Oakland Park the next Fort Lauderdale? New towers morphing city’s skyline with art, restaurants, nightlife

Phillip Valys, South Florida Sun-Sentinel
Updated ·8 min read

Who does Oakland Park think it is, Fort Lauderdale? The city is growing up — literally — with a wave of new buildings that will add restaurants, cafes, art murals, parks and nightlife to North Federal and North Dixie highways.

Here are the three mid- and high-rise, mixed-use projects that are poised to redefine Oakland Park’s skyline:

  • Oaklyn (3333 N. Federal Highway), with its parking garage painted the colors of sunset, and its nine–story mural of a pensive boy fishing off a tree branch, is an 11-story, live-work-play building that debuted Sept. 21 with three ground-floor restaurants, 274 apartments and public art by Daniel “Krave” Fila and the late David “Lebo” Le Batard.

  • The Sky Building (3701 N. Dixie Highway), a pair of six-story buildings tethered by a glass skybridge, is kicking up construction dust on North Dixie Highway, across the street from Funky Buddha Brewery. The future home of Oakland Park City Hall, the Sky, slated to open in November 2024, will boast 16,000 square feet of ground-floor restaurants and retail, 136 units and parking.

  • Finally, the Horizon of Oakland Park (near Northeast 12th Avenue and 38th Street) — whose development plan is winding through city approvals — would be composed of 310 apartments and 21,000 square feet of ground-floor, restaurant-retail space across three mid-rises perched on North Dixie Highway, on the site where the current Oakland Park City Hall will be bulldozed. Horizon would also feature a dog park, basketball and tennis courts, and a future train station platform for commuter rail.

Developers, artists, city officials and advocates for Oakland Park’s lofty new towers all say the projects — after years of stalled progress — are overdue, each designed to bring life to the city’s long-gestating downtown.

“It’s the right time and the right place,” Oakland Park Vice Mayor Tim Lonergan tells the South Florida Sun Sentinel. “All the pieces finally came together for us to revitalize the downtown.”

It wasn’t for lack of trying. Oaklyn, in the works since 2017, required city brass to lift height restrictions to 130 feet along North Federal Highway, Lonergan says. The city tried courting builders for the Sky Building, which is on land the city has owned since 2001, for four years before developer NR Investments finally broke ground last December. And since 2012, Oakland Park has tried — by handing out city grants — pumping public art, food and nightlife into its so-called Culinary Arts District, a cluster of breweries, meaderies, distilleries and restaurants that sit in warehouses along the spine of North Dixie Highway.

For Lonergan, it was public events like Oakland Park’s Dancing in the Street, Oktoberfest as well as the rapid growth of the Culinary Arts District — stretching from Oakland Park Boulevard north to Jaco Pastorius Park — that enabled and lured Oaklyn, Sky Building and Horizon. The district is now a craft beer, wine and liquor mecca, he adds.

“We’ve got Prison Pals and Brewlihan Mead and Rebel Wine Bar and Black Flamingo, Funky Buddha and Chainbridge,” Lonergan says. “This is the place to come to.”

If you ask commercial real-estate guru Josh Deitchman, it’s a no-brainer why the 11-story Oaklyn sprouted on one of the biggest intersections in Broward County: Oakland Park Boulevard and North Federal Highway. Roughly 106,000 passengers pass through the intersection daily, says Deitchman, whose company, Level Realty, is now courting tenants for Oaklyn and Sky Building.

“With Oaklyn, the attention we’re getting from retailers is because of traffic count data,” Deitchman says. “It’s so strong in this corridor. When I moved here, it was charming and not as busy or built-up. Now there’s a mix of upper-class workers and, on a factual basis, the nighttime population numbers are staggering.

“People aren’t just commuting here and going home. They’re coming here and staying here.”

Oaklyn’s first residents moved into the complex’s 274 apartments in mid-September, and already two restaurants have signed leases on the ground floor: Miami-based Imperial Moto cafe and North Miami Beach burger joint La Birra Bar. A third tenant is still unsigned, Oaklyn spokeswoman Barbara Costa says.

Imperial Moto, a motorcycle-themed coffeehouse, is expected to debut in January as the first Broward offshoot of owner Matt McKenna’s flagship in Miami’s Little River neighborhood. McKenna says Imperial will display vintage motorbikes, offer branded apparel and roast its organic fair-trade beans in Miami Springs. It’s a perfect cafe for Oakland Park, which has “great potential,” reminding him of Little River before its gentrification, he says.

