LauderBlog
Sept 5: On the Broadwalk
Posted On: September 5, 2006 12:48 PM
Posted By: LauderBLOGGER
Related Subjects: Greater Fort Lauderdale
On a sunny morning over the Labor Day weekend, I took a walk from Hollywood’s past to its future. Or really the other way around, and then back … or – uhm, you’ll see what I mean. Because I went to the Broadwalk for the first time in probably two years. It is, in many ways, a different place from the beachside walkway I knew.
I’d been to the Broadwalk many times over the years, usually with friends. Things are changing. It’s called the Broadwalk Renovation, starting at the north end of the walk and heading south a long ways, ending now about Indiana Street. I was amazed. I remembered a cement path that looked like a narrow street running along the sand. Now the Broadwalk is, well, broader, with bricks paving the wide walking area that adjoins a pretty bike path, which is made of sandy concrete embedded with seashells. They’ve added a wavy seawall – a low, sand-colored, more earthy than the Lauderdale wall. At each major entrance to the beach itself, the wall rises in a decorative flourish. Hollywood also has planted many dozens of tall palm trees on the beach near the Broadwalk, and added large planters on the sand, which no doubt will soon be filled with tropical foliage.
The Broadwalk is still a work in progress, something that was obvious on my long walk along it from just below Sheridan Street by the Marriott Hotel. I headed south and the beautiful new walk kept heading south with me: past the venerable Nick’s, past the Hollywood bandshell, and on and on. Until the new palm trees and the planters and the bricks and the wall stopped. It was weird, as if I literally was walking back in time, to the old Broadwalk. That remaining section too will be renovated as work continues in the coming months.
I’ll tell you about the rest of my surprising Broadwalk morning later this week. Let’s just say I wasn’t ready to leave this new-old part of Hollywood yet.
I’d been to the Broadwalk many times over the years, usually with friends. Things are changing. It’s called the Broadwalk Renovation, starting at the north end of the walk and heading south a long ways, ending now about Indiana Street. I was amazed. I remembered a cement path that looked like a narrow street running along the sand. Now the Broadwalk is, well, broader, with bricks paving the wide walking area that adjoins a pretty bike path, which is made of sandy concrete embedded with seashells. They’ve added a wavy seawall – a low, sand-colored, more earthy than the Lauderdale wall. At each major entrance to the beach itself, the wall rises in a decorative flourish. Hollywood also has planted many dozens of tall palm trees on the beach near the Broadwalk, and added large planters on the sand, which no doubt will soon be filled with tropical foliage.
The Broadwalk is still a work in progress, something that was obvious on my long walk along it from just below Sheridan Street by the Marriott Hotel. I headed south and the beautiful new walk kept heading south with me: past the venerable Nick’s, past the Hollywood bandshell, and on and on. Until the new palm trees and the planters and the bricks and the wall stopped. It was weird, as if I literally was walking back in time, to the old Broadwalk. That remaining section too will be renovated as work continues in the coming months.
I’ll tell you about the rest of my surprising Broadwalk morning later this week. Let’s just say I wasn’t ready to leave this new-old part of Hollywood yet.
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