Hollywood's Got the Bends

In 2004, Posner told the city he couldn't afford to build a new theater, which was one of the primary selling points of the project. He then missed the first deadline to pay back the city's loans. Posner's legal bills were rising, as were South Florida construction costs, at the same time the Florida condo market took a nosedive.

In this panicked state, Hollywood's Community Redevelopment Agency entered negotiations with the new developer WSG, leading to a May 2007 agreement for the firm to buy out Posner's group and pay back the city's $3.5 million loans, in exchange for which it would win exemptions from city zoning guidelines and collect 90 percent of the tax revenue generated by the project over the next 15 years – a figure that projects to $14.4 million based on current property tax rates.

At the April 2 commission meeting, WSG lobbyist Koslow cast his clients as heroes who only wanted a bit of profit in return for having rescued the city. For WSG to get that profit, the city would have to accept a project that was taller than what it had wanted, with less parking and smaller setbacks.

If it seems as though WSG has Hollywood over a barrel, it's not alone. The city is in a similar position with the Hollywood Academy of Arts and Science, the charter school that currently occupies the Home building's first three floors and is the last remnant of the HART project. The school was promised a new building on the same block when ArtsPark Village went forward, but charter school officials rejected other sites as financially troubled.

Hollywood schools were under-enrolled before the Hollywood Academy of Arts and Science was formed. Now the charter school looks like a luxury for a cash-strapped city. But if it's extravagant, it's also well connected: It's managed by the for-profit, Fort Lauderdale-based corporation Charter Schools USA, whose officers include prominent Broward County Republicans such as former county party chair Shane Strum and G.O.P. operative and Bush family friend Art Kennedy. When safety standards threatened the school's 2004 opening, a Republican-sponsored bill exempting charter schools from the safety standard was rushed through the state legislature and signed into law in the nick of time for the school's grand opening.

How a Republican school outfit wrangled a promised gift of land worth an estimated $9 million, without competition from other charter school operators, in a city controlled by Democrats, seems destined to be another Hollywood mystery. Giulianti, a Democrat, isn't talking. She's no more available to explain why the city is paying Posner's failed HART group $270,000 a year to run the same school through 2013.

Neil Fritz, the director of Hollywood's downtown Community Redevelopment Agency, said "it's not in the city's interest" to stop those payments, but declined to say why. Instead, he referred New Times to acting Hollywood attorney Alan Fallik, who said such a move could lead to HART suing the CRA.

In effect, Fallik said, the CRA told HART, "We're not going to hold you responsible" – for having broken your contract and squandered millions of city tax dollars – "as long as WSG performs."