Broward County has proposed converting roughly 154 acres surrounding Amerant Bank Arena in Sunrise into a mixed-use district where apartments, hotels, office buildings, and retail would replace land currently used as surface parking. The Florida Panthers' home arena would remain the district's anchor under the plan, which the county has shared publicly.
The county's program would add up to 1,400 apartments, 600 hotel rooms, 1.62 million square feet of office and educational space, and 300,000 square feet of commercial uses — all on land that today primarily serves event-night parking. New public green space and expanded transit connections are part of the proposal as well. The county frames the concept as a 24/7 destination rather than an event-night node.
The premise depends on replacing parking. Per the county's proposal, much of the 154-acre site is currently consumed by surface lots, and the redevelopment would absorb that land while keeping the arena at its center. What replaces the parking — and how the district manages event-night demand once those surface lots disappear — would be a central question for any implementation plan.
Sunrise sits at the western edge of Broward County, where transit options are limited and development patterns are predominantly suburban. The proposal's call for expanded transit connections acknowledges that a district of this density would require more access infrastructure than the arena's current road-based network was designed to handle.
Based on publicly available county communications, the proposal does not yet name a developer, specify a financing structure, or attach a permitting or construction timeline. Those details will determine whether the concept advances beyond the planning stage and on what schedule.
The next visible benchmarks would likely be a formal planning document, a developer solicitation, or a county commission discussion on scope and funding. If the proposal moves forward, it would mark the most significant attempt to activate Sunrise's arena acreage since the venue opened.
