City commissioners recently applied for a $50,000 state preservation grant that would help finish off the restoration of the historic Southside School that began in 2005.

“It’s a piece of history that we can recreate,” said Fort Lauderdale city architect Frank Snedaker, who is overseeing the project.

When the two-story school was built in 1922, at the intersection of Southwest Seventh Street and Andrews Avenue, it was at the heart of the burgeoning city. Its mission-style architecture, finished in yellow with brown trim, was a model of design. Its graduates were to brag about, including Virginia Shuman Young, the first female mayor of Fort Lauderdale.

After the city boomed with development, the building went through various incarnations — a school for the handicapped, then offices for administrators — before finally shutting down in the 1990s and becoming one more derelict property in a raffish neighborhood.

The school now sits walled off by a chain-link fence near an abandoned Coca-Cola bottling plant.

The city bought the school from the county in 2004 and began restoration “in the vernacular architecture of the time,” Snedaker said. The $50,000 grant, which the city must match, will go for facilities that will be under the supervision of the city’s Department of Parks and Recreation.

“They will reach out beyond the neighborhood,” Snedaker said.

The rebuilt school may also offer a meeting place for the Tarpon River Civic Association, on whose turf the school sits.

“We’re one of the few communities without a community center,” said association president Reid Morgan. “We hope that when the facility is finished, we’ll be able to have monthly meetings there, plus some space for our historical records.”

The commission’s approval of the state grant application for $50,000 will likely “allow the money to be included in the city’s budget,” Morgan said.

“We expect the construction to be finished in late summer of 2011,” Snedaker said. “We’re looking to reopen it as part of the centennial celebration.”

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For years, the 13th Street corridor in Fort Lauderdale has been a hard-luck area, standing hat in hand for a chance at city money that somebody else ends up getting.

But that may be about to change, according to representatives of some of the area's neighborhood groups. City commissioners are drawing close to a vote that will likely include the 13th Street corridor in the city's Community Redevelopment Agency area, opening the door for a chance at city grant money.

The area in the northwest portion of the city runs north from Sunrise Boulevard to Northwest 13th Street, then east from Powerline Road to Federal Highway.

“It will be money for sidewalks and landscaping and improved water lines,” said Mike Vonder Meulen, who heads the community association for the Poinsettia Heights neighborhood.

In 2008, area residents and businesses along 13th Street formed a neighborhood alliance to help clean up a strip along the block from Federal Highway to Powerline Road, and encourage business growth in the area.

“The money will be plowed back into our businesses and properties,” said Randall Klett, a member of the 13th Street Business Alliance board. “That will increase their value and generate even more tax revenue.”

The matter of the 13th Street corridor's inclusion in the CRA was set to be voted on earlier this month, but discussion – and a decision – was postponed.

Should approval come, which is what many of the neighborhood groups are pushing, the next matter is the money that will be plowed back into the area.

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When city commissioners voted against the proposed Cortez Hotel late last year, they may have thought the issue was over. But now the developer wants $6 million.

A lawyer for Cortez Property Development LLC, Dan Stengle of the Tallahassee law firm Hopping Green & Sams, sent a letter to the city dated Oct. 21 asking for $6.29 million in compensation resulting from the city’s rejection of the Cortez Hotel project last year.

The claim is grounded in the obscure Bert J. Harris Jr. Private Property Rights Protection Act, said Stengle. The $6.29 million claim represents the appraised market value of the project that was lost due to the city’s decision. The city has six months from the date of the letter to respond, or the matter could go to court.

“[The Harris Act] was created to protect property owners who have been prohibited from using their property in a manner that is backed by reasonable, investment-backed expectations. That’s what happened here,” Stengle said.

Cortez Property Development was hoping to put up a 17-story hotel with 154 rooms that would top out at $200 a night before city commissioners shot the project down in a 3-2 vote in October of last year. City attorney Harry Stewart would only say that the city still has “five months now” to respond to the letter.

“Then we’ll look at the information they’ve provided and evaluate the claim,” Stewart said.

But this isn’t the first time the city has seen a lawsuit based on the Harris Act. A developer for a proposed hotel-marina complex called The Sails sought millions from the city in compensation under the Harris Act in February 2008. Developers of the Icon Las Olas also threatened a $120 million lawsuit against the city in September 2007 under a similar premise.

Stengle was also involved in The Sails compensation claim in 2008, and after a long battle with the city, commissioners settled the lawsuit with a redesigned Sails project.

Cortez Property Development LLC does not currently have a Fort Lauderdale address or phone number.

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