The City of Margate Offers Attractive Amenities for Residents and Visitors
Sponsored by: City of Margate CRA
The City of Margate, Fl, has a vision for a new city center that will strengthen an already vibrant community.
“We want to create a destination for residents and those from neighboring cities to come visit us, patronize our shops and establish businesses here,” says Cale Curtis, Margate’s city manager and executive director of the Margate Community Redevelopment Agency (MCRA). “People can live, work and play in Margate.”
Margate has historically been a quiet bedroom community that people pass through on their way to Fort Lauderdale to the southeast or to points north or west.
“Our board and city commission have spent a considerable amount of time and dollars drawing in families through improvements in our parks and an emphasis on youth recreational sports,” he says.
The first large multipurpose covered field developed by the MCRA has been wildly popular.
“It’s morphed into an event space for concerts and festivals,” Curtis notes, including the monthly Sounds at Sundown concert series.
The new city center will expand on these successes and will help provide a more visible identity for Margate. It will be a walkable destination offering retail, dining and leisure activities, residences and public open spaces.
“Creating that environment here is very exciting for us,” Curtis adds. “We’ve been working on this vision for some time, of a core that offers amenities so residents and visitors alike can get out and walk, shop, get a bite to eat and take in street fairs and markets.”
The city center will be located on the heavily traveled U.S. 441, on more than 40 acres the MCRA has purchased. Some is now vacant land, while some is home to older shopping centers.
“We actually have incubator businesses in there right now,” he says, “creating a following for their business.”
The MCRA is committed to helping pay for the project’s public components and can incentivize developers with other funding opportunities.
“It’s a vision where everybody benefits,” he concludes.
