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The boys grew up in Fort Lauderdale
A half century ago, movie star Connie Francis and a bevy of young actors made a movie changing Fort Lauderdale for decades. “Where the Boys Are” became synonymous with spring break. But no more.
Spring Break began in the 1930’s when the Colgate University swim team, (at the behest of a student’s father who lived on Fort Lauderdale beach), spent winter breaks training at the Olympic-sized Fort Lauderdale beachfront pool.
Most people’s idea of "Spring Break" — beach, bikinis, beer, and bacchanal — ignited a tourism boom in Fort Lauderdale, which gradually ballooned into an eight-week drunken sprawl of 370,000 college students blowing off steam and leaving considerable wreckage behind.
The city said “enough” in 1985, forbidding alcohol on the beach and enforcing other ordinances with a strong police presence. No more MTV on the beach. No more college promotion funding. No more cruising ocean-front A1A.
What followed 1985 was public and private sector investments of billions of dollars in new four- and five-star quality hotels and resorts, trend-setting restaurants, museums, entertainment and recreational facilities, beach renovation, and airport and cruise port expansions. And a 600,000-square-foot convention center.
Today, out of more than 10.6 million annual visitors, spring breakers only make up a group of about 10,000.
“We have spent the last 25 years growing and surpassing our colorful history of Spring Break past,” said Nicki E. Grossman, president of the Greater Fort Lauderdale Convention & Visitors Bureau.
“We took a collective breath back then, not sure of the future. The most recent payoff is our first Five Diamond hotel on the same plot of land where wet T-shirt contests were once the main attraction,” she said.
By David Wilkening
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