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What Boca Raton residents see now in the proposal to redevelop the area around City Hall is almost certainly what they are going to get.

That is the shared opinion of Cody Crowell, a member of the development team, and City Manager George Brown. I spoke with them Monday. In 12 days, the city council likely will approve the interim agreement with the project team—Frisbie Group and Terra Group.

Crowell is a Frisbie Group principal. He expects that the proposal will change very little, if at all, because “it’s what the community wants.” Terra/Frisbie, he said, spent months “getting input” from city officials and residents for those 30 acres. “This is the community’s plan.”

That plan calls for 1,129 apartments, 156,000 square feet of retail and entertainment space, 250,000 square feet of offices and a 150-room hotel. The city would get a new city hall, community center and police substation, with Terra/Frisbie paying for them as part of a public-private partnership.

More important, from the city’s standpoint, the proposal includes roughly six acres of new public space emphasizing walkability and sustainability. Terra/Frisbie calls the civic component, which includes 18 parks, “an oasis for all.” That portion is named The Commons.

There’s no way to overstate how much will be involved in creating this new downtown over roughly the next decade. The first step will be the interim agreement.

From Terra/Frisbie’s standpoint, Brown said, the document will lay out “what will happen when.” There will be details of each phase. The team plans to work from north to south, starting near the library and ending at Palmetto Park Road. City hall and the community center will be in the center.

Demolition of those buildings will come early. That means, as Brown put it, “We will have to find someplace to live for up to five years” until the new facilities are built.

Though the city has roughly 1,500 full-time employees, not all of them work at City Hall and the nearby Building Department, once home to the library. According to a city spokeswoman, between 150 and 200 are at City Hall, depending on the time of day. Ninety to 130 work in the building and code enforcement departments. All may be in the new City Hall.

The city had planned to house the Building Department where the Children’s Museum had been, but the new proposal changed that. The museum still will move to Meadows Park. Though the city has tentatively called for an 85,000-square foot city hall, Mayor Scott Singer said officials are still working on “the overall size.”

Rent thus will be a public cost of the redevelopment. So will construction of a new police station. It will take up the 10 acres of city-owned land next to the Spanish River Library. Brown said the station will cost “close to $200 million.”

To pay for it, Brown said, the city will hold a special election in October on a bond to be financed with property taxes. A city election is scheduled for March of next year, but Brown said the city wants to “get this moving.” He emphasized that Boca Raton would have needed a new police station regardless of the downtown project.

As for the city hall, community center and police substation, Crowell said the city will issue the financing, to take advantage of low rates available to government agencies and keeping down the overall cost. Terra/Frisbie will reimburse the city for its annual payments.

The city also will pay for a softball complex at Sugar Sand Park, to replace the fields near the community center that the project will displace. Brown said Terra/Frisbie “may” share that cost. Work will start “before the end of the year.”

Terra/Frisbie has included tennis, pickleball and padel courts in its plans. The project will displace the downtown tennis center. Brown said the city may augment those facilities with clay courts elsewhere. A new skate park—the downtown facility also will be displaced—could go at North Park, once the Ocean Breeze golf course in Boca Teeca.

A priority for the city and Terra/Frisbie is making The Commons complement Mizner Park, not cannibalize it. Singer said, “It can’t be a zero-sum game.”

Crowell said Terra/Frisbie included in its plan $10 million toward connecting The Commons with Mizner Park. The library is roughly due west of Mizner Park, but Federal Highway and Dixie Highway are in the way. So are the parking garages that everyone realizes—30-plus years too late—should not have been built facing Federal Highway.

A pedestrian bridge, Crowell said, could be one option. He notes that a connection would open up Mizner Park to people who come on a Brightline train. Brown said he always hoped for “a really good” street-level connection, but that a combination might be possible. There are no details at this point, beyond Brown wishing to “avoid a competition” between the two areas.

Once the council approves the interim agreement, work will begin on the final agreement. It will lay out what will be built where and when. It will specify what Terra/Frisbie will pay the city in rent for each parcel and, as Brown said, “our obligations as the landlord.” Among other things, the city must figure out “how to move traffic around.”

