Boca: issues update
By design and by happenstance, the Boca Raton City Council spent Monday afternoon talking about water.
Don’t get excited. There’s no shortage in the city. The issue was getting residents to the waterfront, especially the Intracoastal Waterway.
On the council’s workshop—discussion only, no votes—agenda was the city’s comprehensive plan for the waterfront. You know that plans are serious when they come with that label of “comprehensive.” The timing could not have been better.
Here are the main topics of Monday’s discussion:
— The Wildflower property.
Last week, the city learned that a key part of its “comprehensive” waterfront plan might be dead in the water. Hillstone Restaurant Group said the company was ending negotiations for a Houston’s restaurant on the former Wildflower property. The site was to include a public walkway along the Intracoastal with access to Silver Palm Park south of the property.
As Hillstone Vice President Glenn Viers and Deputy City Manager George Brown told me, the sticking point was the lease agreement. Under the early terms, Hillstone would have paid $500,000 a year, with a five percent increase every five years and a share of sales over a certain amount. Recently, the city countered with a demand for two percent more annually, which would have doubled the rent over five years from what Hillstone had proposed. The lease would have run for 20 years. The city bought the 2.3 acres in 2009 for $7.5 million.
“If you play those numbers out,” Viers said, with the other costs of designing, building and running the restaurant, “that was a concern.” Deputy City Manager George Brown told me that the terms seemed fair, given the “potential” of the property.
From Boca’s standpoint, there was general agreement that the council had allowed the staff to negotiate the lease— the site plan was ready to go—without coming back regularly for input. The council’s top priority for two years has been finalizing a deal for a revenue-generating business on the property. So what happened?
According to City Manager Leif Ahnell, Hillstone responded to the city’s 2 percent annual rent proposal by offering $600,000 a year—but asking that the amount then be reduced to “offset” property taxes. Ahnell said the city offered to negotiate “face-to-face,” after which Hillstone sent its letter breaking off the negotiations.
Though Viers said, “We’re always interested in talking,” the council Monday wasn’t in the mood. “They know where we are,” Jeremy Rodgers said. Mayor Susan Haynie, whose gripe was that Hillstone didn’t want to build a dock for diners who came by boat, noted earlier talk of moving the municipal boat launch from Silver Park to the Wildflower site and developing the Silver Palm site.
And, of course, the council heard from residents who always wanted the Wildflower property to be nothing more than the most expensive, little-used park in Boca Raton. The Boca Watch website, which is those residents’ mouthpiece, shrieked that Ahnell and Brown should be fired—not for failing to close the deal but for insinuating that the plan was for a restaurant all along, not a park. Congress has its Tea Party. So does Boca Raton. All anger, no mission.
I assume that Haynie and the council will question Ahnell and Brown in private. The Greater Boca Raton Chamber of Commerce was especially unhappy about Hillstone’s letter. Negotiations have their own dynamic. If the city must start over, one hopes that the goal won’t be to turn the land into a spot for food trucks, even if Rodgers asked Monday that staff figure the cost of putting down some sod to allow residents temporary use of the site.
–That citywide waterfront plan.
Haynie complained that while Boca Raton owns a lot of waterfront property, it’s “underutilized.” The council wants to change that.
So the staff will compile an inventory of all property that Boca and other governments own, and perhaps hire a consultant to examine how the city could let residents know how much waterfront access they have and also find ways to make that access more. . .accessible.
–The Hillsboro/El Rio park.
The city owns nearly 30 acres along the El Rio Canal that once served as Boca Raton’s landfill. On the north side of 18th Street are two baseball fields and a soccer/football/lacrosse field—also part of the old landfill. Pre-recession, the south side was to be the other half of a park. A decade later, the city is interested again.
But there are problems. Preparing a former landfill for public use is expensive—at least $300,000 an acre. The city can’t get too expansive with its plans. Still, there’s that inviting stretch of the El Rio. A dock could allow the use of canoes, paddleboards and kayaks.
The council consensus was to consider developing between seven and eight acres—minimal lighting, no fields, just a way to “open up the water” as Rodgers said. Merely getting a permit from the Florida Department of Environmental Regulation could take a year. The city would need to add two feet of topsoil. Any structures—such as restrooms—would need pilings. Otherwise, they could sink up to six inches over 20 years. There would be issues with the mangroves. The city engineer pointed out that access from a parking lot to the dock would have to comply with the Americans With Disabilities Act.
Ahnell said the staff would be back with more information “in a month or two.” (Disclosure. I live in the Camino Lakes neighborhood just west of the canal.)
Ag Reserve vote contrary to public referendum
I have written recently about the effort to undercut what Palm Beach County voters demanded in 1999 when they approved $150 million in bonds for land sales designed to preserve as much farming as possible in the county’s Agricultural Reserve Area (above).
On Monday, the county commission approved the latest set of potentially harmful changes. The details are complex, but the main change to the county’s comprehensive plan will make small farms more valuable to developers.
The changes would not immediately allow more residential units than envisioned 16 years ago, but they would encourage development patterns that could make the reserve more suburban-oriented. Eventually, the push for more houses could become irreversible.
County Mayor Shelley Vana, who has been fairly dismissive of those who criticize the changes, claimed Monday that the commission was doing nothing more than “finishing up” what a previous commission began in 1999 by advancing the bond program and asking for a master plan for the reserve.
The commission never adopted the master plan for the reserve, but County Administrator Verdenia Baker correctly pointed out Monday that the plan “has been our guide.” An even better guide would be that public referendum in 1999. Monday’s vote did not keep faith with that vote.
University Village and Pine Circle
At tonight’s meeting, the Boca Raton City Council will tee up a vote on a project of nearly 80 acres and decide on a project of barely more than one acre.
The big project is University Village. The council will introduce the ordinance that likely will be the subject of a vote next month.
The small project—1.14 acres—is on Pine Circle, just west of City Hall. The developer wants a change that would allow eight apartments on land is now zoned for a maximum of five units per acre. The project would include four, two-unit buildings clustered within a curve of the road. Though it’s just one acre, the council would have to approve four changes to approve the project.
Some neighbors have expressed opposition, even though there would be just three more units than the rules currently allow. The land also is vacant, and based on the design the project could perk up the neighborhood.
As for University Village, that project should reach the council next month.
Al Alford
I have been remiss in not noting the passing last month of Al Alford.
Boca Raton is lucky to have had elected officials with lots of institutional memory. Mayor Susan Haynie has been associated with the city since 1974. Steven Abrams spent nearly two decades as a mayor and city council member before moving to the county commission in 2009.
In sheer resume terms, however, no one could top Al Alford. His ties to Boca Raton city government started in 1960. He spent six years as an assistant city manager and another six years as city manager. He then spent almost 20 years—in the mid-1970s and from 1981 to 1994—as mayor and council member.
Alford supported downtown redevelopment that made Boca Raton a city, but always liked small-town touches. When he ran in 1990, his issue was side-yard garbage pickup. Sure, he said, it would cost more, but all those bins on the street meet Boca look “kind of trashy.”
I spoke with several people who said of Alford that as an elected official his word on an issue—whether he favored it or opposed it—was his bond. He took the job more seriously than himself. Example: When Alford lost his final election in 1994 to Wanda Thayer, he proclaimed himself satisfied that progressives, not naysayers, still comprised the council majority. He was more upset that a library bond issue had lost by a narrow margin. Alford no doubt was happy to see the new downtown library open—even if it happened many years too late.
