Correction
Before getting to new business, I must start with a correction.
Like other South Florida reporters, I wrote last week that one of the weapons used in the Paris terrorist attacks came from Century Arms, whose headquarters is in Delray Beach. We were responding to an Associated Press story that relied on an interview with a Serbian arms dealer. The weapon in question is an M92 semi-automatic pistol.
After the story appeared, the Department of Justice said the weapon did not come through Century Arms. AP then issued a correction.
Bowl us over!
Assuming that the weather is good, there will be tangible ways to measure tonight’s Marmot Boca Raton Bowl against the inaugural game last year.
One is number of seats occupied. Technically, all 30,000 tickets for the game at Florida Atlantic University Stadium are “sold.” The teams—Toledo and Temple—get allotments, and rest are available to the organizers—ESPN, the city and Palm Beach County—for distribution.
Greater Boca Raton Chamber of Commerce Director Troy McLellan said there has been more effort to get tickets out to young people through the Spirit of Giving Network and the county school district. Ticket revenue isn’t key to the bowl’s future. ESPN committed the network for six years. Still, a full or nearly full house would give the game more credibility.
Another gauge will be the number of corporate sponsors. McLellan said he has heard that sponsorships are up. “People last year saw the economic potential,” he said. After the game, I will get reaction from ESPN’s Doug Mosley, who acts as the bowl’s executive director.
iPic Plan
Last week, the production that is the iPic project went to the cutting room of the Delray Beach Site Plan Review Advisory Committee. The ending was predictable, even if the discussion at times got weird.
Board members voted to approve three waivers for the project, but they raised many questions about the overall plan. Most were about the movement of traffic within the mixed-use projects and on Southeast Fourth and Fifth avenues. In proposing an approval schedule, iPic attorney Bonnie Miskel had presumed that the project would come back to the board next month with revisions. Indeed, the board voted to table a final decision until January.
Whether that decision comes at the Jan. 13 meeting or two weeks later will depend on how quickly iPic and city planners can deal with the board’s questions. You can assume that those also would be the city commission’s questions. Commissioners appoint the board members.
As with the commission, the sentiment among most board members is support for the project. Chairman Jose Aguila urged a quick turn to “show that this can work” so the city can “get it passed.” Ipic would like to obtain a building permit by the end of 2016. Construction would take between 12 months and 18 months.
Discussion ranged from the serious—How would the loading area for the project work? Could a security guard really discourage drop-offs along Fifth Avenue? Would the valet line be, as Aguila described the area in its current design, “an accident waiting to happen?”—to the bizarre. Two speakers urged the board to reject the project because streaming will make movie theaters obsolete. Perhaps they’ve never tried to book a seat at the iPic in Boca. Another speaker said the project “looks like a mosque.” IPic CEO Hamid Hashemi was born in Iran. Perhaps the speaker is a Donald Trump fan.
Then there was the strange moment at the end when the board voted to table the iPic project but then voted to move ahead on the neighboring Martini property, which iPic would buy to make the main project work. “Could that be more silly?” Aguila asked, rhetorically. “Come on, guys.” Miskel asked that the two projects remain linked. A second vote did so.
Four months after the commission gave the project preliminary approval, the main issue remains compatibility —making the project work on that site. No remaining issue is huge. Collectively, though, they amount to a great deal of work to find what Miskel called “solutions.”
“They’ve got a lot to do,” city planner Scott Pape said of iPic. Aguila responded, “So do you.”
Hillstone back in the hunt
It looks likely that a proposed lease for the Wildflower property will go before the Boca Raton City Council early next year. There has been a lot of activity on the issue in the last month.
On Nov. 24, Hillstone Restaurant Group sent a counter proposal. It came four weeks after Vice President and General Counsel Glenn Viers had written the city to say that Hillstone was withdrawing from negotiations to build a Houston’s. The draft lease had proposed a $500,000 annual payment with a five percent increase every five years. City staff had asked for a two percent increase every year, or double over five years what the two sides had discussed.
The city’s officer surprised Mayor Susan Haynie and city council members. The Greater Boca Raton Chamber of Commerce offered to mediate and help restart negotiations. In that Nov. 24 letter, Viers offered to pay five percent of gross sales or $600,000, whichever is greater. The lease payment would increase five percent every five years, but the city would pay the property tax on the 2.3-acre site.
Regarding the issue of a restaurant dock, which Haynie had made a priority, Viers said Hillstone does not plan to build one. The company, though, would be fine with the city building and maintaining one south of the site on the Intracoastal Waterway. Silver Palm Park is on the south side of Palmetto Park Road from the property.
On Dec. 3, chamber director Troy McLellan sent an email asking the members to contact Haynie and the council in support of the project. Much of the comment at council meetings has come from neighbors who oppose the restaurant. Some want the city to make the property, which Boca bought in 2009 for $7.5 million, a park.
The council, though, never envisioned a park. And City Manager Leif Ahnell reported that it would cost about $300,000 just to open the site temporarily. Fortunately, the council had no interest in wasting that money.
Striking a deal with Hillstone, however, remains a council priority. With the mayor and council having stayed out of negotiations for many months, it’s time for them to get involved. Soon.
The Tracy issue
Florida Atlantic University finally is seeking to get rid of a bad professor.
That would be James Tracy, who teaches in the communications department. He has embarrassed FAU since 2013, when he questioned on his private blog whether the Sandy Hook School massacre happened. The victims were 20 children and six adults. FAU only reprimanded Tracy, and that was for not making clear that he was speaking for himself, not FAU.
The distinction should not have mattered. Tracy might promote crackpot conspiracy theories on his own time, but he promotes them on a public forum. Tracy can’t separate his FAU position from his blog any more than a supposedly objective reporter for a newspaper could separate that work from a private blog that bashes the people he or she is covering. Tracy does not list his FAU affiliation on his blog, but he does call himself “a media scholar, educator and political analyst located in South Florida.”
By questioning every mass shooting since Sandy Hook —and the Boston Marathon bombing—Tracy damages not just his own academic credibility but FAU’s. The university never would tolerate a faculty member who denied the Holocaust or otherwise questioned events that clearly happened.
Recently, the parents of a Sandy Hook victim accused Tracy of harassing them. They went public in an oped for the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. Last week, FAU notified Tracy that the university would seek to fire him.
Tracy is tenured, and under the collective bargaining agreement he has 10 days to respond. After Thursday, FAU is closed until Jan. 4. An FAU spokeswoman said no more information would be available until then.
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.
