Gripes are growing: Don’t mess with Las Olas and its tree-lined median

Judging from the rumblings, not everyone is in love with the idea of an extreme makeover for Las Olas that will forever remove the tree-lined median — a timeless touch that helped the iconic boulevard win a national competition for most beautiful street in America.

The coming redesign of the 2.4-mile historic corridor has tongues wagging and keyboards clacking, with residents blasting their opinions on social media and in emails to City Hall.

“Removing … the center trees is crazy to me,” one man from Las Olas Isles griped.

Another complaint came from a longtime resident and activist in the Harbor Beach neighborhood: “Majority are very critical of removing the trees for both loss of charm and shade. Not a popular plan with little support. What’s the alternative?”

Even a guy from Denver weighed in.

“I’m 1,703 miles away, haven’t been a part of the discussion and may not know all the facts about the changes to Las Olas Boulevard,” he wrote in a letter to the South Florida Sun Sentinel. “But there is the old phrase about the forest and the trees. This decision will come back to haunt city leaders.

“I remember after the tree-lined median was planted how bearable it was to visit the Las Olas Arts Festival at midday because of the shade. … Leave the center median in place and prevent those inevitable head-on collisions.”

The redesign will cost close to $140 million, according to early estimates. Now Fort Lauderdale leaders have to find a way to pay for it.

Commissioners signed off on what they called “the vision” Tuesday night, but they say there will be tweaks along the way.

“All of this will be fleshed out as we continue,” said Commissioner Steve Glassman, whose district includes Las Olas and the surrounding neighborhoods. “We are accepting a vision, then we will go through the design phase. All along the way we will have public input. It’s still a long road.”

Under the current plan, the shopping district would have one lane of traffic in each direction to encourage drivers to slow down and take it easy as they cruise through one of the most traveled sections of the boulevard.

In the Isles, where critics say Las Olas has turned into a speedway, the width of the outside lanes would be narrowed from 12 feet to 11 feet. The inside lanes would be narrowed from 12 to 10 feet. The experts say that will get drivers to slow down. Critics worry it will only lead to more accidents.

Shade trees, colorful vines and lush landscaping would be planted along the rest of the boulevard to add to its charm. And benches would be added in the Isles for people needing a spot to rest on their stroll to and from the beach.

So far, the vision still includes getting rid of the median and the black olive trees — a part of the plan that’s unlikely to change, city officials say.

The olive trees were planted more than 50 years ago, helping Fort Lauderdale’s most famous boulevard win that coveted national award three years later, in 1971.

Bob Moorman, the owner of Carroll’s Jewelers at 915 East Las Olas Blvd., has watched the trees thrive and grow over the years.

“I came in 1980 when they were young trees,” he said. “They’ve been here 50 years. These trees have survived hurricanes. I love the trees. I hope they live forever.”

But Moorman knows their time has perhaps come and gone, with a major redesign on the horizon.

“We are sort of opposed to it, but we understand the city must move on,” he said. “The street must move on.”

Residents say they’ve been told some of the trees — which can live 150 years or more — are diseased and at the end of their life cycle.

But the real reason the trees need to go has nothing to do with whether they are healthy or not. It’s all about getting rid of the 8-foot-wide median and making more space for wider sidewalks and outdoor dining, said Joe Corradino, a consultant whose company Corradino Group was hired to help come up with a redesign plan.

Trading olive trees for live oaks

To help keep things quaint and charming, new trees would be planted along both sides of Las Olas. Options recommended by the consultant include Cathedral live oaks, Spanish stoppers, silver buttonwoods, pink and yellow trumpets, crepe myrtles and silver palms.

The plan does have its defenders, including Tom Godart, a real estate broker and vice president of the Las Olas Isles Homeowners Association.

“We deserve something we can be proud of,” Godart said. “And that’s not what we have today.”

Godart praised city leaders for moving things along.

“The commissioners did the right thing,” he said. “Las Olas Boulevard belongs to everyone in the city. All the residents would like to see Las Olas become the beautiful iconic segue between the beach and downtown, to have an area that looks like Worth Avenue in Palm Beach or Fifth Avenue in downtown Naples.”

The original plan created by the consultant divided the 2.4 mile boulevard into five distinct neighborhoods: Downtown, the Shops District, the Colee Hammock neighborhood, Las Olas Isles and the beach. To simplify the commission vote on Tuesday, the plan was split in two: a western corridor for the area between Andrews Avenue and Southeast 12 Avenue and an eastern corridor for the area between Southeast 12 Avenue and the beach.

Both plans won approval Tuesday night.

