Broward County and Fort Lauderdale sure know how to celebrate another fancy new building. They should, because they’ve had so much experience at it.
Judges, politicians and movers and shakers turned out Wednesday for a long-awaited groundbreaking for the new federal courthouse, just south of downtown Fort Lauderdale. Politicians did their usual shtick of wearing hard hats and turning over shovelfuls of dirt to symbolize the start of construction.
Mike Stocker/Sun Sentinel
Steve Bousquet, South Florida Sun Sentinel editor and columnist.
“It took many, many years for this to be accomplished,” Fort Lauderdale Mayor Dean Trantalis told the crowd, seated on folding chairs under a big white tent on a sunny and windy morning.
The celebration was a milestone moment, and an all-too-rare example of real intergovernmental cooperation. The city and county and congressional delegation all kept at it, even when things looked grim along the way, as they did about a year ago.
Two champions of the new courthouse were singled out for special praise.
One was U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Weston, who secured a critical $55 million after the initial appropriation of $190 million was judged insufficient. The other was U.S. District Judge William Dimitrouleas, hailed for his tireless persistence in overcoming one hurdle after another.
The effort to secure federal funding for a new courthouse was a long, slow slog, a federal case that dragged on for 15 years.
Joining Trantalis on stage at the groundbreaking was Broward Mayor Lamar Fisher — like Trantalis, a pivotal figure in the tussle over whether to build a bridge or a tunnel over the New River for a regional commuter rail system. The city insists on a tunnel and the county demands a bridge. The two reluctant partners are trying to organize a joint workshop on Tuesday, Nov. 21.
One side or the other will prevail, but the courthouse story offers some lessons. It may take a very long time to resolve — longer than anybody expects — and the needed federal money will be hard to come by. But if they can just get along, it will greatly improve the chances of success.
The new courthouse will replace the hideous-looking gray box at 299 E. Broward Blvd., which has been dispensing justice since Jimmy Carter was president in 1979.
That’s where a federal jury decided former Sunrise Mayor John Lomelo should go to prison for extortion.
It was where U.S. District Judge Norman Roettger changed the course of Broward history, overruling a state judge and allowing Nick Navarro to stay on the ballot as a candidate for sheriff in 1984 — despite violating a state law on party-switching.
It was where Alcee Hastings first wore the black robe of a federal judge, and where hundreds rallied for common-sense gun laws after the mass shooting in Parkland five years ago.
For all that time, the courthouse also has been the target of endless jokes for its brutalist design (“the pits … terrible,” the normally soft-spoken U.S. Rep. E. Clay Shaw called it in 1985). Problems were obvious within months of its opening.
The General Services Administration (GSA) decided that the Fort Lauderdale courthouse needed a quirky cascading outdoor waterfall, but it never worked right. It didn’t help that local kids used soap to clog up the works.
While the outdoor waterfall was a failure, there was more than enough water inside the building. It leaked for decades as judges and clerks used buckets to catch endless drips from above.
The leaks and mold got worse, but year after year, federal money was not forthcoming.
The need for a new courthouse was given “emergency status” 10 years ago. That’s Washington for you.
Dimitrouleas, the judge who was a schoolboy athletic star at Pompano Beach High and is known everywhere as “Billy D.” served on the task force charged with getting the money, and the first wave finally came through five years ago.
“It’s very encouraging the way everybody pulled together and did what was needed to achieve this goal,” he said. “It was a tough accomplishment, given the real estate prices that went up in Fort Lauderdale, the pandemic, supply chain problems … the congressional delegation really came through for us.”
The new courthouse, on the east side of Southeast Third Avenue just north of Davie Boulevard, is scheduled to be ready for occupancy by the end of 2026. Perhaps by then, the city and county will find a consensus on the question of a tunnel or a bridge.
Steve Bousquet is the Opinion Editor of the Sun Sentinel and a columnist in Tallahassee and Fort Lauderdale. To contact him, call (850) 567-2240 or by email at sbousquet@sunsentinel.com, and follow him on X, formerly Twitter, @stevebousquet.