South Florida CEO: One last transformation: can US-441 change from a gritty commercial corridor to a

Driving down Hollywood's four and-a-half miles of US-441 (also known as State Road 7), you will see mostly pawn-shops, used car dealerships, auto body repair shops and psychics, stretching almost to the city's northern border. There, the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino suddenly looms over you from the west side of the road. The sprawling resort, casino, retail and entertainment complex, sparklingly new, is in sharp contrast to the street around it.

Hollywood city planners hope to change that disparity. Their vision is to turn US-441 into a boulevard with trees and wide sidewalks, where parking lots are behind buildings, outdoor dining faces the boulevard and mixed-use projects combine residential, retail and office space. "What we envision is like you would find in good American cities or European cities," says Bernard Zyscovich, whose Zyscovich Inc. is working with the city on a plan for the corridor. "It's a huge leap ... we're looking 20 years [ahead]," he says.

The Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) had already allocated money to buy land along the sides of US-441 to widen and reconfigure the road throughout Broward County. The city of Hollywood, says Mayor Mara Giulianti, decided to take the opportunity presented by the upcoming work. After a moratorium on building along the corridor, the city developed a zoning overlay plan that it hopes will mean fewer industrial properties lining the road, and more shops, restaurants and residential towers. Higher building heights are also expected when the plans are finalized. The city asked FDOT to put bus-only lanes on US-441, which could in the future be converted for another form of mass transit.

Once the new zoning is finalized, Zyscovich thinks developers will begin investing. "Waterfront land and the best properties have all been taken," he says. "Many developers say, 'I don't have a problem getting money--I have a problem doing deals.'"

Still, Zyscovich acknowledges that redevelopment will not be so simple. "The challenges are enormous, because there's different sizes and shapes of the properties along the corridor," he says. "There's a lot of very small buildings that no one wants to invest in."

The uncertainty of plans in progress has deterred current property owners from making major changes. "We've always invested with maintaining the properties, but we haven't done significant improvements because we've been waiting to find out ... what the county's and city's ideas are," says Mason Sharpe, vice president of Hialeah-based Sharpe Properties, which owns four strip centers with 44,500 square feet of retail along the corridor. His family has owned the properties for 15 years, and wants to hold onto them and eventually redevelop them, possibly with a partner, Sharpe says.

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He is intrigued by proposals for outdoor seating and sidewalks, but points out that, like many properties on US-441, at least two of his are not deep enough to accommodate such a concept. "You're not dealing with an empty land-scape or empty lands," he says. "The only direction you can go is up."

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Sharpe's properties are located just to the north and to the south of Hard Rock. He says that while there are certainly more cars driving by since the complex opened, it is hard to tell whether there are more people stopping to shop.

Others are more confident that the 500-room hotel, casino and entertainment complex helps the city, although it is situated on Seminole reservation land outside of city limits. "I believe the economic impact has been great, even without paying taxes," says Jacqueline Gonzalez, the city's former economic development director. She points to "the jobs generated and the commerce generated" by Hard Rock. According to the Seminole Tribe, the complex cost more than $200 million to build and employs some 3,000 full-time workers.

Hard Rock is definitely bringing more groups to visit Hollywood, says Rozeta Rad, director of tourism at the Hollywood Office of Tourism. She also says it has attracted the attention of travel media and tour operators. "The tourists that stay at the hotel ... they're definitely going to visit the beach at some point, or they're going to come to downtown Hollywood," Rad says.

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Next door to the hotel and casino, Seminole Paradise, a 350,000-square-foot complex of 11 nightclubs, 24 stores and 12 restaurants developed by The Cordish Co. of Baltimore, is attracting more locals than tourists, at least according to the owner of two of the complex's restaurants.

Arturo Gomez, chief operating officer of Chicago-based Rockit Ranch Productions Inc., says that although most of the customers at his restaurants, Tequila Ranch and The Park Sports Club, live in western Broward, he expects more tourists in the future. "Over time, I see this being a destination point for travelers who come to South Florida for whom South Beach might not be their thing," he says.

If the Hard Rock anchors the northern end of Hollywood's stretch of US-441, the decidedly less glitzy Millennium Super Mall anchors its southern end at Hollywood Boulevard. In 2003, Weston-based Millennium Development Enterprises signed a 30-year lease--with an option to buy after 10 years--with the owners of what was then the vacant Hollywood Fashion Mall. Millennium turned it into a flea market-like bazaar. Eventually, the company plans to turn the 46-acre site into a mixed-use residential, retail and commercial hub for southwestern Broward County, says attorney Alan Koslow of Fort Lauderdale-based Becker & Poliakoff PA, which represents Millennium. While that project is in its first, baby-step phase--rezoning--Koslow thinks Millennium's long-term investment will pay off. "I think they'll be rewarded," he says. "Because I get phone calls every week from people who want to invest in that project."

Redeveloping the US-441 corridor is undeniably a multi-decade project. The FDOT work is not even scheduled to begin until 2008. But Mayor Giulianti says it will ultimately be as important as Hollywood's beach. "The health of the community is often judged by those corridors," she says. "They're highly visible, and they set the tone of a community."

--RB