Hollywood OK's Project With Lower-Cost Townhouses on Adams Street

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By Shannon O'Boye
South Florida Sun-Sentinel

April 27, 2006

Hollywood � City officials took a major step Wednesday toward building affordably priced townhouses where rundown apartments once stood.

Commissioners selected MG3 Developers and Creative Community Development to build Tango Gardens on Adams Street, east of South 24th Avenue.

Creative Community is owned by the city's former director of art and cultural affairs, Cynthia Miller, who has another project on Adams Street as well.

Tango Gardens is supposed to include 60 three-bedroom townhouses. Thirty-one of them will be priced at $158,000 and can be purchased only by families making a maximum of $46,480, or 80 percent or less of the county's $58,100 median income.

The other 29 townhouses will sell for $270,000.

To win neighborhood support for the project, the developers met with community members and promised to donate $10,000 to create a computer lab at the McNicol Community Center and to make other improvements on the street.

Adams Street has long been a notorious drug haven. Mayor Mara Giulianti said Wednesday it was considered "the worst [street] in Hollywood" when she took office in 1986.

The city used approximately $3 million in federal funding to purchase and raze several dilapidated apartment buildings on the south side of the street.

Neighbors "wanted to bring more ownership into the neighborhood, and for good reason," said Commissioner Beam Furr, who represents the area. "One of the ways we lost Adams Street was there was no one there who was invested in it. You're going to have eyes on that street where you haven't had them in a number of years."

Those who qualify to purchase the low-priced townhouses will not be able to rent them to others, according to Community Redevelopment Director Neal Herst.

Although the city requested proposals from 160 developers, only one other firm submitted a plan.

Developer Gary Posner, who has plans to build condos, restaurants and shops on the south side of Young Circle, offered to build and sell 62 townhouses on Adams Street at $158,000 apiece. An outside consultant analyzed Posner's plan and told city officials Posner might not be able to make the project work financially if he tried to make all the townhouses affordable.

Miller, the former city employee, and former City Commissioner Ken Gottlieb, a state representative, have stirred up controversy by asking the city to give them $6.3 million in land and $2 million in tax incentives on the other Adams Street project. They propose building a mix of housing, retail and office space at the site of the old Theresa Apartments.