FATVillage.
Doug McCraw and Lutz Hofbauer
Co-founders at FATVillage
It sounds like the first, slightly weaker title for the Leonard Gardner novel “Fat City,” and not the name of an arts community that helped spur a full-on residential district with plots of land being hoovered up like M&Ms. Names aside, Ft. Lauderdale’s FATVillage, and the adjoining Flagler Village, have been one of the most active areas in South Florida development in recent years.
To be clear, the FAT in FATVillage has nothing to do with food. (Well, actually, it does a little.) FAT stands for “Flagler Arts and Technology.” It was four blocks of warehouse space that in the 1990s Doug McCraw and Lutz Hofbauer decided to reinvent as artist space.
Whatever McCraw and Hofbauer originally envisioned (they were unreachable before this issue went to press) the adjoining 270-acre Flagler Village has become a hotbed of development.
In 2021, Hines plunked down $57 million for the development of FATVillage, a 5.6-acre, 833,677-square-foot office, residential and retail complex two blocks from the Brightline station in Flagler Village along with Urban Street Development, Cresset Real Estate and Las Americas. It’s expected to be finished in 2024.
Last year, Denver-based REIT Air Communities spent $173 million for the 350-unit building The District at Flagler Village. In the spring, Midtown Capital Partners and Prospect Real Estate Group scooped up a 1.4-acre lot at 618 NE Third Avenue to build a 252-unit project called Flagler Station, then closed in October on 1.3 acres for a second site with plans to build a 173-unit project. And the California-based Thomas Tomanek & Associates spent $195 million on the 385-unit Motif Apartments complex. There are a lot more deals in the works.
This wasn’t always as obvious as it might seem now. “It was older, multifamily working-
class intermixed with light industrial warehouse,” said Jaime Sturgis, CEO and founder of Native Realty, which has been one of the single most active brokerages in the area. “It was a rough neighborhood with prostitution and drug sales.”
But once the fire of arts and real estate was ignited, there was little stopping it. In addition to the many land deals that Sturgis has been involved in, he has been bringing in the retail and restaurants necessary to make Flagler fly: the brewer Invasive Species; Wells Coffee; the pilates studio Jetset; Glitch, the bar; JB&C, the juice bar; and more.
“I liken it to a combination of Wynwood and Downtown,” Sturgis said. “We’re finally catching up on some of the retail, and we built a tremendous amount of multi-
family.” —M.G.
