SEARS TOWN VISION

Sears Town Cut Sheet

Developed as part of a HOME Fort Lauderdale magazine charrette titled Reimagining the City, GLAVOVIC STUDIO’S “Sears Town Vision” began with a deeper examination of a woefully underutilized mid-century shopping center. The team identified elements—site, architecture, transportation, and more—that might be underscored and expanded upon to transform this site into a vibrant project for its next 50 years. The result was a dynamic development that used the sweeping curves of the original structure, as well as its outmoded acre of asphalt parking, as jumping off points. The design transforms the shopping center into a vibrant, mixed-use plaza that includes a tower with a stacked-tray design and facades with incredible variations in terms of fenestration and indoor/outdoor space. The project utilizes the concept of the unit to transform the site. The units therefore become tools for redevelopment: they are living units, play units, cultural units, performing units, social units, retail units, and the aggregate of the units reconnects the community, incorporating landscape, form, and light in a new paradigm. Situated near the geographic heart of Fort Lauderdale, Sears Town enjoys a privileged location but lacks a core; the center is void. It is central to neighborhoods on four sides, a potential future passenger rail and a greenway rail, the largest recreational park in the city, and is the visual culmination of the Federal Highway and beach intersection. The project incorporates an urban design framework that reinforces connections to neighboring communities, as well as setting Sears Town as a visual marker from downtown. Affordable housing, market rate housing, cultural space, and public space all coexist in an architecturally resonant environment.