This Broward park is getting major upgrades — including a Rusty Pelican sister restaurant

Highrise condominiums and hotels pepper the area surrounding downtown Fort Lauderdale’s Huizenga Park, which sits across from the NSU Art Museum along Las Olas Boulevard. Scan the streets and you’ll see a plethora of cars on the road and a few people walking their dogs in the evenings.

Before Huizenga Park was built, hardly anyone lived downtown. Longtime Fort Lauderdale resident and developer Charlie Ladd recalled the scene when he first moved to the city in the 1980s, estimating that at that time there were three buildings in the area. When Huizenga Park first opened in 1998, the city’s downtown hadn’t grown that much: There were about seven buildings in the area and no residential housing, he said.

The park would change that, drawing people to the city’s downtown core with events and serving as a communal space near the Riverwalk.

“They had a bandstand. There were some concerts there. They’d have the corporate 5K run, so everybody would marshal there. There were some fairs and events,” Ladd, the chair of the Fort Lauderdale Downtown Development Authority, told the Miami Herald ahead of a groundbreaking event for upgrades to the park.

While the downtown park now sits in an area of about 25,000 residents, Ladd said it hasn’t seen much life in recent years. The planned overhaul will include a dog run, an expanded Riverwalk area and more trees for shade. A new waterfront restaurant, Sweetwaters, is also being developed by the team behind Miami’s Rusty Pelican and will sit where the bandshell once was.

READ MORE: Rusty Pelican owners are opening a restaurant in a Fort Lauderdale park

Upgrades to the park, which is named after the late businessman and Miami Dolphins owner Wayne Huizenga, are intended to reinvigorate the city’s downtown core and draw residents to the area.

The $15 million investment into the park is coming from the city, the development authority, the Huizenga Foundation, and other private and public donors, Ladd said. Of that amount, the state contributed $950,000.

Just south of Las Olas Boulevard, adjacent to Andrews Avenue and situated near the New River, the land for Huizenga Park was purchased in the 1970s by the Fort Lauderdale Downtown Development Authority. The goal for the park has always been to attract people to the city’s downtown, which was long home to offices, Ladd said. In the past decade, however, 15,000 residences have been added to the city’s downtown, with another 10,000 in the pipeline, he said.

Conversations about redeveloping the park began in 2019, and then, as with many things, the COVID-19 pandemic brought plans to a halt. But Fort Lauderdale Downtown Development Authority CEO Jenni Morejon said it gave the agency time to research best practices from around the country about how parks are funded and managed. That time helped Morejon better develop a vision for the new Huizenga Park.

“It could be ... a small exercise program, just a casual meetup of friends in the dog run, mommy-and-me classes, maybe there’s an art painting session — something that really appeals to more daily living for residents but also so many employees that work here just getting kind of a respite from the city in a nice, lush, shaded green space,” she said. “So it’s really transforming it into a park that works every single day of the year for everyone.”

Jennifer Sandberg has lived in downtown Fort Lauderdale for a year and often walks her dog in the park.

“I walk past here every day. So I’m excited to see it redone because right now it looks kind of sad,” she said after the groundbreaking event Wednesday. “It’s an older park, and there’s just nothing special about it. The grass is patchy. There’s not a ton of shade where you could really enjoy it, except here on the edges. It doesn’t connect really well with the Riverwalk, which is a shame.” She said earlier that evening, she spoke to someone who didn’t even realize a river was near the park.

Another resident, Michelle Davis Lewin, said she used to live in the area 10 years ago and met her husband at the park. She is looking forward to the additional shade.

“We have two young ones now, and it’s really hot here,” she said, “so any time I have shade to run around with my kids, it’s the best thing.”

The park’s redesign includes an additional 88 trees that will offer a 216% increase in shade, an enhanced Riverwalk area, an improved lawn, as well as an updated Spirit of Fort Lauderdale Fountain. Fifty-eight new plant species and 13,500 total new plants will be added to the park. The section of the Riverwalk by the park will become 103% larger.

The park will also have downtown’s first dog run — a fenced-in area for dogs to exercise and run off leash. The new design includes a children’s moundscape, a series of climbable play mounds that blend into the landscape, and new seating options in the park and along New River. The Downtown Development Authority is looking into the possibility of adding WiFi, Ladd said.

Portions of the park will remain open while construction is underway. Upgrades to the park are expected to be complete by early 2025.

Ladd said that when downtown was developed, many assumed it would be office-centric, but with the busy shopping and restaurant street of Las Olas, it has also attracted tourists and residents to the area.

“Downtowns are usually next to struggling neighborhoods if you look at traditional American cities,” he said. “So when residential urban living became avant garde, which was probably about 20 years ago, we started seeing people moving back to the cities. It was natural here because the land is here, and Las Olas is here with the shopping and the restaurants.”

He likened what’s happened in Fort Lauderdale’s downtown to what Miami saw with Brickell, but “softer.” He noted that Fort Lauderdale’s downtown is walkable, with the Riverwalk at the core of it.

“You go to all these cities around the country that have tried to build this live-work-play, walkable, 24-hour city, and very few actually achieve it. And it’s kind of just, it’s happened here. It’s real.”