Growth Takes Its Toll
Most of our readers live in the more prosperous neighborhoods on the east side of Fort Lauderdale, and even those who don’t are usually familiar with the bottleneck where traffic from Broward Boulevard merges into Las Olas for the final leg of a trip to or from the beach.
As the city grows recklessly, the traffic situation worsens by the day. It has gotten so bad that the Colee Hammock Homeowners’ Association is divided between those who live west of 15th Ave. – the main connection between Broward and La Olas – and those who live on several streets to the east. That historic neighborhood is characterized by old oak trees and canopied streets, clearly upscale from the rest of Colee Hammock which has smaller lots and many businesses and apartments.
Early Colee Hammock houses were designed around ancient oak trees (Colin Breslin painting shown above).
At a recent homeowners meeting, residents west of 15th Ave. were calling for a reopening of several streets in the old neighborhood. These have been closed for years, going back to when Bob Cox was mayor in the 1980s. Those streets,17th and 16th Ave., were partially closed in response to increasingly heavy traffic. When they were laid out the Las Olas Isles did not exist and there were few high-rise buildings on or near the beach. Las Olas was a quiet artery with few restaurants and not nearly the activity of today.
In that era, Commercial and Oakland Park Boulevards were busier entertainment venues. When Colee Hammock developed in the 1920s and 30s there was little pass-through traffic. Few people recall today, but at one point South Victoria Park Road connected to Las Olas Blvd. It was the neighbors who simply closed the street. In contrast the later partial closing of 17th and 16th Avenues was very much by design. The city recognized that the neighborhood had some of the city’s most attractive homes, almost all single structures on larger lots built among century old oaks. That quality neighborhood was never intended for heavy traffic.
At the time, Fort Lauderdale mayor Bob Cox said the city was simply correcting a mistake it had made in permitting traffic to become so heavy. That traffic, worsening by the year, now uses 15th Ave. and several streets to the west. At the recent meeting of the homeowners things got a bit testy when those residents complained of cars speeding through the cross streets and ignoring stop signs, fast scooters on sidewalks and illegal parking. They said ordinary functions such as bicycling and walking dogs have become dangerous. They challenged the city to act before someone gets killed.
To transfer that traffic back to 16th and 17th Ave., however, would be devastating to property values. Most residents living there moved in after the streets had been closed, and a number of beautiful new homes have replaced the smaller original cottages. Those investments were made with the expectation of protection from traffic.
A representative from the city’s traffic unit at the recent meeting was tactful to both sides and made it clear that there was no easy solution to the problems. But he added that the city would do all it could to improve the situation.
Good luck.
