Crews finished demolishing the Fashion Mall in Plantation to clear land for a mixed-use development including 700 apartments.
Only an office building and a parking garage with 2,600 spaces remain on the site of the mall, which had been closed for 10 years.
Opened in 1988, the Fashion Mall gradually drew smaller crowds of shoppers and inspired ideas to redevelop the property that never materialized. In 2005, Hurricane Irma damaged the mall and Macy’s closed its anchor-store location there, and in 2007, the rest of the mall closed.
The developer, Art Falcone of Encore Capital Management, plans to replace the Fashion Mall with a $350 million development, called Plantation Walk, with 700 apartments plus 200,000 square feet of retail stores and restaurants, plus a rebuilt office building.
Falcone told the Sun-Sentinel that Plantation Walk will exemplify a trend among western suburbs in Broward County to become “more urbanized.”
Construction of Plantation Walk is expected to start next year. But some work is under way at the site, where crews are installing water mains while others install new elevators, new lighting and railings in the parking garage. [Sun-Sentinel]— Mike Seemuth