Expect fewer cranes in this Florida city’s downtown amid slowdown

Construction cranes have dominated the Fort Lauderdale skyline for more than a decade as developer after developer came forward with plans for taller and taller towers in and around downtown, fueling an unprecedented and head-spinning construction boom.

But that fast-paced growth has finally hit the skids for a number of reasons, including rising interest rates, a nationwide downturn and a volatile financial market, according to developers who shared their insights with the South Florida Sun Sentinel.

“Things are definitely slowing down. A number of projects have started and stopped,” said Charlie Ladd, a high-profile developer who sits on the seven-member board of directors for Fort Lauderdale’s Downtown Development Authority. “Things are really pretty much stuck. It’s the slowest it’s been in downtown Fort Lauderdale in the past 20 years. It’s definitely winding down.”

At one point in the past decade, you might have seen at least 10 cranes hovering over downtown, Ladd said. Now there’s three.

“A number of projects have started and stopped,” Ladd told the Sun Sentinel. “It’s slowing down with interest rates going up. There have been very few new apartment deals in the past two years.”

Forty projects have all the required approvals, but are still waiting to break ground, according to a list on the city’s website last updated in January.

The list, which gets updated quarterly, has four categories: projects under review, projects already approved, projects under construction and projects completed from 2012 through today.

Thirteen projects are under construction. Twelve are under review and awaiting on approvals. And 45 have been completed in the past 13 years.

The city has seen a slight downturn in the number of development applications it has received so far this year, said Ella Parker, acting deputy director of Fort Lauderdale’s Development Services Department. Developers submitted 20 applications from October 2024 through April; 56 applications from October 2023 through the end of September 2024; 46 applications from October 2022 through the end of September 2023; and 46 applications from October 2021 through the end of September 2022.

But development growth is cyclical, Ladd said. “Downtown had an amazing run from 2010 to last year,” he said. “And it’ll start up again.”

How long will the down cycle last?

“You never know,” Ladd said. “The savings and loan crisis lasted about five years. The real estate crisis went from 2008 to 2013. So maybe five years.”

‘A lot of fearmongering’

Jimmy Tate, one of the developers remaking Bahia Mar into a Monaco-inspired destination with a hotel and four condo towers, isn’t quite as pessimistic.

“I don’t agree the slowdown will last five years,” Tate said. “Everyone is saying tariffs are going to cause inflation. It’s a lot of white noise, a lot of fearmongering. When prices don’t go up, then things will settle down. And markets will return to normal.”

Despite all the headlines, Tate says developments are still going to come out of the ground — including his own.

“I stalled a $170 million project over a year and a half ago because costs were too high,” he said. “Now we’re about to break ground. It’s a 19-story luxury high-rise, a multi-family rental in North Miami. Two years ago I couldn’t afford to do the project. Now I can.”

Tate says the slowdown really started two years ago when interest rates went from 1% to 7% and the cost of insurance went sky-high.

“It’s my belief that construction costs are going to come down because supply lines have been diminished,” Tate said. “The two years of backlog has gone away because so many developers were putting projects on the backburner. And the cost of insurance has come down 20%, 25% from last year.”

Tate says the market experienced a hiccup this year because of the unknown — including the impact of President Donald Trump’s tariff hikes.

“What happened is you have mass hysteria caused by the media, so people are freaked out,” Tate said. “The news put the fear of God in everybody. Now that people are starting to see how the tariffs are affecting us, they realize it’s not a big deal. … No one is going to slow down if they have sales. It’s market driven and it’s about supply and demand. If people are still moving to Fort Lauderdale, which they are, there’s a demand for product.”

The question, Tate says, is whether developers can afford to build a high-rise apartment tower with rents people can afford.

“That depends on the market,” Tate said. “The unknown is where is the ceiling on rent from an affordability standpoint. Is there enough demand in the market for their product? If there is, they’re going to break ground.”

Some of the projects breaking ground now were in the works for three or more years, Tate said.

Before breaking ground, there’s a long process to maneuver through that can take years. Then it could take another two or three years between site-plan approval and getting the financing to break ground, Tate said. And then it takes another two or three years to build the project.

