Showing posts with label Downtown Hollywood Master Plan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Downtown Hollywood Master Plan. Show all posts

Thursday, January 5, 2012

Thursday's 6 pm meeting is time for Hollywood residents to make sure that prospective Hollywood City Manager candidates are 'scared straight' by the reality of the city's situation

Now that the holidays are over and the decorations have been stored away, it looks like it's finally time for the concerned residents of Hollywood to turn out and see if prospective Hollywood City Manager candidates can be 'scared straight' by the reality of the bad situation the city's elected leaders have put city taxpayers in.
More after the email I received Wednesday morning from the City of Hollywood.

-----
From: <NotifyMe@hollywoodfl.org>
Date: Wed, Jan 4, 2012 at 10:57 AM
Subject: 01-04-12 City Manager Candidates Interview This Week

City of HollywoodFlorida
Office of the City Manager



NEWS RELEASE                                     FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
                                                                                          
January 4, 2012

Contact:  Raelin Storey
                 Public Affairs and Marketing Director
Phone:     954.921.3098
Cell:         954.812.0975          Fax:     954.921.3314
E-mail:     rstorey@hollywoodfl.org

City Manager Candidates to Interview with Commissioners
and meet with Residents
Six Finalists in Hollywood January 5-6, 2012

HollywoodFL - The six candidates for the position of Hollywood City Manager will be in Hollywood on Thursday, December 5 and Friday, December 6 as part of the recruitment process.  At a Special City Commission Meeting on December 13, 2011 the search firm conducting the City Manager recruitment process, Affion Public, presented the City Commission with six candidates for the position.  A total of 60 resumes were received and Affion Public conducted several rounds of interviews including background screening before arriving at the top six candidates.  The candidates are:

David Andrews - Assistant Town Manager/Finance Director, Town of Paradise ValleyAZ
Jim Chisholm - City Manager, City of Daytona BeachFL
Robert Frank - City Manager, City of OcoeeFL
Doug Hewett - Assistant City Manager, City of FayettevilleNC
Horace McHugh - Assistant City Manager, City of Oakland ParkFL
Frank Ragan - Former City Manager, City of McKinneyTX

Information on all six candidates is available on the City's website, www.hollywoodfl.org under "Hot Information."  On Thursday, January 5, 2012, a meet and greet with the public is scheduled from 6:00 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. at the Art and Culture Center of Hollywood, 1650 Harrison Street.  There will be a Special City Commission Meeting in the Commission Chamber of Hollywood City Hall where the Commission will interview each of the six candidates on Friday, January 6 beginning at 2:00 p.m.  City Hall is located at 2600 Hollywood Boulevard.  This meeting is open to the public and will be broadcast on Hollywood Community Television (Comcast Channel 78 and AT&T Uverse) and streamed live on the City's website, www.hollywoodfl.org.

For media inquiries, contact Raelin Storey, Public Affairs and Marketing Director at 954.921.3098.


# # #



Once upon a time I might've said that it was hard to believe that this is the first time that the City of Hollywood was sending this particular information out, but over the past two years, sending something important out one day -or even a few hours- before a public event took place, a common occurance for years here in Hallandale Beach, has become "the new normal" in Hollywood, with crummy results and lower public attendance to match those feeble efforts.


Other than The Balance Sheet blog of Sara Case and Laurie Schecter
http://balancesheetblog.wordpress.com/2012/01/02/city-manager-finalists-here/
there's been absolutely ZERO info about the Hollywood City Manager meetings distributed anywhere around Hollywood, esp. where the public congregates, a point that was proven to me all over again a few days ago while I spoke to a manager at the Publix at Young Circle.


January 2, 2012 photo by South Beach Hoosier
(Earlier in the afternoon, after a visit to Hollywood Beach with my sister visiting from the Mid-Atlantic, I discovered from a reliable source that the Young Circle Shopping Center's landlord, Equity One, with two empty storefronts on either side of the news stand I often frequent -the only place to buy the Daily Business Review- quite preposterously, wants $9K and $11k a month for the spaces.
No wonder they've been empty since July!)


