Zevar Jewelers

On West Oakland Park Boulevard, inside Pine Oak Plaza, Zevar Jewelers has been part of the Sunrise retail scene for a long stretch of time. According to its Yellow Pages listing, the business has operated for roughly 32 years, which would put its roots back in the early to mid 1990s, a lifespan that outlasts plenty of the chain stores that have opened and closed in Broward County shopping centers over that same period.

The shop’s name is worth noting on its own. “Zevar” is the Hindi and Urdu word for jewelry or adornment, a naming choice that lines up with the broader South Asian business presence found along Oakland Park Boulevard and University Drive in this part of Sunrise and neighboring Lauderhill. Jewelry, particularly gold jewelry, carries deep cultural significance in South Asian communities, tied to weddings, festivals and family milestones, and independently owned jewelers serving that community tend to carry a different mix of inventory, including particular karat weights, styles and design traditions, than a typical American mall jeweler would stock.

Zevar Jewelers is registered with the State of Florida as Zevar, Inc., an active corporation, confirming it as a real, currently operating business rather than a stale directory entry left online after a closure. The shop accepts Visa, Discover and Mastercard, according to its Yellow Pages profile. Its listed hours state the shop is open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, which is unusual enough for a small jewelry store that it’s worth treating with some skepticism. It is more likely a data quirk from an automated directory system than an accurate reflection of how the shop actually operates day to day, and anyone planning a visit would be smart to call ahead and confirm before making a special trip.

What’s clear, regardless of the exact hours, is that this is a long running, independently owned jewelry business in a part of Sunrise that doesn’t get much attention in guides to the city, which tend to focus almost entirely on Sawgrass Mills a few miles south. Pine Oak Plaza and the surrounding stretch of Oakland Park Boulevard are lined with small, family run businesses serving the immediate neighborhood, and a jeweler that has held on for three decades in that kind of environment has clearly built a loyal, returning customer base over the years.

For anyone in Sunrise looking for gold jewelry, repairs, custom pieces, or a jeweler with deep roots in the local South Asian community, Zevar Jewelers is worth a phone call before the national chains at Sawgrass Mills come to mind as the automatic option. It’s a reminder that some of the most established retail in this city sits well outside the mall’s shadow, in ordinary strip plazas along the city’s major boulevards.