Sugar Reef restaurant, a Hollywood Beach mainstay since 1994, offers sophisticated and imaginative cuisine in an idyllic tropical setting that will get even better, thanks to a Hollywood Community Redevelopment Agency-sponsored program available to property owners in the Beach District.

 

Through participation in the Property Improvement Program (PIP), husband-and-wife restaurant owners Robin Seger and Patrick Farnault are sprucing up the exterior and interior of their upscale oceanfront restaurant, where locals and visitors come to soak up the ambiance while enjoying the culinary fusion of Asian, Caribbean and Mediterranean tropical influences.

 

Plans include redoing the existing exterior railings in a Caribbean style and installing a retractable awning. Seger, an artist and designer, also plans to make improvements to the interior of the restaurant, whose whimsical decorating scheme is characterized by colorful mosaic features.

 

Sugar Reef’s opening on Hollywood Beach 12 years ago came about by accident. Seger and Farnault, an acclaimed chef who studied in his native France, opened Victoria Park, a restaurant in the Fort Lauderdale neighborhood whose name it shares, in 1987 after relocating from the French Caribbean.

 

The couple longed to open an oceanfront eatery, but they weren’t familiar with Hollywood Beach until it was recommended to them as an ideal spot for rollerblading. It was love at first sight.

 

“We thought, ‘This is the nicest part of South Florida,’” Seger recalled. “We absolutely fell in love with the Broadwalk.”

 

As part of the Beach District community, Seger and Farnault were eligible to apply to the Property Improvement Program, which is available to commercial and multifamily property owners. The PIP offers matching grants, with the Beach CRA reimbursing one-third of the amount, as well as interest participation loans for those applicants who do not have the necessary matching funds. Various interior and exterior improvements are included in the PIP eligibility criteria.

 

By working together, individual property owners and the CRA are able to dramatically enhance the overall appearance of the beach area, one property at a time, leading to increased occupancy and property values.

 

Seger said the bulk of the improvements at Sugar Reef will take place right after the season, “and hopefully by July we’ll have it all done.”

 

Sugar Reef, at 600 N. Surf Road, is open from 8:30 a.m. to 10:30 p.m. daily except Monday, when it opens at 5 p.m. For more information, call (954) 922-1119.

 

To learn more about the CRA’s Property Improvement Program, call (954) 924-2980 or visit www.hollywoodbeachcra.org.