Next up for Pier Sixty-Six: Four new luxury condo towers and more dining, shops

Tavistock Development Company is moving into the second phase of its roughly $1 billion Pier Sixty-Six redevelopment, a four-tower expansion of 23-story, 270-foot condo buildings branded Pier 66 North and Pier 66 South, with three on the south side of Southeast 17th Street and one on the north. The plan calls for 339 luxury condos expected to sell for $5 million and up, a boutique grocery, additional shops and restaurants, 37 marina slips, a 1.43-mile waterfront promenade billed as one of Fort Lauderdale's largest, and a new community park beneath the 17th Street Causeway bridge. Jessi Blakley, vice president of Tavistock US, told the newspaper the company has been planning the project for about a decade and is "very bullish" on a market where people increasingly want to live rather than just visit, adding that Phase 2 connects the north and south sides of the 32-acre barrier island property into a walkable destination. Although Tavistock's development agreement allows 575 condos across both phases, meaning 475 in Phase 2, it is proposing fewer and is not using the state's Live Local Act, which would have permitted 300-foot towers but required 40% of residences as affordable rentals for 30 years and stripped out the retail, grocery, promenade and other public improvements. The developer also plans to give up an acre of land to widen the narrow canal fronting the Harbour Inlet neighborhood for safer navigation, a move attorney Stephanie Toothaker called unprecedented in her experience, and the project still needs approval from the city's planning board and the Fort Lauderdale commission, likely several months away.