The Publix manager hadn't heard anything about the City Manager meetings, and while I realize that that is not the only supermarket in the city, it does have a certain significance because of its location.
He'd never heard from the City, the CRA, the Chamber of Commerce...


They're all asleep at the wheel.


It was yet another instance, like so many over the past few years I'm personally familiar with, wherein the business community of Hollywood was finding out something important at the-last-minute.
And again, how do you NOT have something posted at or near that Publix or at the Arts Park, one block away from where Thursday's meet-and-greet will take place.


Sounds familiar, right, but not just because it sounds like it's straight out of the Hallandale Beach City Hallplaybook.


It's just like Hollywood's embarrassing and unsatisfactory outreach effort a few years ago to tell the public about the Bernard Zyscovich meetings being held re the new Downtown Hollywood Master Plan.
You could find nothing about it anywhere in Downtown Hollywood.


I know because I walked east on Hollywood Blvd. from Dixie Highway to the east side of Young Circle and never found a single notice or flier about the Zyscovich meetings on any window, bulletin board or kiosk.


It makes you wonder wonder what the proper function of a Chamber of Commerce is if it's not to disseminate info to the local business community?


But then as many of you have previously discussed with me before, that role, at least in this part of South Florida, seems to be more one of acting as a cheerleader for whoever is at City Hall, and NOT as a fair and judicial representative of lots of Mom & Pop stores and restaurants that are just barely scraping by in this economy, and who are paying their annual dues.


That's how they've done it here in Hallandale Beach for years since I moved back here from the Washington, D.C. area, where the head of the organization had no qualms about speaking at public meetings in favor of bad ideas championed by the mayor and city commission -the Diplomat LAC- and slamming HB citizens who opposed it.


All her bombast WITHOUT ever mentioning in her comments that all the HB citizens in the room were paying part of HER salary.
And tell me, when was that vote of all the HB CoC members in 2009 on the plan that got approved days before Christmas?
Exactly.


If all goes as planned, I expect to be at the 6 p.m. Thursday meeting mentioned above, with questions and facts ready in case there's an opportunity to inform the prospective new City Manager what he's got to look forward to, since all the candidates are men.


A good place to start is to ask them if they have a rough idea of how many empty storefronts there are within four blocks of where the meeting is taking place at the Art & Culture Center of Hollywood, 1650 Harrison Street, because many have been empty for YEARS.


Saturday, December 24, 2011

Sweet & smooth Christmas a cappella from the sextet called "Vocation" - Ett barn är fött (A child is born) & Sleigh Ride -LIVE on Abbey Road, TV4's Nyhetsmorgon

Vocation%20%E2%80%93%20Ett%20barn%20%C3%A4r%20f%C3%B6tt


TV4's Nyhetsmorgon: Vocation – Ett barn är fött (A child is born) LIVE on Abbey Road, December 22, 2011.
http://www.tv4play.se/nyheter_och_debatt/nyhetsmorgon?title=vocation_ett_barn_ar_fott&videoid=2126555&utm_medium=sharing&utm_source=permalink&utm_campaign=tv4play.se




Vocation%20%E2%80%93%20Sleigh%20ride


TV4's Nyhetsmorgon: Vocation – Sleigh Ride -LIVE on Abbey Road, December 22, 2011.
http://www.tv4play.se/nyheter_och_debatt/nyhetsmorgon?title=vocation_sleigh_ride&videoid=2126551&utm_medium=sharing&utm_source=permalink&utm_campaign=tv4play.se


This music makes me think of the music I heard one odd pre-Christmas night 21 years ago at the Abercrombie & Fitch at Georgetown Mall, where, within 15 minutes, I ran into and spoke with both then-Rep. and future UN Ambassador and New Mexico governor Bill Richardson and then-ABC News correspondent and Gator alum Forrest Sawyer, wearing a trench coat that made him seem like Joel McCrea in Alfred Hitchcock's Foreign Correspondent, one of my all-time favorite films.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forrest_Sawyer


I was the first person to tell Richardson about his future House colleague -and present U.S. Senator- Bernie Sanders of Vermont, and because he had never heard of him, at first, I think he thought I was joking about Sanders' VERY liberal politics.
"Even for Vermont" I think I told Richardson a few times.


