Just north of Northwest 16th Court in Fort Lauderdale is where Broward County officials are hoping to build a new state-of-the-art forensic center. That’s if the county can get residents to stop protesting the project.
The new building would house the county medical examiner’s office and Broward Sheriff’s Office’s crime lab, among other things. But many people in the community, which is home to a large number of Caribbean-Americans, say they do not want a building that houses dead bodies and chemicals near their homes and schools. Some of those residents were at last Monday’s commission meeting to speak out against it.
One Broward resident, John Morrison said that he is concerned about the property value of homes after the facility is built.
“This needs to go someplace else. Consider our property values. This is the county’s coroner’s office – a morgue. The families that live near here worked hard to buy and maintain their properties. For you to put a morgue there, we’re gonna lose our property values,” he said during Monday’s meeting.
Another Caribbean-American resident, Sharon Simmons-Alexander said Broward residents have enough to deal with as it is, with traffic and other issues.
“How dare they bring this to our disenfranchised neighborhood. We have enough traffic as it is because they gave us an industrial park area, it’s not a community for us to bring more and dump more on top of us,” she said. Simmons-Alexander lives nearby the proposed site.
The site is in Broward Commissioner Dale Holness’s district; District 9. He originally voted to move forward with the project but changed his mind after hearing the concerns of residents.
“As a result of a cry from the community that they don’t want this facility in this community, I’ve joined with them to express their sentiments and add my voice to them,” he said.
“There are serious concerns from the community as to what will be done in this facility, whether it will be a morgue storing dead bodies, whether there will be cremation done there, whether there will be chemicals used and as to what will happen to property values in the area when this facility is built,” he continued. Commissioner Holness requested to have his vote rescinded on the matter.
Construction of the facility has not yet started, but the county plans to break ground in 2023 – unless the Commission decided to move the facility elsewhere.
