By Susannah Bryan | sbryan@sunsentinel.com | South Florida Sun Sentinel
PUBLISHED: April 28, 2026 at 2:51 PM EDT
The peninsula that’s home to both the International Swimming Hall of Fame and the Fort Lauderdale Aquatic Center now has a catchy new name: The Water District.
The rebranding dovetails with the ongoing $220 million redesign of the Hall of Fame.
The reimagined waterfront destination is set to open in late 2028 at 501 Seabreeze Blvd., also home to the Fort Lauderdale Aquatic Center and its famous dive tower.
“People refer to the peninsula as the Hall of Fame pools, ISHOF pools and the Aquatic Center pools,” said Mario Caprini, the developer behind the Hall of Fame project. “There’s too many names. We decided to rebrand the entire peninsula.”
When the project opens in 2028, visitors will find a marine aquarium built around a 10,000-gallon tank along with a rooftop restaurant and a new Swimming Hall of Fame museum.
“You can come to The Water District 15 times in a year and do something different every single time,” Caprini said.
“You come for a dive competition, you end up in the aquarium,” Caprini said. “You grab lunch on the promenade, you stay for dinner on the rooftop. That is what a real destination does. This is what Fort Lauderdale has been waiting for.”
An elevated public promenade overlooking the Intracoastal will be open from dawn to dusk.
Interactive screens will adapt educational content to each visitor, making the aquarium equally accessible to a first-grader on a field trip and an international traveler stepping off a cruise ship.
The waterfront destination will also house Frameless, an immersive digital art experience that transforms iconic works from across art history into a fully immersive environment.
The four-phase project is part of a public-private partnership between Hall of Fame Partners and the city.
“Fort Lauderdale’s relationship with water is its identity,” Mayor Dean Trantalis said. “The Water District makes that identity permanent. It is a generational investment in our waterfront, our people, and our global standing.”
The project, approved by the commission in 2023, is now in its first phase of construction. The buildings revert to city ownership at the end of a 30-year lease.