A developer wants to knock down the retail building housing Crown Wine & Spirits on Cordova Road in Fort Lauderdale and replace it with three towers holding 765 apartments, using a state law that lets the project skip public hearings entirely. The plan, dubbed Terrasse, would rise on a 3.05-acre site at 1645 Cordova Road, just south of the New River in the Harbordale neighborhood near Port Everglades.
According to Florida YIMBY, which first reported the proposal, the development would include two 36-story towers and one 19-story tower, offering a mix of 459 market-rate apartments and 306 workforce housing units. The market-rate side would span studio, one-bedroom, three-bedroom and four-bedroom floorplans, while the workforce units are limited to studios and one-bedrooms. The site currently holds an 8,147-square-foot commercial building constructed in 1960 that last sold for $2.1 million in October 2013, according to Movoto.
That building is currently home to Crown Wine & Spirits, a beverage retailer that serves both local residents and South Florida's marine industry along the Cordova Road corridor, per the Superyacht Services Guide. The property is owned by W D Cordova LLC, an active Florida limited liability company whose principal office sits just down the street at 1845 Cordova Road, Suite 215, and which has maintained active registration since 2006, records show.
How the Live Local Act Clears the Path
W D Cordova LLC intends to qualify for benefits under Florida's Live Local Act, the same statute that has reshaped development ambitions elsewhere in the city. Under the law, also known as SB 102, local governments must administratively approve qualifying residential projects on commercial or industrial land without public hearings or rezoning, provided at least 40% of units are set aside as affordable for households earning up to 120% of Area Median Income for 30 years, according to the Florida Housing Coalition. Terrasse reserves exactly 40% of its units as workforce housing, the threshold needed to trigger those protections.
The law also preempts local height restrictions, letting qualifying workforce developments rise to the height of the tallest commercial or residential building allowed within one mile, or three stories, whichever is taller, and up to the maximum density allowed citywide, per Lowndes Law. That preemption is how a project can legally propose two 36-story towers in a neighborhood with far lower standard municipal height limits. Following 2025 updates under Senate Bill 1730, state law also mandates that municipalities administratively approve the demolition of existing structures tied to qualifying Live Local Act proposals, according to the City of Fort Myers, meaning Fort Lauderdale officials would have no veto power over tearing down the 47,965 square feet of retail space on the site.
Who Qualifies for the Workforce Units
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development set Broward County's 2026 Area Median Income at $102,500, capping the 120% AMI workforce limits at $106,440 for a single-person household and $152,160 for a four-person household, according to the Florida Housing Finance Corporation. Those caps would determine who can rent Terrasse's 306 set-aside units, aimed at middle-income earners such as nurses and teachers.
Beyond the residential units, Terrasse would include about 3,220 square feet of commercial space, two swimming pools — with the two 36-story towers sharing one — and more than 1,200 covered parking spots, per Florida YIMBY's reporting. Fort Lauderdale-based Dorsky + Yue International, the architect on the project, is a firm founded in 1959 with offices in Fort Lauderdale and Cleveland that specializes in high-density urban residential and mixed-use developments.
Part of a Broader Fort Lauderdale Trend
Terrasse is not the only Live Local Act project reshaping Fort Lauderdale this year. In July, developer Affiliated Development secured a $74 million construction loan for a $122 million mixed-income complex delivering 374 apartments with workforce set-asides elsewhere in the city. And in May, a separate Live Local Act proposal to redevelop Fort Lauderdale's Galleria mall into a nine-tower campus with more than 3,000 apartments drew pushback from over 1,000 petition signers and 200 town hall attendees concerned about density preemptions bypassing public hearings.
Whether Harbordale residents will mount similar opposition to Terrasse remains to be seen, as does how quickly the administrative plan review will move once formally filed. It's also unclear whether nearby infrastructure can absorb 765 new apartments on a corridor currently anchored by a single-story retail strip. For now, the project exists only as a proposal, but the same state preemptions that stripped Fort Lauderdale officials of hearing and veto power over the Galleria and Cove projects would apply here too, clearing the way for construction without a single public vote.
