Redevelopment Means; One City’s Loss is Anothers Gain

By BOB KECSKEMETY

A major redevelopment that was designed for the area south of Five Points on Dixie Highway in Wilton Manors has been moved to Oakland Park’s redevelopment Main Street area.

According to the architect, Edward Tokarcik, two individual clients wanted a new building in Wilton Manors. One is an owner of a gymnasium who wanted to move to a new location and the other, an owner of a movie theater. The original plan was to redevelop the area on the east side of Dixie Highway from N.E. 24 Court to N.E. 12 Avenue and east to the Florida East Coast Railway tracks.

Also in the planning were a drive-through gourmet restaurant and a parking garage.

The project started out as two individual clients looking for a building in Wilton Manors and it then turned into a three-block urban renewal project and was looking to expand beyond that. At this point, I don’t think any of the projects are going forward.

They were all very interconnected to each other. Tokarcik, a resident of Wilton Manors, was disappointed that the project could not go forward.

“We worked out the design concepts and worked with a design firm and we spoke with two developers and their prices were close,” said Tokarcik. But the project fell through. “Either the lots were too expensive – they were bought at the height of the market – and you can’t get parking, you can’t pass the parking requirements. And I actually designed a 500-car garage and when that did not go forward, nothing could go forward. There were other small stores across the street, none of which were making it because of the lack of parking.”

The gymnasium owner, which was originally planned south of N.E. 24 Street on Dixie Highway, wanted his gym to be set apart from any others. He wanted an upscale four-floor gym complex in a building people would want to go to. The ground floor would have the main entrance and a café, the second floor would have the weight lifting equipment and exercise machines, the third floor would have open workout areas as well as a swimming pool and the top level would be a sundeck. There would have been 25,000 square feet of usable space.

A movie complex would have a 500-car parking garage in the back. On top of the parking garage, there would be space for a club or restaurant. Tokarcik estimated that if the parking garage would have been kept full, parking fees would have carried the whole project financially.

The drive-through gourmet restaurant was still in the early planning stages when the project was scrubbed.

However, new life was brought to Tokarcik’s dream was when he met with Gary Lanham of Real Estate Recovery, an Oakland Park real estate firm which has helped lead the way in redeveloping Oakland Park’s “Main Street,” which spans further north on North Dixie Highway from Oakland Park Boulevard to N.E. 38 Street.

Tokarcik’s projects could be the anchors of the redevelopment of the west side of Dixie Highway in Oakland Park.

“Oakland Park is a different city than Wilton Manors. Oakland Park is a huge city – downtown is 150 acres.

It’s a huge amount of space and, working from the cultural point of view, you can create different main streets in different parts of Oakland Park and I think that by claiming this section as the gay center, you can create a lot of different things happening,” said Tokarcik.

Tokarcik explained that when he graduated and got his degree from Harvard University, he worked in Harvard’s academic department as projects coordinator. There he coordinated projects between architecture, urban design, city planning and landscape architecture. That’s where he realized how things are so interrelated and that, by efficiently coordinating everything together, a city could be picked up cheaper and faster than by any other means.

“In Oakland Park, you have to look at sites very differently,” said Tokarcik. “You have to see what works and one of the worst problems is you have a main street section which is not only divided by a highway but also railroad tracks. But what you have to benefit from is a huge amount of space. If it’s properly designed and properly managed by getting the proper mix of things here, we can have a real destination spot to bring people to the downtown area. That’s the real beauty of it.”

Tokarcik explained that a lot of demolition of existing buildings on the west side of Dixie Highway is unnecessary. “I kind of like these commercial/industrial-type block buildings,” he said, “because you can actually provide them with artistic-type endeavors inexpensively and they’re big. A lot of them have loading docks and parking. It really makes sense to work with the existing fabric when you can and just develop the character from that.”

Tokarcik said he thinks Oakland Park has the ability to grow beyond what Wilton Manors has already done for the gay community – just expand upon it in a different way. He says he doesn’t want to repeat what has already been done in Wilton Manors. “I’ve met many people that want more than what’s here now. They don’t know exactly ‘that’ is, but people have voiced to me that something’s missing. That’s why an arts and cultural center of town, just places that really work and keeping it inexpensive – and not over building. I always thought Oakland Park would be the next big place.”