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Downtown continued

Downtown Fort Lauderdale Circa 1996

Formica and turquoise appliances that looked like they were and with a lot of Tim and Peter’s sweat, the meltdown never
left over from the 1950’s. occurred, and the Himmarshee Bar & Grille became a huge
hit, as did our next project Tarpon Bend Food & Tackle. Along
Places to shop, have fun or live were few and far between
and it impacted Fort Lauderdale’s ability to attract businesses. with other 2nd Street venues like Bob Pignone’s Pourhouse, the
For young people, there wasn’t much to do, except for maybe Himmarshee Entertainment District was born and gave young
a few hard-to-find watering holes near the beach. It kept many people a new place in Downtown to have fun. Today, our
of my friends from coming home after college. Instead, they partnership, The Restaurant People, continues to be big part of
chose more vibrant cities like New York, Atlanta, Chicago, the Downtown’s ever-changing food scene.
and Dallas. It was those things that we lacked that motivated a While Tim and Peter were changing how we ate and had fun
few early risk takers. on SW 2nd Street, I began looking for a new place for people
to live. I was young, and wanted to create something very
For me, my Downtown career started when I met my partners,
future restaurateur Tim Petrillo (who I knew from playing beach different than what others were starting to do near Las Olas.
volleyball) and chef Peter Boloukos. I secured a piece of Weekend trips to New York City introduced me to industrial
land on SW 2nd Street and was looking for a “build to suit” lofts, so Flagler Heights, with its forgotten history, dilapidated
restaurant tenant to do my first commercial development deal. warehouses and cheap land, was the perfect place to try and
Tim and Peter were working at Mark’s Las Olas and wanted replicate them. So, in 1999 we bought two acres of land for
to venture out on their own. Tim (shrewdly enough) wanted $2 million on Andrews Avenue between 4th and 5th Streets.
me, the landlord, to be their partner so that in the event of a Avenue Lofts was the first spark that started the fire that still
possible meltdown, if the restaurant couldn’t pay the rent, I burns today in Flagler. This was one of the first projects to
would be mentally aligned. I was desperate and so were they, receive CRA incentives through tax increment financing,

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