Opinion | Farewell to Searstown, ‘a city within a city’ | Editorial

So long, Searstown.

The bulldozers finally came for Fort Lauderdale’s oldest and best-known shopping center, after 68 years. That’s a heck of a lot of Craftsman tools and Kenmore appliances.

Sears, Roebuck & Co. relocated from its Andrews Avenue location to the corner of U.S. 1 and Sunrise Boulevard in the summer of 1955.

It may be hard to believe when you look at the city’s grand and ever-expanding skyline, but the new shopping center was truly a milestone in the evolution of Fort Lauderdale.

For weeks before it opened, the Fort Lauderdale News ran story after story about it. In its time, it was bigger than Sawgrass Mills. It also added a term to the local lexicon: Searstown.

“A city within a city,” as the paper described it. Hundreds showed up for the opening on Aug. 17 as Mayor Porter Reynolds cut the ribbon. The Academy Award-winning movie “Marty” had just ended a midsummer run at the Gateway Theater down the street.

A one-word tracking system

Long before GPS mapping, Searstown was its own one-word tracking system. Landlords used it to advertise nearby apartments. Retailers used it to direct shoppers to their stores.

For decades, Broward kids sat on Santa’s lap for the first time at Searstown.

Fort Lauderdale was still a seasonal place where shopkeepers on Las Olas closed for the summer. It wasn’t at all the diverse, dynamic, fast-moving place that it is now.

The Henry E. Kinney Tunnel did not yet exist. Neither did most suburban cities west of the Turnpike. In fact, the Turnpike, known as the Sunshine State Parkway, didn’t exist either.

Searstown, the prototype

As the anchor for a Piggly Wiggly supermarket and other retailers, Searstown was a prototype as the original strip shopping center.

Its success no doubt encouraged one of the worst byproducts of South Florida’s phenomenal growth. Through the decades, drab strip malls have proliferated in every nook and cranny of Broward and beyond.

For years, Sears stores have been disappearing across the country, victims of competition and of the popularity of online shopping. In a way, the Sears Roebuck catalog evolved into Amazon.com.

Of course, Searstown was way past its prime. It was dying for a decade or longer, but when it finally came crumbling to the ground, one more piece of South Florida history disappeared, too.

Far too much of our region’s unique and colorful history has been obliterated in pursuit of what was called progress, but which too often was to make a developer richer.

A traffic nightmare awaits

As the Sun Sentinel’s Susannah Bryan has reported in great detail, Searstown will be replaced by a skyline-altering megaproject consisting of five high-rise towers, with condos, apartments, shops, restaurants, offices and a 15-story hotel. Plans estimate that the project will generate 11,000 vehicle trips every day and 1,000 cars an hour at peak times.

“Traffic is already a nightmare at that location,” Mayor Dean Trantalis memorably said two years ago, when he described the potential added gridlock in an already traffic-choked area as “scandalous.”

To wax nostalgic for just a moment, the demise of Searstown calls to mind the dizzying array of other landmarks that no longer exist in a community that’s barely 100 years old.

Thankfully, many lovers of local history keep alive the vivid past on social media.

A favorite Facebook page among people with deep emotional attachments to the city is called You Know You’re From Fort Lauderdale If …

It’s filled with classic photos and descriptions. Among many classic images are those of Jimmy Fazio’s Fireside Steak House on Las Olas Boulevard from 1954, with a sign promoting “nitely” appearances by comedian Frank Fontaine.

Too many bygone landmarks

Fort Lauderdale has a fabulous history, but preserving all that history is just too expensive. The land is too valuable to leave it as it was. So cherish your memories.

The list of what used to be but is no more is long and ever-growing: Pirates World, the Marlin Beach Hotel, Creighton’s, The Reef, the Galt Ocean Mile Hotel, the Chemist Shop, Royal Castle, Governor’s Club, Pierce Street Annex, Lester’s Bar, Grandma’s Ice Cream, Ireland’s Inn, Patricia Murphy’s, Pete & Lenny’s, Brownie’s Tavern (the city’s oldest bar, it opened in 1935) and far too many more.

On the bright side, we still have Cap’s Place, Holiday Park, War Memorial, the Riverside Hotel, the Parker, Jaxson’s Ice Cream, the Elbo Room, the Floridian and the Mai-Kai, too.

They’re all still there. Enjoy them while you can.

The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Editorial Page Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Editorial Page Editor Dan Sweeney, editorial writer Martin Dyckman and Editor-in-Chief Julie Anderson. Editorials are the opinion of the Board and written by one of its members or a designee. To contact us, email at .