Sweetwaters in Fort Lauderdale
A new three-story riverside restaurant called Sweetwaters will be the centerpiece of a $15 million redesign of Huizenga Park in downtown Fort Lauderdale. The restaurant — a substantial space measuring 12,688 square feet, with an additional 5,846 square feet of outdoor dining area — will be built and operated by Specialty Restaurants Corp., owners of Miami’s popular Rusty Pelican. The building will be designed by New York-based ICRAVE, a firm with a resume that includes work at Sphere in Las Vegas, hospitality spaces at the Dallas Cowboys’ AT&T Stadium, and Miami nightclub entrepreneur David Grutman’s hip Brickell restaurant Komodo.
Jenni Morejon, president and CEO of Fort Lauderdale’s Downtown Development Authority (owner of Huizenga Park), described SRC as a hospitality leader with expertise in collaborating with public agencies on parks and other community spaces. Sweetwaters is a new brand for SRC, a family-owned company that operates 16 restaurants across the country, many on the water and also built on publicly owned land. In addition to Rusty Pelican, they include four Whiskey Joe’s restaurants in Florida; Whiskey Red’s in Marina del Rey, near Los Angeles; The Boat House Restaurant in Columbus, Ohio; and Templeton Landing in Buffalo, N.Y.
