A Deerfield Beach Strip Mall Vote Shows Where Broward Development Is Headed

This week, Deerfield Beach's Planning and Zoning Board takes up a request that will look familiar to a lot of Broward homeowners, even if they have never heard of Rivertowne Square. JBL Asset Management wants to tear down most of a shopping center built in 1980 on South Federal Highway and put up two eight story apartment buildings, 736 units total, while keeping the Winn-Dixie and a couple of outparcel restaurants standing. About 106 of those units would be set aside for households earning up to 120 percent of the area median income.

That alone would be a normal week in Broward right now. Aging strip malls from the 1970s and 80s have been turning into apartment towers up and down the county. Fort Lauderdale's Galleria Mall redevelopment is the most visible example, and it is one of the clearest patterns I track with clients who are looking near older commercial corridors.

What makes Deerfield Beach worth a longer look is what else is on the ballot in November. City voters will decide nine charter amendments, and one of them would repeal a rule that has been on the books since a 2023 referendum, the requirement that residents approve any city land sale or lease over 750,000 dollars. That rule exists because of a separate deal: a 3.75 acre former Department of Transportation parcel the city is selling to a Boca Raton developer for 6.5 million dollars, tied to a City Hall sale and leaseback arrangement that has grown well beyond what voters originally approved back in 2023.

Deerfield Beach has a long memory here. In 2002, residents ran a petition campaign called Save Our Beach and passed charter protections with 75 percent approval, specifically to slow down high density overdevelopment. The city commission already voted in July to loosen some waterfront building rules, and the amendments on November's ballot would go further, removing floor area ratio limits on several property types while keeping the existing height caps in place.

There is a bigger force at work than any single ballot question. Florida's Live Local Act was expanded again as of July 1, and it lets developers skip a lot of local zoning review entirely on commercial and mixed use land, as long as at least 40 percent of the units are workforce housing for 30 years. That is a state law, not a city vote. So even if Deerfield Beach voters keep every referendum requirement on the books, projects that qualify under Live Local can move around that requirement anyway. The November charter question still matters. It just matters less than it would have two years ago.

For anyone who owns near an older retail plaza in Broward, and there are a lot of them, the practical question is not whether this happens again. It is when, and how it lands on the street you actually live on. A shopping center converting to housing changes traffic patterns, school enrollment numbers, and the comparable sales your home eventually gets measured against, sometimes before a single unit is built.

I am watching how the Planning and Zoning Board handles the Rivertowne application this week and how the November charter vote turns out, because both outcomes say something about how much control Broward residents actually have left over what gets built near them. If you own or are considering a purchase near an aging commercial corridor anywhere in the county, it is worth a conversation before you write an offer, not after.

Roger Averbuj, Broker | Prestige Heritage Realty | (954) 663-8461

Source: Hoodline, "Deerfield Beach Weighs 736-Unit Rivertowne Tower Plan and City Hall Land Deal," Sept. 2, 2026