“We won’t break ground on Bahia Mar until we’re 45% presold,” Tate said. “I believe we will hit that by the end of first quarter 2026 and break ground shortly afterward. April was a crazy month because of the stock market and the uncertainty of the tariffs. But we still have huge qualified buyers coming in every day. Now it takes a week or two to get them to sign, but they all sign.”

Watching the bottom line

Tate agrees with Ladd that the market was due for a downturn.

“Between 2010 and 2020, you had a market that only went up. It never went down,” Tate said. “Historically speaking, we always had a recession every four years. And you knew how to time the recession. We didn’t have a real recession for 10 years. Interest rates were low and everybody had money in their pockets. People were buying, people were selling. It was glorious. And then COVID hit, and everything came to a screeching halt.”

Now the feds are raising interest rates to control inflation, Tate said.

“But it killed development when you had high costs of insurance and high cost of construction over the last two years,” he added. “Now interest rates are coming down a point or two and insurance costs are coming down. I’m hearing prices of construction are going to come down too.”

Doug Eagon is a developer who retired from Stiles Corp. after serving in the roles of president and vice chairman. He told the Sun Sentinel we can expect to see fewer projects breaking ground in downtown Fort Lauderdale as the market slows.

“I don’t think you’re going to see near as many cranes in the skyline,” he said. “When we’re talking about downtown Fort Lauderdale and the multi-family rental projects, those are expensive projects. It takes big investors behind it and it takes big lenders. And right now, there’s not the same appetite for those projects as there has been over the last several years. But I don’t think that’s the end of the world.”

The slowdown began well in advance of Trump taking office, Eagon said.

“It began over the last year or so,” he added. “Part of it is the cyclical market. If there’s another level of uncertainty because polices have to become more clarified, that doesn’t help. Today you don’t know what steel prices are going to be. You don’t know what cement prices are going to be. Development is not an easy business. You get used to factors you have to contend with literally every day. That just kind of comes with the territory.”

As far as the pace of new development, Eagon believes most developers are going to take a break.

Interest rates are just one factor. Construction costs also play a role.

“Where they go in the next year nobody knows right now because of external forces,” Eagon said. “Nobody knows about the impact of the tariffs, so how do you price anything?

“Another big factor hitting these projects hard is insurance costs. Rule of thumb was that insurance costs would be $800 a year per unit. Now it could easily be $2,200 a unit or maybe more. When you’re underwriting your forecasted project, that goes right to the bottom line. And you have to figure out where else you’re going to make it up.”

Wait and see approach

The market will eventually even out, Eagon said, but it’s not going to happen overnight.

How long will it take?

“That’s a question nobody can answer,” he said. “We don’t know because of all the unknowns. Whether it’s going to be a year or five years, you react accordingly. In the interim, there’s a good supply of apartments downtown. There are more condos under construction and there’s more in the presale stage.”

The good news is that people are still flocking downtown and Fort Lauderdale still has a good supply of units, Eagon said.

“Right now there’s less of a need for more high-rise apartment projects,” he said. “In the interim we have a good supply of apartment projects downtown that are going to continue to be absorbed. There’s no doomsday that I see in the continued evolution of our vibrant urban center.”

Developer Aiton “A.J.” Yaari will agree to that.

Yaari and his partner are behind Las Olas Ocean, a supersized project that would bring dramatic change to Fort Lauderdale’s beachfront just north of the legendary Elbo Room at Las Olas Boulevard and State Road A1A.

As initially proposed, the three-block project calls for two 29-story condo towers with a total of 500 units; a two-story luxury hotel with 373 rooms; exclusive shops surrounded by high-end restaurants; and an eight-story parking podium with 1,323 spaces.

The megaproject is still winding its way through the approval process and has not yet made it to Fort Lauderdale’s commission or Planning and Zoning Board.

But it will soon, Yaari told the Sun Sentinel.

“It’s about to launch,” he said. “It’s sexy. It’s beautiful. It’s a marathon, not a sprint. I’m taking my time. And I really want to do it right.”

