Oakland Park Celebrates Re-Birth

Oakland Park Mayor Allegra Webb Murphy and Real Estate
Recovery’s Gary Lanham.

BY BOB KECSKEMETY

First it was northeast Fort Lauderdale, then Wilton Manors and now it’s Oakland Park’s turn. The city of approximately 45,000 people over 6.9 square miles is celebrating a rebirth of sorts since Hurricane Wilma damaged much of the city in 2005.

Last week, the city celebrated the opening of Real Estate Recovery offices under the leadership of Gary Lanham. Part of the purpose of the office will be to make Oakland Park a more welcoming place to live, work and play. The offices, located on NE 12 Avenue just north of Oakland Park Boulevard, is in the heart of the current redevelopment area of Oakland Park known as the city’s Main Street Downtown Redevelopment Project.

The City of Oakland Park recently invested $4.3 million to beautify NE 12 Avenue and NE 12 Terrace in its downtown district known as Main Street. The beautification project included new decorative lighting, attractive street furniture, lush landscaping, paved sidewalks and walkways and plazas with pergolas and fountains.

Oakland Park used a $6 million open space grant to develop a park in the downtown district that opened in 2008. The park was named for the late Jaco Pastorious, a hometown son and a world renowned bassist. This 7-acre park is the northern crown jewel of the downtown district and home to major events like the annual Oktoberfest celebration and this weekend’s PrideFest gay pride festival.

Oakland Park has adopted a downtown master plan and zoning regulations for landscape planting, signage and graphics – and parking and traffic patterns. These modifications are intended to encourage mixed-use and pedestrian-friendly development in the downtown district.

Earlier this year, G-Resorts announced that they had scrapped their plans of building their new resort on the corner of N.E. 15 Avenue and N.E. 26 Street in Wilton Manors and instead would be interested in building the resort on the southern end of N.E. 12 Avenue in Oakland Park.

“We are trying to promote gay businesses, this [Real Estate Recovery] is a gay-owned business,” said Lanham. “We’re going to have a lot of gay-owned businesses in the neighborhood. We’re going make sure people understand, it’s not just about Wilton Manors anymore.” Lanham’s home is located only a few blocks away, also in Oakland Park.

Oakland Park maintains a public-private partnership with Oakland Park Main Street, a private non-profit to assist with marketing the downtown district and helping business owners navigate through city code regulations and ordinances.

Oakland Park Main Street is responsible for creating a distinctive image and a development-friendly environment for downtown Oakland Park. The organization promotes downtown as a traditional commercial center with a vibrant mix of culture; mainly through organizing all major events on Main Street.

Oakland Park also wants to promote itself as being more business-friendly than other cities in the area. Several years ago, the City of Oakland Park created a Community Redevelop-ment Agency to act as a liaison between the city’s bureaucracy and the business community. If there are any problems with permitting, inspections, etcetera, a business is encouraged to contact the CRA who can work directly with the permitting department, building department, fire marshal and other agencies to get the paperwork moving through the system.

“It was just a matter of six weeks from the time I got my permits to now, the time I’m open,” said Lanham. “This is the amazing part. Everybody from the permit people to the permit police stood in line and they were very cooperative and they walked us through the entire process. There’s always the possibility of issues but we try to iron them out as soon as possible.”

“I’m very excited about what’s going on here in Oakland Park,” said Oakland Park Mayor Allegra Webb Murphy. “It’s time for our city to redevelop the downtown area. We’ve got new people, young people, moving into our area and these young people are full of energy and vibrancy. And they deserve a downtown area which is equally full of energy.”