The next day, downtown resident Debbie Picker shipped off a fuming email to City Hall.

“The trees in the median of Las Olas … are what gives our street character and differentiates it from other South Florida downtowns,” she wrote. “This is the historic view of Las Olas Boulevard and we simply cannot understand discarding this legacy of our community because … developers want more traffic. Come on!”

Picker, who splits her time between New York and downtown Fort Lauderdale, says she participated in a community zoom call with the consultant just two months ago.

“There were people who wanted to get rid of the trees and the median and there were people who wanted to keep them,” she said. “So that was up in the air. There were so many residents who felt strongly about the trees remaining, it was not clear they had decided to remove the trees.”

‘Worry about Denver’

Five or so years ago, there was a similar outcry when black olive trees were removed from the median along A1A south of Oakland Park Boulevard, Glassman told the Sun Sentinel.

“But now people love the newly landscaped medians,” he said. “That’s going to happen on Las Olas. We’re going to keep the charm. It just makes more sense. The pedestrians need to be shaded, not the cars in the middle of the street.”

Glassman had this advice for the out-of-towner offering input all the way from Denver: “Worry about Denver.”

The loss of the tree-lined median isn’t the only change that has folks wound up.

The downtown district on the west end of Las Olas was initially supposed to have bike lanes from Andrews Avenue east to the U.S. 1 tunnel. Now those proposed bike lanes are gone.

“The commission decided they wanted two things in the western corridor: Two lanes of travel in each direction and parking on both sides,” Corradino said. “There’s no room for bike lanes as we envisioned. They got squeezed out.”

Another last-minute change to bring back on-street parking in the downtown section also riled residents, said Melinda Bowker, president of the Downtown Fort Lauderdale Civic Association.

The neighborhood, with more than 7,000 parking spots within 1.5 blocks, has no need for on-street parking, Bowker said.

“Within a few seconds, we lost bike lanes and added back on-street parking to the first six blocks of the road going east from Andrews, which is the section in our neighborhood,” Bowker said in an email. “But it’s not just the bike lanes AND the on-street parking- it’s about the process, respecting our voice, and good-faith. We were not given a heads up that these changes were being discussed seriously.”

Commissioners did make a few concessions after hearing impassioned pleas from residents during a spirited meeting two weeks ago. The city will:

  • Agree not to seize any property along Southeast 15th Avenue to add more turn lanes.

  • Commission a traffic study before moving forward with a controversial plan to block off Southeast 16th Avenue from northbound traffic using it as a cut-through to Broward Boulevard.

  • Add up to two crosswalks in the Isles neighborhood in the coming months rather than waiting on the redesign to move along.

Some residents in the Isles were alarmed at the possibility of losing their own palm-lined median.

Initial plans would have narrowed the median or eliminated it altogether, prompting removal of the royal palms that give that stretch of the boulevard its own special ambience, said Mary Fertig, president of the Idlewyld neighborhood association on the east end of Las Olas.

“In the 1920s they planted those palm trees in the median as a WWI memorial,” Fertig said. “Right now they are planning to leave it alone.”

Lots of question marks

But some fear things could change down the line as the plan gets tweaked, said Suzee Bailey, president of the Nurmi Isles Homeowners Association.

“They make it seem like this is a feather floating through the air and there is nothing definite yet,” she said. “There’s just a lot of question marks. And that has a lot of people scared and concerned.”

So far, Fort Lauderdale is out nearly $1 million just to come up with a plan, Bailey noted.

“Now they are saying it’s just a vision,” she said. “That’s a lot of money for just a vision.”

But all roads lead back to Las Olas and those olive trees.

The boulevard just won’t be the same without that landscaped median down the middle, said Dave Meadors, the man from the Isles who sent commissioners that email saying their plan was downright crazy.

“They can’t just arbitrarily decide to take down 50 years of Las Olas,” he said. “It just doesn’t seem right. The trees are a tragedy to me. They are beautiful, and they are part of the fabric of Las Olas.”

Meadors still holds out hope city leaders will have a change of heart.

“It’s frustrating that I moved here because of the way the area looks and now they want to change it,” he said. “I might have to live with it, but I have a little hope it won’t happen.”

The way Meadors sees it, Las Olas belongs to all of us — but too many have no idea what’s coming.

“I don’t think a lot of people realize what’s going on,” he said. “When I talk to people, they have no clue what’s going on. I believe strongly they are going to destroy our area. And when they’re done, it’s not going to be what anybody wants.”

Susannah Bryan can be reached at sbryan@sunsentinel.com or on Twitter @Susannah_Bryan