Don't Let Politicians (Aka Feudal Landowners) Sell Off Our Broadwalk to Developers!

Why this petition matters:

There is a massive wave of public outrage crashing over Hollywood right now. While many of us are fighting separate battles over gridlocked traffic, severe coastal flooding, or the loss of our neighborhood's historic character, these problems all stem from one deep-seated issue: Our Mayor and City Commissioners have forgotten they are our elected custodians, not landowners.

Instead of doing the hard work of building a vibrant economy, our city leaders are taking the lazy way out. They are treating our priceless, world-famous Hollywood Beach Broadwalk like a personal “cash cow”, using vertical hyper-development to patch budget holes while letting private developers call the shots.

The City Commission recently voted to completely tear up our protective beach zoning. They are throwing out our long-standing, human-scale standards to build a wall of concrete high-rises along Ocean Drive.

The Zoning Betrayal: What We Are Losing

The unique, low-rise, human-scale layout of the Central Beach Broadwalk is Hollywood’s only real competitive advantage. It is our pedestrian Broadwalk, our beachfront restaurants, our beach. Other towns attract people with top-tier school districts or hyper-luxury nightlife; Hollywood draws people because of our charming, pedestrian-first, laid-back, coastal community feel.

The city just voted to destroy that charm by replacing our protective zoning laws with an aggressive, towering reality:

• The Protections We Stand to Lose: For years, our beach thrived under standards that strictly capped buildings at a human scale—specifically 40 feet (4 stories) facing our historic oceanfront Broadwalk, and 50 to 65 feet facing A1A to protect our sunlight, ocean breezes, and views.
• The Aggressive New Reality: The city's new zoning completely abolishes these protective limits. They have approved a sweeping new baseline height of 50 to 150 feet, plus up to 50 additional feet of "bonus height" dangling explicitly as an incentive for developers to build as high as possible.

Economic Blindness: Forcing 2,500 Unneeded Hotel Rooms

The city claims this zoning overhaul is financially necessary, but the math is completely absurd. The city is paving the way to inject a staggering 2,500 new hotel rooms onto our beach, centered around a massive 49-story tower project.

They are doing this in a localized boutique market that is already suffering. Over the last five years, Hollywood Beach logged a net loss of 226 hotel rooms because our local hospitality sector is already struggling. Right now, our existing boutique inventory faces massive seasonal vacancy cycles, with off-peak vacancy rates spiking as high as 59%.

Forcing 2,500 new rooms onto a beach that can't fill the rooms it already has will trigger a race to the bottom. It will suffocate our remaining mom-and-pop boutique hotels, cannibalize local hospitality jobs, and crater our property values. On top of that, 98% of condominium sales on Hollywood Beach since 2019 are non-homestead properties. The city is sacrificing our neighborhood character to build vacant tax shelters for wealthy seasonal investors, while year-round residents are left dealing with the fallout.

Environmental Recklessness on a Sinking Barrier Island

Approving heights up to 200 feet on a fragile barrier island is pure environmental irresponsibility.

• Our Barrier Island is Sinking: Regional geological models document that our barrier island is sinking faster than earlier models assumed, and 99% of structures in Hollywood face severe flood hazards.
• Planners Were Ignored: Back in 2022, Hollywood's own professional urban planners explicitly recommended against tower development on the beach due to severe flood risks. The Commission overrode them anyway.
• Hypocritical Tax Spending: The city is currently spending millions of our local taxpayer dollars to harden municipal infrastructure against sea-level rise, while simultaneously approving massive new densities on the exact patch of land most exposed to that very risk. 

Our Demand

Our City Commission thinks the only way to generate money and fill the holes in the City Budget is through a developer payoff in the hopes to fix their own lack of economic vision and resourcefulness.

Zoning is a strict tool meant to safeguard public welfare and our local way of life, not a fluid asset used to maximize developer ROI. We elect our leaders to work, to innovate, and to protect us. It is time they stop acting like feudal landowners selling off pieces of our land.

Sign this petition to demand that the City Commission immediately halt and repeal this massive zoning expansion. Let's protect our beach, our neighborhood, and our way of life before it's too late.