Mizner at 25
As Mizner Park turns 25, there is more change within the project and potential change looming that could further reshape downtown Boca Raton.
In the space between the west-side parking garages that once housed Ruby Tuesday’s will be Junior’s, a Boca branch of the Brooklyn restaurant that is famous for cheesecake. It will serve breakfast, lunch and dinner. Replacing Jazziz on the southwest corner will be Ouzo Bay, from the company that operates a restaurant of the same name at Baltimore’s Inner Harbor. The fare is upscale Greek/Mediterranean in what a Baltimore publication called a “chic bar atmosphere.”
Home furnishings, General Manager Andrew McKinney said, has become “a strong category” at Mizner Park. Coming to the space south of Truluck’s is Sugarboo Designs, which describes its stores as “Dealers in Whimsy.” The company has four locations, three in Georgia and another in Alabama. Another new tenant will be Planet Blue, the California-based women’s ready-to-wear clothier. In all, McKinney said, Mizner Park’s newest tenants will take up 30,000 square feet. That’s nearly 13 percent of the retail space.
As McKinney deals with the daily duties of managing Mizner Park, his bosses at General Growth Properties’ corporate office in Chicago have other decisions. GGP owns Mizner Park’s retail and office buildings and the four parking garages. In seven days, the option for GGP to buy from the Community Redevelopment Agency the ground under the office and retail buildings on the west side of Mizner Park takes effect. A year from now, the option will kick in for the land on the east side.
In both cases, the offer also includes the land under the garages. Options to buy the east-side office tower and the Lord & Taylor property become available in 2020.
In an interview Monday, McKinney said, “My assumption is that those options will be exercised.” GGP manages 125 properties. In “most cases,” McKinney said, the company is an owner and operator. As of Monday, the city had not heard from GGP regarding its intentions.
For those who visit Mizner Park, the sale wouldn’t mean anything. Indeed, the company would have even more reason to make the project as successful as possible.
For the city, however, the sale would mean lots of money. Technically, the money would go to the CRA, which then could use it for any downtown work. If GGP exercises all the options, the money would be considerable.
Boca Raton approved Mizner Park in the hope that it would help to create a new downtown. That is happening, though the character and dynamic won’t become apparent until the new housing units are completed and occupied.
McKinney wonders, for example, whether many of those new residents will walk or take trolleys to Mizner Park. If that happens, there may be less discussion about a fifth garage at the park. “I’ve heard that talk,” McKinney said, “but where or how could you put that?”
McKinney came to Mizner Park in May 2013. His timing was good. The iPic theater had opened a year earlier, and was on the way to becoming a fitting draw for Mizner Park. Recall that the AMC theater in the same space was an early, popular spot. Later in 2013 came Lord & Taylor, across the street to the east. McKinney said it has become a draw for retail. Mizner Park’s website lists iPic and Lord & Taylor as the anchor tenants.
Unless and until GGP exercises those options, the ground leases with the CRA remain in effect. Mizner Park, McKinney said, “is going really well. The tenant mix is as strong as it’s ever been.” Without Mizner Park, there likely would be no new downtown. Decisions by GGP and the city in the next four years will determine Mizner Park’s role in shaping that new downtown over the project’s next quarter-century.
Delray gets an internal auditor
Last week, Delray Beach voters approved creation of an internal auditor who will report to the city commission, not city staff. I asked City Manager Don Cooper to explain what happens now.
In an email, Cooper said the commission must first decide formally whether to hire the auditor, “which I expect they will do.” When that happens, the city’s human resources department “will prepare a job description and a salary range based upon that description.” The commission can solicit applications directly or ask a private firm to do the work. Finally, the commission must “determine job functions, amount of staffing and parameters for the position.”
I agree that the commission will fill the position. If that happens, however, it will be a tricky hire. All manner of Delray political types might want to apply, however marginal their qualifications. The correct hire would be someone who has no record of involvement with the city, whose findings thus would be credible. Commissioners would undercut the reason for the position by filling it with someone who has a political agenda.
Office Depot-Staples update
On Monday, a federal judge began hearing the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) request for an injunction to block the merger of office-supply retailers Staples and Boca Raton-based Office Depot. The two CEOs, however, began firing three days earlier.
In an open letter, Staples’ Ronald Sargent and Office Depot’s Roland Smith said that in seeking to kill the $6.3 billion deal, the FTC “cherry-picked a few facts to fit its narrative” and conducted a “flawed analysis of the marketplace” based on a “deep misunderstanding of the competitive landscape” created by Amazon and other online competitors. This debate is not about individuals buying printers and ink. It’s about business customers. Sargent said Staples has agreed to sell off some contracts if the deal goes through, to reduce chances of the merged company dominating the business market.
In a court filing last month, however, the FTC argued that combining the two largest retailers would decrease competition and raise prices. The FTC will present testimony from business executives that they save money by pitting the companies against each other. The FTC said that a poster in Sargent’s office shows one company or the other as the preferred vendor for 94 of the Fortune 100 companies. According to the FTC, the merger would produce a company 15 times larger than its closest rival.
The ruling obviously has big implications for Boca Raton. The merged company would be headquartered in Massachusetts. Sargent has not said how many—if any— jobs would remain in Boca Raton.
Sales tax
Today, the Palm Beach County Commission will decide whether to ask voters in November for a one-cent increase in the sales tax over 10 years. The tax would raise an estimated $2.7 billion for infrastructure projects.
Cities would receive a share of the revenue. For today’s meeting, most cities submitted a list of projects on which they would spend the money. Boca Raton did not submit a list. As reported here previously, the city has no infrastructure backlog.
Delray Beach, though, has plenty on the city’s wish list. The biggest item is $18 million for street maintenance; the city did not give details. The second-biggest item is $4.6 million to replace the fire station on Linton Boulevard. The city is seeking land for a replacement.
Other notable requests include $3 million for public seawalls, $3 million for upgrades to Marine Way, which routinely floods, and $2.5 million toward expansion of the city’s reclaimed water system. Even to skeptical voters, those sounds like infrastructure.
Delray officials, however, also included $200,000 to buy take-home cars for crime scene investigators “to ensure prompt response time.” The city included $600,000 for a mobile command vehicle and $130,000 for a waterway patrol boat. Is that necessary “infrastructure?”
Most interestingly, Delray would spend $400,000 on surveillance cameras and a license-plate recognition system “to reduce crime in high-tourist areas.” I don’t recall the commission making such a policy decision. Commissioner Shelly Petrolia said Monday that the topic has come up. Because of the cost, though, the discussion didn’t go any further. It now has gone further.
About the Author
Randy Schultz was born in Hartford, Conn., and graduated from the University of Tennessee in 1974. He has lived in South Florida since then, and in Boca Raton since 1985. Schultz spent nearly 40 years in daily journalism at the Miami Herald and Palm Beach Post, most recently as editorial page editor at the Post. His wife, Shelley, is director of The Learning Network at Pine Crest School. His son, an attorney, and daughter-in-law and three grandchildren also live in Boca Raton. His daughter is a veterinarian who lives in Baltimore.
