Broward County could soon be seeing a construction boom on the sites of property now owned by the Broward School District.
As the district continues its effort called “Redefining Broward County Public Schools” to manage underenrolled schools and unneeded property, the district has been looking to sell or lease land to help offset budget cuts.
The School Board is expected to approve a $14 million deal on Tuesday with Broward Health, where the healthcare provider would purchase 10 acres of vacant property in Parkland to build an outpatient facility and possibly other development.
Most School Board members also voiced support at a June 16 workshop for a major redevelopment of North Fork Elementary in Fort Lauderdale, one of six schools the district closed this year. The project would involve affordable housing, a teacher resource center and a hotel.
The school district also will be seeking proposals soon for affordable housing on the site of the old Dave Thomas East Education Center at 180 SW 2nd St. in Pompano Beach, which closed in 2021.
Another affordable housing development is planned at 2501 NW 26th St. in Oakland Park, which has been the site of the district’s Rock Island administrative complex. The district sold the property to Urban League of Broward County for $5.36 million in 2024 for the upcoming project.
And more could be coming. District officials said at a June 16 workshop they are discussing with local cities the possibility of workforce housing projects that could share space with three schools: Plantation Elementary, Margate Elementary and Welleby Elementary in Sunrise.
The district also may seek development proposals for the site of Seagull Alternative High School in Fort Lauderdale, which closed this month. Board members are considering that option as well as converting the school into a district-operated public safety training site.
“I think land owned right now by Broward County Public Schools is really owned by the people and the obligation that we have is to return it to its highest and best use,” Board member Allen Zeman told the South Florida Sun Sentinel.
“In many cases, given the lack of housing in Broward County, there’s a lot of pressure to build more housing and there’s a school that’s located in a place where housing makes great sense,” Zeman said. “In other places, there’s park deserts and the cities may decide that they’d like to buy that land from us and create a municipal park. In other places, museums might fulfill the needs of a neighborhood.”
Zeman said that given the district’s financial woes due to declining enrollment, it’s important that those interested in buying or leasing district property pay market rate. He said that’s happening with an agreement from Broward Health that the School Board will consider Tuesday.
If approved, the School Board will sell a 10.14-acre parcel of property at 7625 University Drive in Parkland to Broward Health for $14 million. The land, just south of the Parkland Commons shopping plaza, is known as the Trails End site (an adjacent road is Trails End).
The district bought the property in 2005 for $5.9 million with plans to build an elementary school there. But those plans got shelved, first due to the recession and later due to countywide enrollment declines.
Broward Health officials say they are talking with Parkland officials to determine specifics of how the land will be developed for an outpatient facility. The plan also includes offering on-site health science programming to Broward high school students.
“For more than six years, Broward Health has engaged with the School Board as we continued to express interest in expanding our geographic footprint to the rapidly developing Parkland area,” David Clark, senior vice president of operations for Broward Health, told the Sun Sentinel in a statement. “We are thrilled that the residents of Parkland will soon have greater outpatient healthcare access through Broward Health’s future development in their city, and we look forward to helping train the medical students of the future at this new location.”
The school district is still negotiating the use of another property, the recently closed North Fork School at 101 NW 15th Ave., just east of Interstate 95.
The proposal under consideration, known as Sistrunk Rising, was developed by a group of local small business executives. They are asking for a 99-year lease at $250,000 a year.
Their plan calls for 300 affordable apartment units, a 5,000-square-foot district training center for employees, a teacher supply store and counseling center, a hotel, a transit hub and some townhomes.
School Board members are especially interested in affordable-housing options as a way to recruit and retain teachers.
Barron Channer, one of the project coordinators, told the School Board the company is open to both rentals and home sales to those who meet the criteria.
“Your employees would have first choice to come. We would stipulate a certain period of time those units would be available for your employees that would continue for the entire term of the lease,” Channer said. “So every unit, every time it’s available, would be made available with a priority basis to your employees. To the fullest extent that state laws allow us to guarantee and reserve it for you, we’ll do that as well.”
Zeman said the $250,000 revenue proposal is well below market value, and he doubts he would support it unless they went up on the offer. Sistrunk Rising officials said the actual financial benefit to the district is closer to $400,000 due to about $140,000 in tax revenues the district would receive.
“Property tax value is not part of the calculation for market value,” Zeman told the Sun Sentinel. “They’re going to have to provide a market rate for a lease or sale if they want my vote.”
Junior Achievement of South Florida also had expressed interest in the North Fork site for a “Workforce Innovation Center” to teach career readiness skills for high school students throughout the district. However, officials from the organization told district officials that “leasing land at market rate presents a challenge for them, so they have not given us anything further to consider,” Valerie Wanza, chief strategy and innovation officer, told the School Board.
Despite financial questions, Zeman and most board members say they like the Sistrunk Rising project and have directed district staff to continue to negotiate.
Another development opportunity may arise at the recently closed Seagull Alternative high School at 425 SW 28th St. in Fort Lauderdale.
The city of Fort Lauderdale initially expressed interest in using the site for a safety training center but has withdrawn its proposal.
School Board members were torn on June 16 on whether they would like to create their own regional safety training center for school resource officers and other law enforcement or to seek development proposals.
“What would be the cost, and what would be the payoff?” Board member Maura McCarthy Bulman asked at the meeting.
Michael Gregory, the district’s chief of safety, security and emergency preparedness, said the return on investment would be “increasing the safety of our students on our campuses and increasing the training abilities for officers who patrol our schools.”
But he added, “This is not a moneymaking opportunity. I would, I would shy the board away from thinking that this is a rich, get-rich-quick scheme for a training facility at Seagull. If that’s the goal, then we should look at a different option.”
Several board members said they’d like to see the project at least break even, possibly through grants or fees for hosting other law enforcement agencies.
District staff said they’d like more information about that option as well as the option to enter into a public-private partnership with an outside vendor to redevelop the property.
Three other recently closed schools, Plantation Middle, Panther Run Elementary in Pembroke Pines and Sunshine Elementary in Miramar, are being used for office space and are not being considered for outside development.
Board members said they also plan to develop a formal process for seeking offers for district property.
Most of the proposals they’ve gotten so far were unsolicited emails. Some board members said the Sistrunk Rising proposal didn’t even make it past their spam-email filters.
“I don’t love getting proposals in my junk folder for a piece of land that is millions and millions of dollars,” Board Chairwoman Sarah Leonardi said. “That is not how a serious organization sells or leases or does anything with their land.”