The best things to do in Pembroke Pines, FL sit on three corridors. City Center holds the convention hall, the art gallery and the city’s event calendar. The Flamingo Road corridor holds C.B. Smith Park, a water park and the open-air Shops at Pembroke Gardens. Pines Boulevard holds the enclosed mall, the movie theater and the ice rink. Add a sawgrass boardwalk and a 442-seat theater on the western edge, plus an airboat dock 20 minutes out, and a weekend fills itself. This guide covers 18 of them, corridor by corridor, with parking notes and closing days.
How Pembroke Pines Is Laid Out
Pembroke Pines runs east to west along Pines Boulevard across southwest Broward County, from 1970s and 1980s neighborhoods near University Drive out to gated communities that stop where the Everglades begins. It’s the second-largest city in Broward County, roughly 34 square miles, and it counted 171,178 residents at the 2020 Census. That size is the first thing to understand: nothing sits a five-minute walk from anything else.
What the city doesn’t have is a beach, a walkable downtown or a hotel district. What it does have is more parkland, more public golf and more restaurants inside its own limits than most Broward suburbs its age. Visit Lauderdale, the official county tourism bureau, builds its own city page around the same landmarks you’ll find below.
Drive times are short and predictable. Everything on Pines Boulevard, plus both shopping centers, C.B. Smith Park and City Center, sits inside a 10-minute ring. The far west end, Davie, Miramar and Cooper City are 10 to 20 minutes out. Hollywood Beach, the Sawgrass corridor and downtown Fort Lauderdale are 20 to 35 minutes. Miami is farther south again, and traffic on I-95 decides how bad that is.
One honest note before the list: five of these 18 entries are outside the city line. Pembroke Pines residents treat Davie, Miramar and Hollywood as part of their own map, and any guide that pretends otherwise is padding.
City Center and the East Side: Theater, Galleries and the Civic Calendar
City Center on City Center Way is the closest thing Pembroke Pines has to a downtown, and it’s the one spot in town where a show and an exhibit share a parking lot. The city’s arts and culture roster runs four venues, three of them in this eastern half of the city and the fourth out on Sheridan Street.
Charles F. Dodge City Center
The Charles F. Dodge City Center at 601 City Center Way is the city’s convention and concert venue, managed by ASM Global. The Great Hall takes touring musicians, comedians and theater, and the building also carries meeting rooms, a mezzanine and a gallery. Check the calendar before you build a trip around it, because the programming is event-driven rather than nightly, and a quiet Tuesday looks like an empty parking lot.
The Frank C. Ortis Art Gallery
The Frank C. Ortis Art Gallery, known locally as the Frank, shares the City Center campus and runs contemporary exhibitions that rotate through the year. Family Day, FrankStudio workshops and Frank Contemporaries talks fill out the schedule, and Sensory Sunday sessions give visitors who need a quieter room a slot of their own. The gallery opens Wednesday to Sunday, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., closed Monday and Tuesday, and admission is free year-round except for summer exhibitions, which cost $5. Phone 954-392-9420 to check what’s hanging before you drive over.
Studio 18 Art Complex
Studio 18 Art Complex at 1101 Poinciana Drive is a fine art gallery attached to working studio space for professional artists, with rotating exhibitions plus workshops and school field trips. Because artists work on site, an ordinary visit often turns into a conversation with whoever’s at the easel, which no mall gallery offers. Hours are Monday to Friday, 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Saturday 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., closed Sunday. Phone 954-961-6067.
The Flamingo Road Corridor: Parks, Water and Open-Air Shopping
The Flamingo Road corridor is where Pembroke Pines spends its Saturdays. A 299-acre county park, a seasonal water park inside it and a 75-store open-air center sit within a few minutes of each other, which makes this the one part of the city where you can plan a full day without moving the car twice.
C.B. Smith Park
C.B. Smith Park is a 299-acre Broward County regional park off Flamingo Road with batting cages, a driving range, tennis, squash and pickleball courts, a fitness facility, lake trails for walking or biking, and rentable barbecue pavilions near the water. There’s also a campground with RV hookups, WiFi, a fishing pier and laundry, which is unusual this deep into suburbia. Broward charges $3 per motorized vehicle carrying eight or fewer occupants on weekends and County holidays, and nothing on a weekday, and the pavilions book out weeks ahead for birthdays. Arrive before 10 a.m. on a Saturday if you want shade.
Anyone who hosts those pavilion parties knows the other half of the job: the folding tables, coolers, canopies and inflatables have to live somewhere the other 51 weekends, and a 5×5 storage locker in Pembroke Pines swallows all of it without taking a garage bay.
