Months after flood water inundated basement, crews begin tearing down Fort Lauderdale City Hall
MIAMI - It's the beginning of the end for Fort Lauderdale City Hall.
It's coming down floor by floor over the next few months after flood water inundated the basement. That's where all the mechanical and electrical equipment was housed.
"Many of the systems within that building, were fried, and we can no longer rehabilitate the building in an economically justifiable way," explained Mayor Dean Trantalis.
While getting the building ready for demolition crews made an intriguing discovery hidden inside a wall. They found a time capsule. It was opened for the first time Tuesday.
Inside, there was a copy of the "Fort Lauderdale News" from June 20, 1968. The headline read, "North Vietnamese Resume Shelling." There was a film reel featuring building construction, some coins, flags from Fort Lauderdale and Florida, a tourist guide and the 1967 Fort Lauderdale Annual Report.
Patricia Zeiler, the executive director of History Fort Lauderdale, remembers that time and the controversy over a 8-story city hall.
"The only thing I remember is people talking about it being too high it was too high. It was going to fall over during a hurricane, that's all I remember," she laughed
There were three city halls before the current one. We learned this isn't the first time that city hall in Fort Lauderdale has been flooded. The second city hall was built in 1926 — it was completed just before that year's devastating hurricane.
"Fort Lauderdale, the whole downtown, like Broward Blvd. had like 2-4 feet of water in that storm. The little brand new city hall, it was flooded and the ground floor had all of the city's records so all of the city's records were flooded and destroyed," she said.
We had the chance to go inside the boarded-up, vacated city hall. We got an exclusive look at the building that's been closed for a year. Crews have been working inside, getting it ready for demolition.
As you can imagine, it was a bit eerie going into the darkened city commission chambers with the doors and windows covered with boards.
We asked the mayor about the future of the next city hall
"We need to find a location in the downtown for City Hall. Most of the departments are already down here, they just they're just in other buildings, we need to consolidate our operations," he said.
The city is getting input from the community about what they want in the new city hall. Mayor Trantalis tells us it likely will not be at the same location. The parcel of land is too small.
"It needs to be something that the people are proud of, that they could point to as this is their city hall sort of iconic structure that hopefully other developers will look at and say, hey, you know, we need to start ramping up our design work here at Downtown Fort Lauderdale.
The city is still looking at possible locations and getting community input. The mayor said he'd like to see it on Broward Blvd. He's hoping everything can be figured out and construction can begin sometime in 2025.
