Hollywood Young Circle

Young Circle Park and Amphitheater is a beautiful park-like setting located in the heart of Hollywood. It serves the community with a wide range of performances – everything from the Hollywood Philharmonic to Hollywood Playhouse performances have graced the stage.

The park itself is a popular venue providing a charming, natural backdrop for yearly events including the Mardi Gras Fiesta Tropicale (February), the St. Patrick’s Day Parade & Festival (March), Hispanic Fest and Kuumba Festival (April), LoveFest and the Fourth of July patriotic kickoff (July), Viva Italia, Love Radio’s Jazz Harvest, Footy’s Y-100 Wing Ding, the Herald Hunt (October) and dramatic Holiday light displays (December). These major events mirror Hollywood’s cultural diversity and its commitment to the arts.

Surrounding the park are charming restaurants and open air cafes, filling the air with the scent of fresh baked pastries and breads.

No city in Broward County has high stakes development decisions like Hollywood. It's why for the last decade it's become an emotionally charged issue. For all the fine points that fill the debate, the argument comes down to whether you believe the city should accommodate the developer or if the developer should accommodate the city. The projects have changed, but the debate has not.

In Monday's post about the Block 25 project, planned for the northeast corner of Young Circle and Federal Highway, commissioners Patty Asseff and Linda Sherwood argued that the city should be grateful to developer, Chip Abele, for his willingness to build in Hollywood. For this he's entitled to a big share of the future taxes the city would collect on the property, as well as the right to design his condo tower as a "planned development," or just "PD" -- status that frees him from the zoning guidelines that tend to cut into profit margins. Last evening, in a 5-2 decision, the Hollywood City Commission gave Abele his PD.

The culture of giving developers incentives and architectural cart blanche is, for better or worse, the legacy of former Mayor Mara Giulianti. And despite her defeat in January 2008, a majority of the commission still subscribes to Guilianti principles. Commissioner Heidi O'Sheehan, who was elected that same month, is in the minority.

"Unfortunately, there's this feeling in the city that if we don't say 'Yes' to everything, (developers) are just going to walk away and not build anything," says O'Sheehan. "And I don't believe that."

Hollywood, she argues, is selling itself short: "This is prime real estate in South Florida -- there aren't a lot of places left to develop. We're holding a lot of cards that we can bargain with."

More from O'Sheehan, and the city activists who take her view on developing Hollywood's downtown, after the jump.

In July the city's Community Redevelopment Agency hired Miami urban designer Bernard Zyscovich to revise a master plan he crafted in 2004 that was never formally recognized. Abele and his backers on the commission are eager to lock in planned-development status before that happens .

This seems a contradiction. Zyscovich is being paid to ensure a city design in which individual projects fit within a collective vision, while the commission is doing the opposite -- letting each project define the collective vision. And Block 55 development is just the latest example.

Or at least that's how it seems to Terry Cantrell, president of the Hollywood Lakes Civic Association, whose members have lobbied hard against letting the project get in line ahead of the Zyscovich plan. "The city has spent $200,000 to do the (Zyscovich) master plan and zoning recommendations," says Cantrell. It could have delayed approval for Abele's project until Zyscovich's ideas became permanent policy. "Why not wait another couple of weeks?" he asks.

Activist Sara Case lost narrowly in the January 2008 election to Asseff, an event that had big implications for Hollywood development. Case wonders why the commissioners don't trust Zyscovich. "They hire him, and then they don't pay attention to him," she says. "How can they substitute their judgment for the judgment of a professional planner like Zyscovich?"

Supporters of the Hollywood Circle development caution that by delaying its approval, the city would not only risk losing the project, it might make the city vulnerable to a lawsuit. That threat seems implicit in the commission presentations by lobbyist Alan Koslow.

"I think that's a bogus argument," says Case. And if the city really wanted to protect itself from legal action, she adds, it would have called for a "zoning in progress" that freezes new development until new design guidelines and regulations can be adopted. Hollywood has not done so.

While Abele's group may have started the development review in September 2007, Cantrell points out that the developer didn't apply for zoning changes until this past November -- four months after Zyscovich's arrival. By that time the developer should have known that the city's plans were fluid.