The store had too many contrasting colognes being sprayed into the air for my tastes -by the adorable sale clerk from Kentucky who worked there- but when you were there, it felt like you were in the most Christmas-y place in all of Washington, D.C., besides near the National Christmas Tree on The Ellipse, where I'd been earlier that night.


(Far away from the decidedly un-Christmas feel of SE Broward County this week.)


Yes, back when the late and much-missed Au Pied du Cochon was just a few blocks away up on Wisconsin Avenue, the default hangout for my friends and I after we saw a film in Georgetown, esp. a foreign film.
Back in the early '90's, there were sometimes even two new au courant foreign films playing within four blocks that had the New York Times film critics abuzz, like Indochine or the Chinese film, LIFE.


When I was there with my friends and my then-significant other, the restaurant seemed almost magical, straight out of a film with interesting, attractive people, delicious-smelling aromas, and some "wicked" people-watching wherever we turned our heads.
We felt so "civilized" when we were there, which as pretentious as it sounds -and no doubt was- was no less true.
At certain points in time in the 15 years I lived up there, Au Pied du Cochon was one of the best places in all of Washington, D.C. to be.  


That's where we ate and drank after seeing all three films of the Three Colors trilogy of Krzysztof Kieślowski, starring, respectively, longtime HBB favorites Juliette Binoche, Julie Delpy and Iréne Jacob. (I actually bought the film posters of "Blue" and "Red" and had them in frames in my home.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Three_Colors_Trilogy


Boy, thinking back to THOSE days, it REALLY makes this area seem underwhelming, fun-wise.


Downtown Hollywood could do worse than to have one-tenth of the sort of magnetic persona that area of Wisconsin Avenue had at night. 
But in order to have even that, you need something for people to do at night besides eating, drinking or shopping, and right now, what is there?
No movie theaters, no bookstores with either charm or programming, no old-style news stands...


It's completely lacking in energy.


Maybe once the FEC commuter train is running in a few years and most of the shop owners in Downtown Hollywood who are now so rude and unfriendly have fled, someone with some common sense will invest some money and take advantage of its natural advantages.


I must tell you, though, among my friends, many who used to regularly patronize Downtown Hollywood at night, the collective corrosive effect of so much rudeness, second-rate service and products, and perennial worrying about both parking and safety/crime, has burned too many people, too many times.
"They're just not that into you."


Not that this avoidance has helped The Village at Gulfstream Park at night very much, though, because they are NOT going there either.


Some new faces with common sense and personality at Hollywood and Hallandale Beach City Hall, on the City Commissions, wouldn't hurt, either.


Notice all the 4's for Channel 4 above the ginger bread house doors!


Samtal%20med%20morgonens%20musikg%C3%A4ster%20Vocation


Helena Insulander of Vocation is interviewed by Nyhetsmorgon hosts Kristin Kaspersen and and Steffo Törnquist. December 22, 2011.


http://www.tv4play.se/nyheter_och_debatt/nyhetsmorgon?title=samtal_med_morgonens_musikgaster_vocation&videoid=2126473&utm_medium=sharing&utm_source=permalink&utm_campaign=tv4play.se


Nyhetsmorgon homepage full of video clips and info: 
http://www.tv4.se/nyhetsmorgon



Tuesday, November 1, 2011

Wednesday's Hollywood CRA mtg. features Chip Abele's Block 55 LLC/1740 Polk Street project -inc. the new Publix- getting units from RAC for hotel

Above, looking west at Hollywood City Hall. November 1, 2011 photo by South Beach Hoosier.

