Tamarac, Florida

History

In the early 1960s a young developer named Ken Behring came from the Midwest and bought land where he could, creating an active adult community of two-bedroom maintenance-free homes. He called his new city Tamarac, named after the nearby Tamarac Country Club in Oakland Park.

In 1963, Behring built the city's first development east of State Road 7, Tamarac Lakes Section One and Section Two. Next came two neighborhoods of homes built on a former orange grove called Tamarac Lakes North and The Boulevards. Four of Behring's last developments were Tamarac Lakes South, then the Mainlands of Tamarac Lakes just west of State Road 7, and finally the Woodlands community.

The city's early leaders, hoping to preserve Tamarac as a bedroom community, allowed Fort Lauderdale to annex commercial pockets, forever losing land that might have bolstered the city's coffers. In the late 1970s, the city de-annexed a long line of commercial buildings from State Road 7 all the way to Northwest 31 Avenue, but it went along with Behring's vision of Tamarac as a bedroom community. The boundaries were wherever Behring decided to build homes. The city's current eastern boundaries narrow to a sliver from Northwest 31 to 37 Avenues, then widen to the south. The city's easternmost boundary extends below Commercial Boulevard to Northwest 16 Avenue.

Behring also named a subdivision he founded in the Pinellas Park area, the "Mainlands of Tamarac By-the-Gulf".

Geography

Tamarac is located at 26°12′13″N 80°14′47″W (26.203581, -80.246376). According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 12.1 square miles (31.3 km²), of which 11.6 square miles (30.1 km²) is land and 0.46 square miles (1.2 km²) is water (3.92%).

Demographics

As of 2010, there were 32,794 households, with 13.4% being vacant. In 2000, 15.4% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 44.8% were married couples living together, 9.4% had a female householder with no husband present, and 42.6% were non-families. 36.3% of all households were made up of individuals and 23.0% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.00 and the average family size was 2.56.

In 2000, the city the population was spread out with 13.4% under the age of 18, 5.3% from 18 to 24, 23.5% from 25 to 44, 20.1% from 45 to 64, and 37.8% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 53 years. For every 100 females there were 80.9 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 77.3 males.

In 2000, the median income for a household in the city was $34,290, and the median income for a family was $41,927. Males had a median income of $32,317 versus $28,360 for females. The per capita income for the city was $22,243. About 6.1% of families and 8.9% of the population were below the poverty line, including 13.5% of those under age 18 and 7.2% of those age 65 or over.

As of 2000, speakers of English language as a first language were at 78.08% of the population, while Spanish was at 13.69%. Also, Yiddish was at 1.90%, French at 1.15%, Haitian Creole consisted of 1.12%, Italian made up 1.08%, German comprised 0.62%, and Hebrew as a mother tongue made up 0.52% of residents.

Over the years, the multicultural population has expanded in Tamarac, such as people from Latin American and Caribbean ancestry. As of 2000, Tamarac was the fifty-first-most Colombian-populated area in the U.S., with 2.74% of the population. It also had the thirty-second-highest percentage of Jamaicans in the U.S., (tied with Royal Palm Beach and Goulds) at 4.1% of all residents.