News

By Jane Smith
    
    Beach lovers will soon have renovated restrooms to use at Boynton Beach’s Oceanfront Park in Ocean Ridge, along with freshly baked pastries at the snack bar.
    The restroom renovations will be finished by the end of May, said Jeff Livergood, public works director. The total cost will be $24,950 for renovations.
    Lower counters and a tilted mirror are among the disabled-accessible items that will be added for $3,820, Livergood said. The other renovations will cost less than $21,130.
    “Every four to five years, we try to give the restrooms in our heavily used parks an upgrade,” Livergood said. Portable toilets will be available while the renovations take place, he said.
    Last fall, the city chose a new vendor for the snack bar. Ultimate Bakery & Pastry, which also has the concession contract at the city’s golf course, won the bid for the snack bar with its annual lease offer of $6,600 or 6.5 percent of gross sales, after sales tax, in the first year. The second year, the company offered to pay $7,200 or 7 percent of gross sales, after sales tax.
    The competition was with Culinary Solutions with its offer of $12,000 annually in lease payments for the first two years. Jim Guilbeault ran the Oceanfront Snack Bar for eight years. He described the switch as a personality conflict between his workers and the city staff.
    He also said that business was great there five months out of the year. “But the other seven months were tough to survive,” Guilbeault said.
    Last summer, he opened the Culinary To Go eatery in a converted Denny’s restaurant in Boynton Beach. “Eight months into it, the name is not working for us,” Guilbeault said in mid-March. He plans to add a salad bar and a bakery and rebrand it with the word “Restaurant.”  
    At the Oceanfront Snack Bar, the rent payment was just one of the factors, said Wally Majors, the city’s parks director. Ultimate Bakery offered a more varied menu and its owner had good references from the city’s golf course concession, he said.
    Pastry chef Peter Torocsik owns the Ultimate Bakery. He makes pastries such as apple turnovers, cinnamon rolls and banana bread at the full kitchen at the golf course.
    For lunch, hot dogs and one-third pound hamburgers are available, along with grilled chicken. His wife helps daily and his son, a fifth-grader at Palm Beach Public School, works weekends. The snack bar is open 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily.
    “It’s a family affair,” said Torocsik.