Chip Abele's Block 55 LLC/1740 Polk Street project -including a new Publix- looks to be getting an additional 25 units from the RAC for a hotel component.
Wednesday's 10 a.m. Special/Joint Hollywood City Commission/CRA meeting features the return of our old controversial friend, Block 55, who has been the subject of so many posts here, and LONG meetings at Hollywood City Hall for yours truly the past few years.
Like actually running out of memory cards and rechargeable batteries after well over two hours of video-recording LONG.

And, of course, the city will likely be pulling the financial plug on the Holocaust Documentation Center.

I had planned on being at this meeting but won't be able to attend after all.

Here's the two agenda items for Block 55:

Proposed modifications will result in the following thresholds:
397 residential units
104 hotel rooms (52 residential units)
15,000 sq ft (approx.) ground floor retail/office
46,031 sq ft (approx.) regional grocery chain (Publix)
941 car parking garage including grocery chain

Proposed building height are as follows:
Publix- 24’ (2 stories)
Parking garage- 94’ (8 stories)
Hotel- 114’ (10 stories)
Residential buildings range from - 224’ (22 stories) to 266’ (25 stories)

Looking northwest on Tyler Street -north of the Publix. At left is the two condo towers comprising Hollywood's former #1 condo-mania case study, The Radius, off of U.S.-1 -with Starbucks on the ground floor. On the right is the much-older Town House Apt. complex and the advertising billboard on the Abele property, both of which which will be knocked down. November 1, 2011 photo by South Beach Hoosier.

A much closer view of the shot above looking northwest from Tyler Street. November 1, 2011 photo by South Beach Hoosier.

Even closer, peeking over the fence, looking northwest from Tyler Street. November 1, 2011 photo by South Beach Hoosier.

Looking due north over the fence towards Polk Street. November 1, 2011 photo by South Beach Hoosier.

Looking northeast over the fence on Tyler, with the Hollywood Beach Country Club & Golf Resort two blocks north in the distance. November 1, 2011 photo by South Beach Hoosier.

Looking due south on Tyler Street towards Equity One's Young Circle Shopping Center retail complex, which includes a Publix, Walgreens, Subways and a news stand among other things. (The latter being where I used to buy the Daily Business Review.) November 1, 2011 photo by South Beach Hoosier.

Looking northeast from the south side of Tyler Street towards N. 17th Street. November 1, 2011 photo by South Beach Hoosier.


The Street View on Google Maps looking northwest from the intersection of Tyler Street and N. 17th Street, Hollywood, FL.

The regular Hollywood City Commission meeting is at 1 p.m.

FYI: In case you have had this problem in the past, too, I was at Hollywood City Hall Tuesday afternoon and happened to have the chance to talk to City Clerk Patricia Cerny about some problems this past summer with the online agendas and video archives NOT activating unless you use Internet Explorer -a problem I've previously mentioned here at the blog- which she didn't know anything about but has promised she'd investigate.

It's not unlike the problem the Broward County Commission used to have a few years ago with streaming of their meetings.
You could only do it using Internet Explorer, but there wasn't anything on the website saying so. Now you can watch them at home or work using other browsers.

Friday, July 1, 2011

Good news! To better serve and inform, the Hollywood-based "Balance Sheet Online" has morphed into a blog - "Balance Sheet Blog"

The Hollywood-based Balance Sheet Online, always a source of well-reasoned logic and sense of purpose for the well-informed South Florida citizen who wants to know more about what's REALLY going on there, has changed its format from that of a website to a blog, and will now bear the nom de plume, Balance Sheet Blog.