Paradise Cove Water Park
Paradise Cove Water Park sits inside C.B. Smith Park and runs four five-story waterslides, the Crazy Creek tube ride and two play areas, Sharky’s Lagoon and Parrot’s Point. It charges a separate fee on top of park entry and operates seasonally rather than year-round, so check before driving out in January. Broward County Parks puts admission at $15 a person all day or $10 a person after 3 p.m., with the 2026 season running weekends only from August 15 through its September 27 close. Toddlers stay in the play areas while the slides enforce height limits. Shade is limited, which makes a 10 a.m. arrival far better than a 1 p.m. one in July.
The Shops at Pembroke Gardens
The Shops at Pembroke Gardens is an open-air lifestyle center on the Flamingo Road corridor with more than 75 retailers, indoor and outdoor dining, and an events program that includes PembrokeKIDS sessions and Wellness Sundays. A farmers market runs every Sunday, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., and the center itself opens 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday to Saturday and 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Sunday. Pets are welcome, which explains the dog traffic on Saturday mornings. Parking is free, but the row closest to the restaurants fills by noon. Park at the far end and walk the length, which is the point of the place anyway. Brimstone Woodfire Grill anchors the patio dining here, and its weekend brunch runs 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.
Pines Boulevard and the Central Corridor: Malls, Movies, Ice and Municipal Golf
Pines Boulevard is the indoor half of Pembroke Pines, and in a city where August afternoons are a thunderstorm coin flip, that matters more than it sounds. The enclosed mall, the nine-screen theater, the ice rink and the city-owned golf course all sit within a few minutes of each other in the central stretch of town.
Pembroke Lakes Mall
Pembroke Lakes Mall on Pines Boulevard is an enclosed, air-conditioned mall with more than 150 specialty shops, a food court, Buffalo Wild Wings and the AMC theater. P.F. Chang’s took over the former California Pizza Kitchen space at the mall, so the sit-down dining has improved rather than thinned out. It carries real anchor department stores rather than boutiques, so treat it and Pembroke Gardens as two different trips instead of substitutes. This is the right recommendation for a July afternoon or a rained-out Sunday, and it’s where the shopping side of the city actually lives.
AMC Pembroke Lakes 9
AMC Pembroke Lakes 9, inside Pembroke Lakes Mall at 12085 Pines Boulevard, runs nine screens with reserved recliners and laser projection. Reserved seating means you can book from the parking lot, though the back-row recliners go first on a Friday opening night. MacGuffins Bar inside the theater serves a full drink list before or after a film and is 21 and over. The mall closes well before the bars on the Pembroke Center corner do.
Pines Ice Arena
Pines Ice Arena runs public skating sessions with classes from first-timer through advanced, plus hockey programs and birthday-party bookings. In a city where almost everything else happens outdoors, it’s the obvious answer to a rainy day or an August heat index that makes the parks unpleasant. Public sessions run on a standing weekly timetable the rink can change without notice, so check the current schedule before you load the car. Admission runs $14 with skate rental at $6, and you’ll want socks.
Pembroke Lakes Golf and Racquet Club
Pembroke Lakes Golf and Racquet Club is the course a visitor can definitely get on, because the city owns it. Open to the public since 1969 and rebuilt in a $7 million renovation in 2007, it’s a John Sanford design with Paspalum Supreme grass, coquina waste areas and six sets of tees, so a high handicap isn’t punished. The property also carries nine hard and five clay tennis courts and a pool. Don’t plan dinner around it: Club Nineteen currently serves a limited lunch menu Wednesday through Sunday, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., and otherwise works as a banquet hall. Call 954-431-4144 for golf, 954-431-4146 for tennis.
Golfers who play here weekly and travel in winter tend to keep clubs, a push cart and off-season gear in a 10×5 unit rather than a hall closet, since a Florida garage in August is no place for a leather bag.
The West End: A Sawgrass Boardwalk, a Community Theater and a Resort Course
The western edge of Pembroke Pines stops where the Everglades starts, and there are three reasons to drive out there: a wetland preserve, the city’s best theater and a 27-hole resort course. All three are 10 to 15 minutes from the middle of town and feel nothing like the rest of the city.
Chapel Trail Nature Preserve
Chapel Trail Nature Preserve is a 450-acre wetland in far west Pembroke Pines with a 1,650-foot elevated boardwalk through sawgrass and native flora, plus an observation pavilion at the end. Herons, egrets, wood storks and ospreys are regular sightings, and alligators aren’t unusual. The city lists it as free and open 8 a.m. to dusk Monday to Saturday, 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Sunday, with canoe rentals suspended indefinitely, so come to walk rather than to paddle. This is the free outdoor thing to do in Pembroke Pines, and it’s the one most competing lists underplay. Go early: the boardwalk has almost no shade and the mosquitoes take the place over at dusk in the wet season.