Yaari says he has complete faith in Fort Lauderdale and its ability to ride out the current slowdown in the market.

“I can’t believe what’s going on,” he said. “All the richest people, the big money are coming into Fort Lauderdale.

“I’m building a single-family luxury home in Riviera Isles. A house right across from me in Harborage Isle was worth $70 million and they tore it down. The Miami billionaires are chasing the millionaires into Fort Lauderdale. And I feel it.”

Yaari says he believes in the resiliency of Fort Lauderdale.

“We have the giant port, the international airport, all these great new restaurants, all these changes,” he said. “We are something very special. I think we have to see which projects are real and which are not for real. We are a growing city and we have to be smart.”

Despite his optimism, Yaari is a realist.

“I’m sure the financial uncertainty is opening up the magnifying glass much bigger,” he said of developers reviewing the pros and cons of building in this market. “Some people might think the tariffs are a bluff and some people might have a heart attack over it.”

Some developers might be taking a wait-and-see attitude, he said.

“Not me,” he said. “But I do think it’s going to slow things down a bit downtown. I do think everyone is going to take a breather. I just think it’s cyclical and Fort Lauderdale is as strong as ever. But I think the beach and the luxury market are still going strong. No one can hide that America is in a cycle. I just think everyone is going to watch carefully to see what happens. And if there is a little hiccup in the market, Fort Lauderdale will pass right through it.”

What’s to come

Here’s a list of just some of the projects in the pipeline in downtown Fort Lauderdale.

The list comes directly from the city’s website. Some project names may have changed after they made the list.

Approved and waiting to break ground

— 633 Southeast Third Ave.: 47 stories, 830 residential units, 12,798 square feet of retail and restaurant space.

— RD Las Olas Residences (now Andare Residences) at 521 E. Las Olas Blvd.: 45 stories, 192 residential units, 3,205 square feet of retail and restaurant space.

— Ombelle at 300 NE Third Ave.: 43 stories, 959 residential units, 11,405 square feet of retail and restaurant space.

— 300 W. Broward Blvd.: 48 stories, 956 residential units, 23,818 square feet of retail and restaurant space.

— Searstown (Parcel II) at 550 NE Ninth St.: 16 stories, 22 residential units, 192 hotel rooms, 4,770 square feet of retail and restaurant space.

— Searstown (Parcel III) at 450 NE Ninth St.: 15 stories, 135 residential units 7,013 square feet of retail and restaurant space.

— Nautica Residences and Hotel at 400 SW Third Ave.: 50 stories (condo), 39 stories (rental), 32 stories (hotel), 695 residential units, 155 hotel rooms, 34,450 square feet of retail and restaurant space.

— 200 W. Broward Blvd.: 40 stories, 375 hotel rooms, 10,059 square feet of retail and restaurant space, 52,182 square feet of office space.

— DNA at 300 N. Andrews Ave.: North tower 40 stories, South tower 45 stories, 612 residential units, 74,246 square feet of retail and restaurant space.

— ArtsPark Lofts at 407 N. Andrews Ave.: 30 stories, 289 residential units, 1,914 square feet of retail and restaurant space.

— Raintree Riverwalk Residences at 408 SW Fourth Ave.: East tower 30 stories, West tower 30 stories, 677 residential units, 21,000 square feet of retail and restaurant space.

— 11 Andrews at 11 N. Andrews Ave.: 37 stories, 1,525 square feet of retail and restaurant space.

Under Construction

— FAT Village East at 21 NW Fifth St.: 24 stories, 355 residential units, 43,355 square feet of retail and restaurant space.

— FAT Village West at 501 NW First Ave.: 13 stories, 504 residential units, 26,040 square feet of retail and restaurant space.

— Riverwalk Residences at 333 N. New River Drive: 43 stories, 295 residential units, 1,600 square feet of retail and restaurant space.

— RD Las Olas aka Veneto at 201 S. Federal Highway: 43 stories, 259 residential units, 1,970 square feet of retail and restaurant space.

— 317 N. Federal Highway: East tower 45 stories, West tower 42 stories, 716 residential units, 2,613 square feet of retail and restaurant space.