Below, an excerpt from an email I received from Hollywood civic activists and co-editors Sara Case and Laurie Schecter on Saturday the 26th:

Based on reader request, we have moved the Balance Sheet to a blog format. One advantage of the new format is that you will be able to post your own comments.
If you wish to continue receiving email updates, you must sign up ON THE BLOG to receive them. Click the link below to get started.
If you have bookmarked the Balance Sheet Online website, you will need to change your bookmark to reflect the new location (link below), http://balancesheetblog.wordpress.com/
PS If you discover any bugs in the new format, please let us know so we can work them out.


Friday, March 6, 2009

Zyscovich Plan for Downtown Hollywood to be Unveiled March 10

Having attended all of Bernard Zyscovich's previous preliminary forums, meetings, workshops in Hollywood, now we will finally see  what Zyscovich's ridiculously creative brain has been working on for so long, and see whether having tasked one of the nation's great urban planners to design a cure for what, in part, ails Hollywood -a sense of disconnectedness and lack of 'place'- as well as whether or not the South Florida business community actually has the sense to take advantage of his prescient, dynamic vision and simple  common sense and knowledge of human behavior. Common sense which in my opinion will seem even more obvious and self-evident if approved, once there's a commuter train running on the FEC line in downtown Hollywood connecting it to downtown Miami and to downtown Fort Lauderdale and points north. I urge you NOT to miss the chance to see for yourself someone who really can connect the dots in interesting and unusual ways that few people can. Zyscovich's vision, if properly applied, with any luck will be the accepted norm for South Florida years from now.





FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Media Contact: Lisa Liotta, Deputy Director
City of Hollywood Community Redevelopment Agency-Downtown District
Office: (954) 921-3016
lliotta@hollywoodfl.org

PUBLIC MEETING ON PROPOSED DOWNTOWN HOLLYWOOD
MASTER PLAN – TUES., MARCH 10

Hollywood, FL - The Hollywood Community Redevelopment Agency (CRA)-Downtown District invites the public to attend a public forum for the presentation of a proposed Downtown Hollywood Master Plan from 5:30 to 8 p.m. Tuesday, March 10 in the City Commission Chambers (Room 219) in City Hall, 2600 Hollywood Boulevard.

Bernard Zyscovich of Zyscovich, Inc., urban planners and architects, will present the Downtown Master Plan and preliminary zoning recommendations for the area bounded by Monroe Street on the south, Fillmore Street on the north, 16th/17th avenues on the east and 22nd Avenue on the west. The presentation will include specific recommendations for the entire area including the properties around Young Circle and a proposed North Downtown Office/Mixed Use District. The meeting will be an opportunity for the public to review and provide input on the plan prior to its consideration by the City's Planning and Zoning Board and the City Commission.

This public meeting is the eighth public forum organized by the Community Redevelopment Agency (CRA)-Downtown District regarding redevelopment in Downtown Hollywood and the Regional Activity Center east of Interstate 95 since April 2003. The process began when four panelists reviewed proposed developments for the Young Circle area. Mr. Zyscovich moderated that panel and has worked with the (CRA)-Downtown District to conduct additional forums to ensure public participation in zoning recommendations and design guidelines for the Young Circle/ArtsPark area. Subsequent forums provided public input into redevelopment objectives for the Federal Highway corridor and the Regional Activity Center, introduced the proposed North Downtown Office/Mixed Use District, and presented the scope of the proposed Downtown Master Plan.

For more information, call Neil Fritz, Executive Director, Hollywood Community Redevelopment Agency (CRA)-Downtown District, at 954-921-3016.

The Hollywood Community Redevelopment Agency (CRA) was created under the authority of Florida's Community Redevelopment Act of 1969. The CRA's mission is to encourage economic development through the use of tax increment financing by funding development, special projects and enhanced services that address areas of community concern. The Downtown District was established in 1979 to promote Hollywood's central business district including Historic Hollywood Boulevard, Young Circle and nearby residential neighborhoods. The Downtown District is approximately 580 acres and extends from 22nd Avenue on the west to generally 17th Avenue on the east, Johnson Street on the north and Washington Street on the south.