Mainstreet wins approval for 30-story rental tower in Flagler Village

A 30-story apartment development proposed near downtown Fort Lauderdale won approval despite some design features that deviate from city standards.
Fort Lauderdale-based Mainstreet Capital Partners is planning the 270-unit multifamily project, called Flagler Sky View. It will be in the Flagler Village area just north of downtown Fort Lauderdale.

The Fort Lauderdale City Commission voted Tuesday to approve an “alternative design” of Flagler Sky View for a site plan development permit. The design deviates from standards in the city’s downtown master plan, which require minimum stepbacks, or the horizontal distance that upper floors must recede from the ground floor of a building.

A company controlled by Paul J. Kilgallon, president of Fort Lauderdale-based Mainstreet Capital Partners, bought the 0.7-acre development site of Flagler Sky View for $3.25 million in December of last year, according to Broward property records.The seller, which had acquired the site for $400,000 in 2005, was a company managed by Aventura-based attorney Jeffrey R. Sonn, according to county and state records.

County records also show that the site has changed hands six times since 1996, when it sold for $177,300.

Flagler Sky View is among the latest in a series of high-rise residential developments in recent years in Flagler Village and downtown Fort Lauderdale. More than 10,000 residential units have been built or approved in the last five years in the downtown area, according to the 2022 annual report by Fort Lauderdale’s Downtown Development Authority.

Downtown Fort Lauderdale currently has more than 40 projects with 16,000 condos and apartments in the works, according to a May report released by the Fort Lauderdale DDA. Authority.

This year, prior to its review of the Flagler SV project, the city’s Development Review Committee (DRC) vetted six nearby developments that would put almost 3,000 new apartments in and around downtown and Flagler Village. The biggest residential project that DRC reviewed from January through May was Ombelle, a two-tower, 1,100-unit development planned at 300 Northeast Third Avenue — three blocks from the Flagler Sky View site on Northeast Fourth Street.

The downtown master plan requires at least a 15-foot stepback for a high-rise building, but the proposed design of balconies and other architectural elements of Flagler Sky View narrowed the stepback to a range of 10 feet to about 12 feet.
The master plan also requires at least 30 feet of separation between nearby lot lines and the 30-story building, which would rise next to an existing seven-story apartment building, The Edge at Flagler Village. But the proposed design of balconies and other architectural elements of Flagler Sky View resulted in separation from lot lines ranging from 25 feet to just over 26 feet.