With that final agreement, Crowell said, “Everyone will understand what’s happening.” Crowell and Brown believe that approval could come this fall. Crowell said, “Both sides are fast-tracking this.”

And what is the goal? Brown said he hopes for something even beyond the “live, work, play” mantra one hears so often about redevelopment. He cites Mount Vernon Place, one of the most popular parks in his native Baltimore. In nice weather, Brown said, “People just want to be there.”

Crowell said Terra/Frisbie has incorporated “all the best concepts” into its approach. “We love our plan. South Florida is the epicenter of all that is good in this country.”

James Zervis promoted to deputy city manager

Boca Raton Deputy City Manager James Zervis

Underscoring the complexity of the redevelopment project, Brown has elevated Chief Financial Officer James Zervis to deputy city manager, the third such position.

Brown’s predecessor, Leif Ahnell, had extensive financial training. The former CFO also retired not long after Ahnell left at the end of 2023. Brown’s expertise is in planning. Zervis’ promotion, Brown said, will provide more oversight as the Terra/Frisbie project progresses.

An indecent proposal

A petition on social media seeks to have the city obtain “an additional proposal” for the City Hall area. Doing so, however, would be illegal.

After receiving unsolicited proposals from Terra/Frisbie and Related Ross, the city advertised for bids, as the law requires. The deadline was Jan. 9. If the city reopened the bidding, Terra/Frisbie would have an easy lawsuit. What the petition seeks can’t, and thus won’t, happen.

Addressing concerns of downtown campus size

Finally, on the downtown project:

Those few residents who have spoken against it during council meetings regularly ask that the project not make Boca Raton into “Fort Lauderdale or West Palm Beach.”

Council members chose Terra/Frisbie in large part because they believed, to use Crowell’s term, that its plan had been “right-sized” for Boca Raton. They rejected Related Ross in large part because they believed its plan basically had been lifted from the company’s office-heavy portfolio in West Palm Beach.

Meanwhile, Fort Lauderdale just approved a 54-story residential building. It would be the city’s tallest. In recent years, the city has approved several buildings of at least 40 stories.

In downtown Boca Raton, the height limit remains 10 stories, with projects allowed to reach 140 feet if developers follow architectural guidelines. At roughly 100,000 residents, Boca Raton has doubled in population since 1980. Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach, however, seem to have left their pasts much farther behind.

Petitioners request speed humps on Mizner Boulevard

Another petition seeks to have Boca Raton install speed humps on Mizner Boulevard between Palmetto Park Road and Federal Highway. Residents long have complained about what the social media post calls “drug-racing, muffler-popping, speeding cars.” Police officials have said that it’s hard to assign patrol officers to stop the behavior.

Boca removes Housing Authority vice chair item from agenda

Boca Raton Housing Authority

The case against Boca Raton Housing Authority Vice Chair Angela McDonald has been removed from the agenda for Friday’s meeting of the Florida Commission on Ethics.

Commissioners had been scheduled to decide on a settlement under which McDonald would receive a public reprimand and pay a $1,000 fine for two violations related to her fundraising for a work-related trip to New Orleans. The investigator concluded that McDonald improperly raised money to cover her expenses.

The investigator, though, asked to “review” the case after a ruling by the 1st District Court. That case involved an Escambia County commissioner who used crowdfunding to help pay legal bills in his ethics case.

Randy Schultz

Author Randy Schultz

Randy Schultz, a native of Hartford, Connecticut, has been a South Florida journalist since 1974. He worked for The Miami Herald until 1976 and for The Palm Beach Post from 1976 until 2014, where he served as managing editor and editorial page editor. Since 2014, he has written a politics blog, commentaries and other articles for Boca magazine. His writing has earned first-place awards from the Florida Magazine Association and the Florida Society of Newspaper Editors. Randy has lived in Boca Raton with his wife, Shelley Huff-Schultz, since 1985. His son, daughter-in-law and their three children also live in Boca Raton.

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