“It’s primed to be this great boomtown,” McKenna says of Oakland Park, adding that he envisions bikes-and-coffee weekend meetups in Oaklyn’s parking lot. “People are moving to this area because they’re being priced out of the Miami market, the Fort Lauderdale market. I feel like we’re stepping out of the noise of Miami into this really special environment.”

Related Articles

Oaklyn is the latest example of Oakland Park fighting to transform North Federal Highway into a family-friendly row for food and drink. For decades, it tried to strip away a pair of nude dance clubs, Solid Gold and Pure Platinum, before succeeding in 2017. Now an ABC liquor store, a Bahama Breeze restaurant and PDQ franchise have replaced the former Solid Gold strip club.

In 2024, Oaklyn’s developer Newrock Partners wants to break ground on the O2, a seven-story, mixed-use building on the former Pure Platinum site, with 165 luxury apartments and more than 30,000 square feet of commercial space, says developer Daniel Deitchman, who is the father of Level Realty’s Josh Deitchman. The project is still in the proposal process and hasn’t been greenlit by the city yet.

“The city got rid of this nuisance neighbor that had been there for 30 years, and now we’ve got unanimous support to build there,” he says.

Artist “Krave” Fila, the man behind Oaklyn’s distinctive 90-foot mural — depicting a boy fishing while perched on a tree branch — says it’s designed to evoke the small-town charm of Norman Rockwell.

“I went for the simple pleasures of life, because when I think of Oakland Park, I think of this charming, old-school beach town,” says Fila, a street artist who’s painted countless murals since the 1990s across Wynwood, Lincoln Road, Fort Lauderdale’s Flagler Village and downtown Hollywood.

Oaklyn also tapped other major local muralists — Ravi Superville, Brian Butler, Diana “Didi” Contreras, David Parise and “Lebo” Le Batard, who died in August — to mount paintings around the lobby and elevators.

That major developers in Oakland Park are hiring local artists to wrap their high-rises in art is a testament that “the city is moving in the right direction,” Fila says.

“It’s great they’re willing to invest in local artists,” Fila adds. “With our high-caliber artworks, Oakland Park will become its own thing. This town is a bit more conservative, but also cleaner, more mature, and they should embrace that.”

Developer Nir Shoshani, whose NR Investments is behind the $51 million Sky Building project, says he feels as bullish about Oakland Park as he was about Miami 15 years ago, when he built residential high-rises Canvas Miami and Filling Station Lofts on the edge of gentrified Wynwood.

Sky Building, which straddles the north and south sides of Northeast 38th Street, is scheduled to open by November 2024 and came together with help from a $1.1 million CRA grant, according to city records. Its two five-story buildings, connected by a skybridge, will feature 136 residential units and house the future Oakland Park City Hall on its first and fifth floors, Shoshani says.

“The idea is to create energy and some life,” Shoshani says. “You’ll now have 300 people living there with dogs and cats, and there’s the fabulous (Jaco Pastorius) park right in front. It’s an area that we see that has huge potential.”

Already, restaurants and retailers want to lease its 16,000 square feet of commercial space, adds Josh Deitchman, of Level Realty, who’s also part of Newrock Partners’ development team. He’s aiming to lease every storefront by March.

Once Sky Building debuts, the current Oakland Park City Hall will be demolished to build Horizon of Oakland Park. Developers Kaufman Lynn Construction and Falcone Group, who bought the 4-acre site for $11.2 million in 2022, will build a trio of midrises with 310 apartments and 21,000 square feet of restaurants and retail, according to city documents.

The city’s Development Review Committee OK’ed Horizon at its Nov. 9 meeting, and the project next heads to the Planning and Zoning Board and the City Commission for final approvals, city spokeswoman Shannon Vezina says.

One of Horizon’s key features, adds Commissioner Lonergan, is an Oakland Park train stop on the future Broward Commuter Rail, which will share the Florida East Coast Railway that runs parallel with North Dixie Highway.

“The city used to have big problems with foot traffic,” Lonergan says. “But now we’ve got businesses moving downtown, people are coming here for a nice dinner, it’s a wonderful thing. And that rail station will really complete Oakland Park’s vision.”