How many black olive trees are left on the median?
It is the question people on this boulevard have been asking each other since February, usually somewhere between the valet stand at Riverside and the crosswalk at SE 8th Avenue. The answer, as of this season, is fourteen. One came down in March, hollowed by termites and structural decay, from the eastern end of the four-block median. The other fourteen are exactly where they have been for decades, throwing the same shade over the same benches, on a street where the city has already voted to remove every one of them.
That gap between the vote and the chainsaw is the most misunderstood thing about Las Olas right now. Residents spent the winter watching the median because that is where the argument was. The argument was worth having. But while everyone was looking at the median, the daily center of gravity on this boulevard quietly moved one block west, onto three and a half acres that most people had written off as a construction fence.
What the February vote actually bought
On February 3, the City Commission approved conceptual design plans for the Las Olas Boulevard Mobility Improvements Project. The plan removes the median, widens the sidewalks, keeps on-street parking, and replaces the aging canopy with more than 90 new trees. Mayor Dean Trantalis framed it as continuity rather than rupture, saying the boulevard is "evolving while remaining true to its roots." Vice Mayor John Herbst followed with an op-ed in mid-February defending the decision, noting that the plan came out of years of study and more than 100 public meetings and workshops.
What the vote did not buy was a start date. Construction on the redesign is expected to begin in roughly two to three years, at a cost of at least $7.5 million. A conceptual design approval is the beginning of an engineering process, not the end of one.
So the practical read for anyone who walks this street: the canopy you are mourning is the canopy you will be walking under through this season, next season, and probably the one after that. Trees will come out individually, as that termite-damaged specimen did, when arborists flag a specific structural failure. That is maintenance, not the project.
The other number worth holding onto is the one the city arborist gave at the January meeting: eight to ten years of remaining life for the black olives. Set that against a two-to-three-year construction runway and the decision looks different than it did in the headlines. The choice was never a shaded median or a bare one. It was whether the replacement got scheduled deliberately or arrived tree by tree on the schedule termites set. Ted Inserra and Chris Nelson, two of the most vocal advocates for saving the trees, toured that failing tree with the city in February and came away agreeing it was beyond saving.
Here is what the replacement is designed to produce, by segment:
| Segment | Canopy change under the adopted plan |
|---|---|
| Downtown | Roughly four times more canopy, about 95 percent shade trees |
| The Shops stretch | Roughly four times more canopy, 100 percent shade trees along sidewalks |
| Colee Hammock | Up to twelve times more canopy, up to 100 percent shade trees |
Colee Hammock is the number that should catch a resident's eye. The eastern residential stretch has the least street shade today and stands to gain the most, which means the walk from the Isles toward the Shops is the leg of this boulevard that will feel most different when the work finally lands.
Meanwhile, the shade moved west
While the median debate ran through December and January, a different set of trees went into the ground at 32 East Las Olas Boulevard without much argument at all.
Huizenga Park reopened over the weekend of January 24 and 25 after a two-year, $15 million redesign led by Perkins&Will and built by MBR Construction. The park is 3.6 acres. Into it went more than 13,500 new plants and 88 shade trees.
Read those two numbers next to each other. The entire public fight this winter concerned fifteen trees on a median. One block west, the city and its private partners planted 88 shade trees on a single parcel, and the reopening drew a fraction of the emotion.
What went in with them matters more for a weekday. There is a central Civic Lawn, a children's play moundscape, the restored Spirit of Fort Lauderdale Fountain, and installations by Manolo Valdés and Cey Adams. There is also downtown Fort Lauderdale's first dedicated dog run, which is the single most consequential amenity on this boulevard for anyone living in a tower without a yard. Jenni Morejon, who leads the Downtown Development Authority, put the logic plainly when the park opened: residents in apartments and condos do not have a front yard or a back yard, so this is the one they share.
The park runs daily from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m., admission free, with more than 150 events on the calendar this year and most of them free. Programming is organized around three pillars: Health and Wellness, presented by Cleveland Clinic, Arts and Culture, and Dogs and Pets. In practice that looks like a recurring weekly rhythm:
- Sunset Yoga with Las Olas Yoga Studio, early evening
- The Huizenga Park Weekly Two Mile Run Club
- Think and Drink Trivia
- Yappy Hour at The Dog Spot, run with DogDrop and Family Pet Medical Center
- Zumba for All Ages with Domingo, and Music and Movement with Miss Tracy Sings for younger families
- Pop-up performances, including sets from local musicians such as Kirk Zieser
- The Huizenga Park Community Market, plus the Sunny Side Up Market twice a month
Food is deliberately modest for now. Mr. Smash Burgers came on as the first concession partner. The anchor is still framing: Sweetwaters, the full-service riverfront restaurant from Specialty Restaurants Corporation, the operator behind Miami's Rusty Pelican, is under construction inside the park, with 6,140 square feet of interior dining and another 3,500 square feet of outdoor dining across a riverfront patio and a park-facing terrace. Earlier coverage pointed to a fall opening. The park's own site now describes it as late 2026. Treat the date as a moving target and the arrival as certain.
The reservations followed the foot traffic
None of the restaurant news lands the same way once you understand the park.
Pedestrian traffic on Las Olas Boulevard is up 19 percent since 2021 and now exceeds five million annual visits, according to figures the Greater Fort Lauderdale Alliance published in August 2026. Operators read numbers like that before they sign leases, which is why the openings are clustering rather than scattering. NAIA, from The Restaurant People, is among the names on the way. Little Hen has moved into the old Planta Queen room at 1201 East Las Olas. Amal is coming to 500 East Las Olas. Caviar Club, from Marc Falsetto with interiors by New York's Garrett Singer Studio, is slated for 833 East Las Olas this fall. Skinny Louie and La Felicità are in the mix, and a Rolex retailer has approval for a flagship on the boulevard.
The resident consequence is unglamorous: parking. If Caviar Club, NAIA and the rest hit their announced windows, this street gains several destination rooms within a few months, all on a corridor whose sidewalks have not been widened yet and will not be for years. The people who live in Colee Hammock, Beverly Heights and the Isles have an advantage worth using. Walk in. Or take the Water Trolley, which stops at Huizenga Park as Stop 2, and skip the search entirely.
The season you can actually plan
Dine Out Lauderdale prix fixe menus are running on the boulevard right now, which is the cheapest window to try the summer arrivals at a fixed price. Then the boulevard's own calendar takes over. The first-ever Las Olas Autumn Festival lands Saturday, October 3, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., free, with a marketplace of local vendors, live music, a pumpkin patch and a Kids Corner. The 39th Annual Las Olas Art Fair follows on the weekend of October 17 and 18, bringing more than 300 local and international artists onto the street. The Historic Stranahan House Museum, the oldest house in Fort Lauderdale, holds its fourth annual Founding Families Fall Festival. And Christmas on Las Olas, a tradition running more than 60 years, returns on the first Tuesday after Thanksgiving, which this year is December 1.
Every one of those events will take place under the black olives. That is the part worth saying out loud. The redesign is real, funded in concept, and coming. It is also several years out, which means the next few autumns on this boulevard are the last ones the median will host in its current form.
If you have been putting off the walk from the Isles to the Shops on a Saturday morning, or a coffee under the fountain at Huizenga with the dog, this is the season for it. The street is going to be better in a decade. It is unusually good right now, and briefly, it is both versions at once.
If you own on or near the boulevard and want a candid read on how the public realm work, the park, and the new corridor of restaurants are shaping value on your block, Veroushka MacLean Volkert is glad to have that conversation privately and without pressure. Schedule a free consultation.
