach – it would be the perfect place for one. I had just returned from a trip to Mexico, and in every city and town there had been a plaza where, throughout the day and early evening, people strolled under shade trees, ate food from vendors, chatted on benches, sometimes listened to music from bandstands. The empty lot on Las Olas, I suggested, could be planted with trees, set with chess tables, dotted with food stalls, and furnished with a bandstand for noontime and weekend concerts representing South Florida’s rich ethnic diversity. Because of its strategic location on Las Olas, it would serve as a meeting place for locals and tourists.

That didn’t happen. Instead, Icon Las Olas filled the lot, giving the city one more high-rise. Its waterfront restaurant now blasts music so loudly residents of neighboring buildings can’t sit on their balconies.

A few blocks away sits One Stop Shop, a parcel of land with great potential in the city’s most vibrant neighborhood. Its banyans and oaks are treasures most cities would kill for; to destroy them would not only be criminal, it would be stupid. (Imagine Savannah without its trees.) Turning the place into an entertainment complex would also be wrong; the city has plenty of music venues – indoors and out – and still not one place for its citizens to gather in a casually festive environment, a place where young and old, families and singles, tourists and locals can relax, mingle, eat cheap foods, and experience a sense of community. An entertainment complex is exclusive, charging admission and appealing to a specific demographic (and not all of them); an urban park is free and open to everyone. With intelligent planning, from talented landscape architects, One Stop Shop could be turned into the lively plaza I once envisioned for Las Olas. It would give Fort Lauderdale what it has long needed, and something no other city in the region has. It would be a gift to residents, and a model for planners around the country.