River of Grass ArtsPark and the Susan B. Katz Theater
River of Grass ArtsPark at 17195 Sheridan Street, out past Flamingo Road rather than at City Center, holds the Susan B. Katz Theater, a 442-seat house with six accessible seats. At that size there’s no bad sightline, which is the reason to pick it over a touring venue in Fort Lauderdale. It’s the home stage for the Pembroke Pines Theatre of the Performing Arts, the community company Visit Lauderdale notes has been rated best community theater two years running. Shows sell out at 442 seats, so book early, and budget the extra drive if you’re coming from the east end.
Grand Palms Golf and Country Club
Grand Palms Golf and Country Club plays as three nine-hole courses named Grand, Royal and Sabal, combined into three different 18-hole routings. The Grand and Royal combination runs 6,813 yards off the gold tees at a 73.3 rating and a 142 slope, the stiffest test in the city, though the silver tees drop it to 5,495 yards. Resort access means a visitor can book without knowing a member, and PGA-certified lessons are available. Play the white or silver tees unless you’re a single-digit handicap.
Within 25 Minutes: Airboats, Gardens and the Beach
Five of the best things to do near Pembroke Pines aren’t in Pembroke Pines. Davie, the Griffin Road stretch on the county’s western edge and Hollywood carry the airboats, the botanical garden, the oak-canopy park, the wind tunnel and the nearest ocean, all inside a 25-minute drive. Residents count them as local, and so should you.
Everglades Holiday Park
Everglades Holiday Park at 21940 Griffin Road runs 60-minute airboat tours, live alligator shows from the Gator Boys Rescue team, animal encounters, fishing boat rentals, a cafe and a gift shop. It’s about 20 minutes west, which makes it the shortest genuine Everglades trip in the region. It opens at 9 a.m. daily, and the last boat leaves at 5 p.m. in spring and summer and 4 p.m. in fall and winter. Tours cost $41.99 for adults and $29.99 for ages 3 to 11 and include the gator show; the hands-on Animal Encounters are a separate $49.99 add-on.
Flamingo Gardens
Flamingo Gardens in Davie is a 60-acre botanical garden and wildlife sanctuary with more than 3,000 plant species, a free-flight aviary, wildlife exhibits including Florida panthers and alligators, and the historic Wray Home Museum. It’s 15 to 20 minutes straight up Flamingo Road. The aviary and the panther exhibit are the reasons to go, and the tram is how you see the place with small children before they wilt. The garden opens daily 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m., with last entry at 4 p.m.
Tree Tops Park
Tree Tops Park in Davie is a 243-acre Broward County park with a 28-foot observation tower over an ancient oak canopy, a boardwalk through 23 acres of restored freshwater marsh, equestrian trails, paddle boats and a nature center. At about 15 minutes out, it’s the shaded counterweight to Chapel Trail’s flat, exposed wetland, and in August that difference decides whether the walk is pleasant. Tree Tops is a Broward regional park too, so the same $3 weekend and County holiday vehicle fee applies here.
iFLY Indoor Skydiving
iFLY Indoor Skydiving in Davie is a vertical wind tunnel that lets you fly without jumping out of anything, roughly 15 minutes from central Pembroke Pines. It takes flyers from age 3 and sells group packages, birthday parties and STEM field trips. Book ahead, because walk-ins wait. Arrive 15 minutes early, wear laced sneakers and leave jewelry in the car. Budget 60 to 90 minutes total rather than an afternoon, and pair it with lunch nearby.
Hollywood Beach Broadwalk
Hollywood Beach Broadwalk is the nearest real beach to Pembroke Pines, a 2.5-mile oceanfront promenade running from Jefferson Street to Sheridan Street, lined with restaurants, shops and live music about 25 minutes east. Walking it costs nothing, which makes this the best no-cost day out from the city. Parking is the entire problem: weekend spaces fill early and metered street spots turn over slowly. Take Sheridan Street and park north of the main strip, or arrive in the morning.
Beach households collect gear fast, and paddleboards, coolers, umbrellas and folding chairs are exactly what 5×10 storage units are shaped for once the garage stops closing.
Parking, Closed Days and Weather: The Practical Layer
Pembroke Pines is a driving city, and only two stretches of it are genuinely walkable. The Shops at Pembroke Gardens is one, since you can park once and cover the whole center on foot. The Pembroke Center corner near Firebirds is the other, where The Pub and The Brass Tap sit within a short walk of each other. Everything else on this list needs the car, including the two shopping centers relative to one another.
