Fort Lauderdale moves ahead with long-delayed park at One Stop Shop site

Fort Lauderdale commissioners have approved working with the Downtown Development Authority on design concepts for a future park and active community space at the long-vacant One Stop Shop site at 301 N. Andrews Avenue. For Flagler Village residents who have pushed for years to turn the city-owned parcel into neighborhood open space, the decision gives the site its clearest path yet after a long run of delays, shifting proposals and public distrust.

The former permitting center, which gave the property its One Stop Shop nickname, sits on about 3.2 to 3.3 acres near the edge of Flagler Village and downtown. The city’s Downtown Master Plan has long treated the parcel as a possible public space, and the new work with the DDA moves that idea out of the realm of speculation and into a formal design process.

The DDA said it will begin gathering design ideas and community feedback this fall and bring recommendations back to the commission next spring. That schedule keeps the park from opening quickly, but it also means the city is no longer leaving one of its largest remaining undeveloped public parcels to drift while neighboring blocks keep adding apartments, offices and retail.

The site’s future has already taken several wrong turns. In March 2022, the city approved a comprehensive agreement with One Stop FTL for the Arts Park concept, a private development that would have paired a $140 million concert venue, food hall and park. Fort Lauderdale terminated that deal in October 2025 after the project never broke ground.

City leaders are now pointing to Huizenga Park as the model for what this downtown space could become. Huizenga Park, which reopened to the public on Jan. 24-25, 2026 after a two-year, $15 million redevelopment, covers 3.6 acres and is described by the DDA as a signature gathering place built for shade, flexible use and daily programming. The reopening gave downtown a recent example of a park that is active from morning through evening rather than functioning as leftover land between buildings.

The DDA brings both institutional heft and a growth argument to the project. The agency was established by the Florida Legislature in 1965 as an independent taxing district, and it says downtown Fort Lauderdale’s population grew 35% in the last four years and is projected to climb another 28% from 2024 to 2028. That pace has sharpened the case for permanent public space in the urban core, especially around Flagler Village, where residents have spent years arguing that the One Stop Shop site should become a real neighborhood park rather than another stalled mixed-use promise.