Alan Hooper, Co-Founder, Urban Street Development

May 2026 — Invest: spoke with Alan Hooper, co-founder of Urban Street Development, about how the firm is adjusting to a slower development cycle, why FAT Village is designed to add a main-street lifestyle core to Flagler Village, and how long-term thinking shapes Urban Street’s approach to building in Broward County. “When nobody is doing something, it’s probably the best time to start something,” Hooper said.

What have been some of the changes you’ve seen in the industry over the past year, and how have those influenced the way Urban Street approaches new projects?

There has definitely been a slowdown in new development projects coming out of the ground, mostly residential multifamily. The thing about our company is that we develop a variety of asset classes. We don’t just focus on one or two.

Different asset classes often move within their own cycles. We just finished the expansion of the Hotel Indigo Tallahassee that is in a really strong location and performing incredibly, and we’re planning to start a self-storage project in a sector of downtown Fort Lauderdale that has very low vacancies and lots of future upside.

Our biggest project is FAT Village, which is already under construction. It’s a half-a-billion-dollar, art-centric, mixed-use project that encompasses two city blocks. It includes residential, office, and retail. It’s a placemaking project in Flagler Village. What’s critical here is that we got out of the ground right as things started to slow down, and since it’s a 33-month build, we expect to finish at a time when very few multifamily projects are delivering. That puts us on the early side of the next supply cycle and we’ll likely see very few new units for another year or so after.

Sometimes you get lucky with timing. I do believe that when nobody is doing something, it’s probably the best time to start working on new deals, and when everyone is developing the same asset class, you might want to start looking elsewhere. Unfortunately, they don’t sell crystal balls, so hopefully you have a strong performer that can stand the test of time.

But we try to be nimble. We can do smaller projects, mid-sized projects, and large projects. We also do restaurants that are often within our projects, which helps create another amenity besides the requisite pool and gym.

Being diverse helps us adjust our game plan based on the cycle we’re in.

How has the integration of mixed-use amenities, food, hospitality, and local character evolved as a development strategy?

Flagler Village is a fast-growing neighborhood in downtown Fort Lauderdale, but it’s been missing a lifestyle component. It doesn’t have a centralized location, like a main street, or a place where food and beverage have shown up in a meaningful way.

In some neighborhoods, like say Wynwood, food and beverage spots were the first to show up and helped set the tone for future residential. Flagler Village, on the other hand, built lots of multifamily projects, so here the density came first, and established good numbers for future seats. 

With our project, FAT Village, which stands for Food, Art, and Technology, we saw a need for a pedestrian-friendly neighborhood street where people will feel comfortable walking back and forth across the street to choose between different places to eat and drink and enjoy. 

We’re also planning soft retail, plus space for resident artists who will place art around the project and contribute to the fabric of the neighborhood as it grows. On top of that, we’re adding 850 residential units and a 200,000-square-foot, which brings a significant base of local residents to the street.

We’re being selective with operators. If they aren’t local, they need to feel local in nature. We’re being thoughtful with our leasing because we want the right mix, not the easiest mix. Having food and beverage DNA inside our company helps. My partners Tim Petrillo and Peter Boulukos operate our restaurant business, The Restaurant People, and the relationships with other operators are helping to curate the right lineup as well as placing a concept of our own within the project.

What signals do you look for to determine when a neighborhood is ready for transformative investment?

With Flagler Village, when I first focused on the area, it was called Flagler Heights. There weren’t many new projects, and we were early. We built lofts nearby, and that product fit the warehouse character of the neighborhood at the time. It helped kick-start momentum, and with a few key developer friends, we rebranded and changed the name of the neighborhood.

It wasn’t that there were perfect indicators that told us it would work. It was more of an instinct that downtown had tons of potential, and Fort Lauderdale needed a trendier, urban infill neighborhood that appealed to younger residents. And at about the same time the national cycle of development shifted from suburbia to urban and we were in the right place at the right time. 

Today, Flagler Village has matured, with significant residential density, but not enough placemaking and restaurant concentration relative to that demand. That gap is why a project like FAT Village matters. The goal is to create a mix of day and night energy: office users who can walk out to a street-level environment for breakfast, coffee, lunch, and happy hour during the day, and residents and visitors who animate it at night.

What are the biggest challenges the industry is facing right now, and how are you navigating them?

Construction costs are high, and interest rates almost doubled in three years, which obviously keeps projects from penciling out. At the same time, consumers are focused on affordability. That combination makes multifamily math hard, because rents are relatively fixed within a one-year lease, and your rent increases are constrained by local comparables.

There are a few asset types that can better flex with demand. A well-located hotel with modern amenities in locations that benefit from local attractions and calendar of events can flex rates with the market demand. For example, our stadium-adjacent hotel prices differ for peak weekends versus midweek stays, which has helped the project economics. Long-term fixed leases with multifamily apartments certainly help with income predictability, but when they trade at low cap rates and interest rates rise, the margins become thin. 

I do think multifamily is a positive point in the cycle. As fewer projects start, subcontractors become more competitive, which will help compress costs. Interest rates have also been creeping downward, and as the existing supply of apartments fills, the demand will return, and projects will begin to pencil again. But the reality is, the development schedule is long-term: it takes time to build and time to lease up, so the cycle is measured in years. Which is how it should be. When things are on fire, I get scared.

What are your top priorities for the next three to five years to keep Urban Street positioned well?

We like accessory uses that support downtown growth, including self-storage. And we have a major opening phase ahead with FAT Village: finishing out construction, then leasing residential, retail, and office space with the right mix of tenants.

As a company we’re small and nimble and we don’t carry a huge employment base, which makes it easier to adjust if things slow down.

Longer term, I do want to get back into housing in a way that will allow people to own and not just rent, and I’m not talking about foreign buyers. I think there will be opportunities for the right price point, especially for people in their 30s and 40s to live in downtowns, who like living near the action and have been renting and want a path to ownership. 

Before we wrap, is there anything else you want to make sure we include?

Hines is our partner on FAT Village, and we couldn’t be happier. We are true partners. We work together to make FAT Village a great place. Our development team is completely aligned on how we see the project and the long-term value it brings to the community. Urban Street approaches projects with a long horizon, and Hines does too.

From Urban Street’s perspective, we really care about what we leave behind. Buildings last a long time, and once you build something at scale, it becomes part of the city’s story, part of history. And if you strive to do something better, that’s thoughtful in design, considering the long-term impact, what you leave behind can be super positive for generations to come.

We want to raise the bar and leave a legacy of community and quality, because great development can push others to build at a higher standard and make the city better than it was before.