Closing days catch people out more than parking does. The Frank C. Ortis Art Gallery is shut Monday and Tuesday. Studio 18 is shut Sunday and closes at 5 p.m. on weekdays. Charles F. Dodge City Center and River of Grass ArtsPark are event-driven, so a dark night is common rather than unusual. Broward County regional parks, including C.B. Smith and Tree Tops, charge vehicle entry on weekends and holidays but usually not midweek, which is a real argument for a Tuesday visit.
Weather runs the calendar here. NOAA’s 1991 to 2020 normals for the Fort Lauderdale airport station, the reference station for this part of Broward, put July and August at a 90°F average high and a 78°F low against a January average of 76°F and 61°F. June is the wettest month at about 9.6 inches, while February and March are the driest at roughly 2.4 inches each. From June through September, plan outdoor things for the morning and keep an indoor fallback ready, because afternoon thunderstorms arrive most days. The comfortable window for anything outdoors is November through April.
Storm season deserves a straight answer. The Atlantic hurricane season runs June 1 to November 30 and peaks on September 10, with most activity between mid-August and mid-October, according to the National Hurricane Center. Pembroke Pines sits inland, about 25 minutes from the coast, but inland doesn’t mean dry: the city is low-lying, and a 2017 study ranked it third among U.S. cities most exposed to coastal flooding, with roughly 116,000 residents inside FEMA’s coastal floodplain. Book refundable rates for late-summer trips. That same season is why residents use climate-controlled storage in Pembroke Pines for anything that warps, since months of humidity are hard on wood, paper and electronics.
Frequently Asked Questions
What’s Pembroke Pines, FL known for?
Pembroke Pines is known for parks, public golf and shopping rather than a single landmark. C.B. Smith Park and its Paradise Cove water park, the sawgrass boardwalk at Chapel Trail Nature Preserve, four in-city golf courses, the Shops at Pembroke Gardens and Pembroke Lakes Mall are what the city gets recommended for. It’s also the second-largest city in Broward County and runs the largest charter school system in the county, and the largest municipally run nonprofit charter system anywhere.
What are some free things to do in Pembroke Pines, Florida?
Chapel Trail Nature Preserve is free, and its elevated boardwalk over the sawgrass is the best free hour in the city. Rose G. Price Park and Ben Fiorendino Park, both city parks, cost nothing and stay quieter than the regional parks. Walking the Shops at Pembroke Gardens is free, and so is the Frank C. Ortis Art Gallery outside its summer exhibitions. Broward regional parks like C.B. Smith charge no gate fee at all on a weekday.
What are some fun things to do at night in Pembroke Pines?
Evenings in Pembroke Pines run on three options. Catch a show at the Charles F. Dodge City Center or the 442-seat Susan B. Katz Theater, book reserved recliners at AMC Pembroke Lakes 9, or walk the Pembroke Center bar corner where The Pub and The Brass Tap sit within a short walk of each other. Those two hold the latest close in the city, both running to 2 a.m. on Friday and Saturday. For a full rundown, see the Pembroke Pines nightlife guide.
How far is Pembroke Pines from a beach?
Hollywood Beach is about 25 minutes east of Pembroke Pines, and it’s the closest real ocean beach to the city. Sheridan Street is the fastest route across. There’s no beach inside the city limits, and there’s no swimmable lake open to the public either, so beach days here are always a drive. Weekend parking on the Broadwalk fills early, so go in the morning.
What to do near Pembroke Pines, FL?
Within 25 minutes you can take an airboat tour at Everglades Holiday Park, walk the aviary at Flamingo Gardens, climb the observation tower at Tree Tops Park in Davie, fly in the wind tunnel at iFLY, or spend the day on the Hollywood Beach Broadwalk. Farther out, Butterfly World is about 40 minutes north and Miami’s Wynwood arts district is the next step south. Our day trips from Pembroke Pines guide sorts them by drive time.
Storage Space for the Gear a Pembroke Pines Weekend Requires
A city built on parks, boats, bikes and beach days generates more equipment than a Broward garage can hold, which is where Value Store It’s Sheridan Village location comes in. Rentals are month-to-month with no long-term contract, so seasonal gear doesn’t commit you to a year. Past the smaller lockers, 10×10 storage units hold the contents of three rooms, roughly a one-bedroom apartment’s worth of furniture during a renovation, and the 10×20 is a one-car garage of space, enough for a three-bedroom home or a small business inventory. If you’re not sure which fits, the size guide compares them side by side before you commit.
Planning the rest of your time here takes one more click. Start with the best restaurants in Pembroke Pines for dinner after a show, check things to do in Pembroke Pines with kids if the group includes children, and read the best time to visit Pembroke Pines before you pick your dates.
