On the Saturday morning of October 17, someone walking a dog through Huizenga Park's new dog run, the first one downtown has ever had, will be a few minutes' walk from Esplanade Park, where Riverwalk Fort Lauderdale is running its 10th Annual Fall Festival with pumpkin painting and food trucks along the same stretch of the New River. Neither event exists because of the other. That is the part easy to miss if you only see one flyer at a time.
Huizenga Park and Esplanade Park are run by two different organizations that don't share a marketing calendar, a booking system, or even a parent nonprofit. This fall is the first time both have been running full public programming on the same river within a few minutes of each other, and the overlap is coincidence of timing, not coordination.
A Park Finishes Its First Season
Huizenga Park, the 3.6-acre riverfront space at 32 East Las Olas Boulevard, spent two years and $15 million under a redesign led by the architecture firm Perkins&Will and built by MBR Construction. The Fort Lauderdale Downtown Development Authority and the Huizenga Park Foundation reopened it to the public across a two-day celebration on January 24 and 25, 2026.
What came back wasn't the same park. The redesign added a children's play moundscape, downtown's first dog run, restored the Spirit of Fort Lauderdale Fountain, and expanded the shaded seating along the water. These are daily-use features, not event-only ones, meaning the park has been drawing people for ordinary Tuesday afternoons since January, not just for scheduled gatherings.
What the park hasn't had, until this fall, is its anchor restaurant. Sweetwaters, developed by the team behind Miami's Rusty Pelican and operated by Specialty Restaurants Corporation, broke ground in November and is set to seat its first diners on October 12 at 58 East Las Olas Boulevard, inside the reworked park. Mr. Smash Burgers has already launched a branded stand as the park's first concession partner, giving the space a second food option that doesn't require a dinner reservation.
In its report on the reopening, CityBiz quoted Steve Hudson, chairman of the Huizenga Park Foundation, describing the redesign's purpose: "The reopening of Huizenga Park reflects what can be achieved when residents, organizations, and leaders come together to create a space that brings people closer and strengthens downtown's identity."
The park's first nine months ran without the piece it was designed around. A rebuilt riverfront park with a dog run and a fountain is one kind of daily draw. The same park with a full-service restaurant serving dinner along the water is a different one, and that version only starts this October.
A Few Minutes Upriver, a Decade-Old Rhythm Never Stopped
Riverwalk Fort Lauderdale is a separate 501(c)(3) nonprofit that has run programming at Esplanade Park for years, independent of the DDA's Huizenga Park project entirely. Its Riverwalk Linear Park and district were named one of the top 10 Riverwalks in the country for the second year in a row, a recognition that predates and has nothing to do with what's happening two blocks away.
Its fall calendar didn't change to make room for a new neighbor. It's the same rhythm the organization has run for years:
- Tunes on Top, live local music Wednesdays and Fridays through October 9, noon to 1:30 p.m., at Tunnel Top Plaza
- The 10th Annual Riverwalk Fall Festival, Saturday, October 17, noon to 4 p.m., Esplanade Park, typically drawing more than 2,000 attendees
- Light Up Lauderdale, Thursday, November 5, 5:30 to 8:30 p.m., Esplanade Park
- The 2nd Annual Downtown Day of the Dead, Saturday, November 7, 3 to 8 p.m., Esplanade Park, run in partnership with Damn Good Hospitality and Revolution Live/Backyard Ft. Lauderdale
- The 6th Annual Riverwalk International Food Festival, Saturday, November 14, noon to 4 p.m., Esplanade Park
- A free jazz concert the first Sunday of every month, 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., at Esplanade Park
None of this is new for 2026. It's the same programming Riverwalk has run through the years Huizenga Park sat closed for construction. What changed is that a second anchor a short walk away woke up in the same season and started running its own separate calendar, so a given October evening downtown now carries two independently organized reasons to be near the water instead of one.
Across Town, a Third Clock Runs on Its Own Schedule
Across town, inside the 93-acre Snyder Park adjacent to Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport, a $30 million pickleball complex called The Fort runs on a schedule that has nothing to do with either downtown park. It has 43 courts, 14 of them covered, and what its founders describe as the world's first dedicated pickleball stadium. Co-founders Brad Tuckman and Rich Campillo, along with other investors, put in $23 million, with an additional $7 million financed through Centennial Bank. The city owns the land and licenses it to the private operator, who keeps roughly 99 percent of the revenue.
The Florida Room, the restaurant on site, is led by Top Chef alumni and James Beard-nominated chefs Janine Booth and Jeff McInnis, serving everything from pizza and fried chicken to short ribs beside a seven-acre lake. In a local television interview, general manager Troy Boynton described the courts as booked solid on weeknight evenings and even more so on weekend mornings.
This calendar doesn't sync to festival dates at all. It runs on league nights, open play, and free beginner classes, a rhythm built around daily recreational use rather than seasonal events. The fall in Fort Lauderdale isn't just two competing park calendars downtown. It's a third one operating on entirely different logic across town, filling on its own timetable whether or not anything is happening on the river that week.
What Three Calendars Running at Once Actually Changes
For years, a Fort Lauderdale weekend downtown meant picking between Las Olas and the beach, two single strips competing for the same few hours. That is no longer an accurate description of the choice. In the period between Sweetwaters seating its first diners on October 12 and the International Food Festival closing out on November 14, there are several separately organized public gatherings along the same river, produced by at least two organizations that never coordinate a shared calendar, plus a full-time recreational anchor across town running on its own daily logic.
The stacking isn't hypothetical. The weekend of October 17 lands five days after Sweetwaters opens, which means someone can eat dinner at Huizenga Park's new anchor restaurant after it opens and walk the same stretch of Riverwalk for the Fall Festival that Saturday, without either event depending on the other for its draw. In November, Light Up Lauderdale, Downtown Day of the Dead, and the International Food Festival run within nine days of each other, all produced by the same nonprofit, all indifferent to whatever Huizenga Park's restaurant is doing that same week.
The map downtown used to have one strip on it. This fall it has three points, built and funded independently of each other, running concurrently for the first time since Huizenga Park's redesign finished.
If you're weighing what a changing map like this means for how a property along the river actually gets used day to day, not just on a festival weekend, that's exactly the kind of question Priscilla Gonsalves is set up to talk through. Schedule a Consultation to start that conversation.
