It was painful to look at.
After greater than three years of ready, the would-be developer of a cultural heart and metropolis park within the coronary heart of downtown Fort Lauderdale couldn’t give any written verification of monetary backing, forcing metropolis officers to declare the undertaking in default.
As developer Jeff John’s rambling presentation on Tuesday repeatedly insulted the intelligence of metropolis officers and residents, it was clearer than ever that the undertaking generally known as One Cease FTL goes nowhere — 5 years after the proposition surfaced on June 19, 2020.
But when the developer’s obfuscation completed something, it underscored the truth that developer-driven public-private partnerships corresponding to this, generally known as P3s, are lengthy on grandiose guarantees and brief on particular commitments.
Three years in the past, amid appreciable controversy, the town plowed forward, swayed by a lobbyist’s guarantees and splashy full-color renderings.
A earlier fee voted 4-1 to provide One Cease FTL a license to manage the location for 99 years with out paying property taxes, regardless of a metropolis grasp plan that referred to as for the location to be preserved as park house.
The positioning is a 3.3-acre parcel generally known as One Cease Store, a reputation courting to its previous life as a metropolis allowing workplace.
Businessman Jeff John tried to reassure the mayor and commissioners by claiming that he had secured $194 million in financing from a London-based firm, BGC Group.
“I’m right here to let you know we’ve a signed dedication for the total funding for this undertaking,” John mentioned.
However even this metropolis’s relentlessly pro-development majority wasn’t shopping for it.
The canine ate their homework
When Mayor Dean Trantalis demanded that John present proof, he didn’t.
“You’re empty-handed. Why ought to we imagine this? I’ve acquired a group out right here that wishes to know,” Trantalis mentioned. “The very first request has not been fulfilled.”
Skeptics who checked out the BGC Group’s web site seen that it’s a brokerage agency, not a lender.
When Commissioner John Herbst pressed John and his monetary adviser for particulars, none have been forthcoming. As a substitute, the fee heard excuses. They didn’t have authorization to launch particulars. An affiliate had related paperwork however had missed a flight to Florida from Newark.
Then the political web site ftlpolitics.com unearthed a shady-looking letter from a supposed investor, ARES 2811 Corp., itemizing a residential deal with in Nassau County, N.Y., and claiming it’s “prepared, keen and ready” to finance the deal.
The letter seems to be phony. It lists no enterprise deal with or perhaps a signature from a person and it misspelled John’s first title.
This entire charade has a dog-ate-my-homework really feel.
“That is all smoke and mirrors,” resident Anne Hilmer informed commissioners. “That is one other instance of one other unhealthy P3 deal for the town. The land has not been usable for over three years. They must tear down the fences and let metropolis residents use it as a park.”
“That is like an unlimited farce,” mentioned Robin Haines Merrill, a group activist and critic of the plan since its inception. “I believe it is a uncooked deal. There’s one thing that doesn’t odor proper right here.”
Seems to be ‘like a giveaway’
It’s value recalling what we mentioned on these pages in 2021 in our first of a number of editorials opposing this undertaking, titled “This Land is Your Land.”
“It seems to be extra to us like a giveaway of one of many only a few remaining inexperienced areas left downtown,” we wrote then. “The town ought to vote no. It’s merely not value it.”
It wasn’t value it — and it nonetheless isn’t. The folks of Fort Lauderdale now know {that a} P3 is a ticket to deceive and delay.
Solely Commissioner Ben Sorensen proposed killing all the deal on the spot. “I simply don’t see something to substantiate shifting ahead,” he mentioned.
Commissioner Steve Glassman, whose district contains the location, mentioned it will be “a disgrace and a travesty” to cancel the deal.
He mentioned he needs the developer to hunt a full metropolis evaluation of its plans by June, and warned residents that if One Cease FTL fails, “we may have high-rise towers on that web site.”
As a substitute, commissioners declared the undertaking in default, which provides the developer 30 days to treatment any issues. Additionally they demanded a second-year rental charge of $250,000 instantly.
So the undertaking technically stays alive, however the subsequent visionary who involves city with a grand plan to show a patch of land right into a 99-year profit-making enterprise must navigate the ugly shadow of One Cease FTL.
After this fiasco, how can folks ever overlook?
The Solar Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Opinion Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Opinion Editor Dan Sweeney, editorial writers Pat Beall and Martin Dyckman, and Government Editor Gretchen Day-Bryant. To contact us, electronic mail at letters@sun-sentinel.com.