Nine-year-old Kaden MacNeil of Lake Worth caught this 40-pound wahoo with a sardine Dec. 22

on The Lady K Drift boat out of Lantana. (l-r) Kevin MacNeil (proud dad),

Captain Bruce Cyr and proud fisherman Kaden.

Photo provided

A porkfish swims through elkhorn coral, a threatened species, on a reef off Pompano Beach.

South Florida coral reefs face threats from pollution, anchor damage, high water temperatures

and other factors. The public is invited to comment on proposals to protect the region’s reefs

during two meetings Jan. 29 in Delray Beach.

Photo provided by Ana N. Zangroniz

By Willie Howard

    Spearfishing with scuba gear could become a thing of the past in the waters off of Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach and Martin counties.
    Coral reef education could become mandatory in South Florida schools.
    Anglers who pass an online exam covering the Coral Reef Protection Act and basic boating laws could pay less for their fishing licenses.
    Those are just a few examples of the dozens of recommended management actions that have been proposed through the Our Florida Reefs community planning process to protect the reef tract that stretches from Miami to Stuart.
    The public is invited to comment on management options to protect the reefs during two meetings set for Jan. 29 at the Delray Beach Public Library. Meeting times are noon to 2 p.m. and 6 to 8 p.m. at the library, 100 W. Atlantic Ave.
    The Delray Beach reef meetings are part of a series of community workshops being held in the four-county area through Feb. 18 to gather feedback from boaters, divers, anglers and others on a variety of suggested reef-protection measures.
    Other proposals being considered to protect the reefs would:
    • Designate the reef tract off Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach and Martin counties as a “particularly sensitive sea area” to reduce impacts from tugboat and barge cables as well as ship groundings.
    • Create coral reef “gardens” that could be closely monitored to promote the recovery, restoration and recruitment of corals and fish.
    • Nominate the four-county area to be designated as a national marine sanctuary similar to the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary in Monroe County.
    • Reduce from 12 to six the number of spiny lobster that divers could keep daily during the two-day sport lobster season in late July. (The six-lobster bag limit already applies in Monroe County and Biscayne National Park.)
    • Require the tagging of lead lines for all cast nets over 6 feet and require commercial and recreational anglers to report lost nets within the St. Lucie Inlet Preserve State Park.
    • Increase funding for the recruitment and retention of law-enforcement officers with the Florida Fish & Wildlife Conservation Commission.
    After the public has commented on the recommendations, community working group members — who have been discussing South Florida’s reef problems and developing proposed solutions since March 2014 — will produce a final report.
    Final recommendations will be presented to agencies that would implement the reef-protecting measures, including the FWC and the Florida Department of Environmental Protection. That’s expected to happen later this year, said Ana Zangroniz, awareness and appreciation coordinator for the DEP’s Coral Reef Conservation Program.
    For details about the Our Florida Reefs planning process, go to www.OurFloridaReefs.org.

Triggerfish minimum size changed back to 12 inches
    After increasing the minimum size for gray triggerfish to 14 inches in July, the Florida Fish & Wildlife Conservation Commission in November reduced the minimum size for triggerfish caught on Florida’s east coast back to 12 inches (fork length). The bag limit on the state’s east coast is 10 triggerfish.

Tara Eddings (third from left) with the Miss Britt team and the 104.6-pound yellowfin tuna caught Dec. 12

off Boca Raton while fishing for sailfish. The tuna set a weight-fish record for the Quest for the Crest

sailfish release tournament series.

Photo provided by Endless Imagery

105-pound yellowfin tuna taken off Boca Raton
    Sailfish angler Tara Eddings was fishing off Boca Raton during the Operation Sailfish tournament in mid-December when something much larger than a sailfish hit her live goggle-eye, dangled from a fishing kite in 350 feet of water.
After a two-hour fight with Capt. Ray Rosher aboard the 39-foot Contender Miss Britt (during which the crew hooked two more sailfish), Eddings boated a 104.6-pound yellowfin tuna, caught on 20-pound-test line rigged with 40-pound-test leader.
Her tuna was the heaviest fish ever weighed in any of the Quest for the Crest sailfish release tournaments organized by Deerfield Beach-based Blue Water Movements.

Delray Beach Historical Society angles for fish tales
    The Delray Beach Historical Society is asking Palm Beach County residents to share fishing stories, photographs and memorabilia for a fishing history exhibit planned for the spring.
    The exhibit is expected to include fishing photos, mounted fish and fishing tales from throughout South Florida but will focus on southern Palm Beach County.
    To participate, contact historical society archivists Janet DeVries or Michelle Quigley at 274-9578 or email: Archive@Delraybeachhistory.org.

Manatee dubbed “Morty” at Waterstone Resort
    More than 200 people voted in person and online to choose the name “Morty” for the stuffed manatee mascot at the Waterstone Resort & Marina in Boca Raton.
    The name selection was celebrated Dec. 20 with a manatee-naming party at the resort featuring a buffet lunch for kids, manatee cookie decorating and appearances by Santa and Morty.
   The resort plans to offer a special package next year in which 10 percent of the lodging fee will go to the Save the Manatee Club and guests will receive a stuffed manatee when they check in.
Guests see real manatees from the porch of the waterfront resort near Boca Raton Inlet, spokeswoman Allie Weinstock said.

Coming events
    Jan. 6-9: 79th annual Silver Sailfish Derby, a sailfish release tournament organized by the West Palm Beach Fishing Club. Captain’s meeting Jan. 6 at the club. Fishing Jan. 7-8. Awards dinner Jan. 9. 832-6780 or www.WestPalmBeachFishingClub.org.
    Jan. 9: Basic boating safety class offered by Coast Guard Auxiliary in Boca Raton. Class will be from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. in the headquarters building at Spanish River Park, 3939 N. Ocean Blvd. Fee: $35. Register at door. Bring lunch. 391-3600 or www.cgauxboca.org.
    Jan. 13: Snook symposium, a full-day discussion about snook research and management in Florida, Caribe Royale hotel, Orlando. 850-487-0554 or www.myfwc.com/snook2016.
    Jan. 26: Brett Fitzgerald, director of the Snook & Gamefish Foundation, speaks to the Boynton Beach Fishing Club, 7:30 p.m. at the clubhouse by the boat ramps, Harvey E. Oyer Jr. Park, 2010 N. Federal Highway, Boynton Beach. Free. www.bifc.org.
    Jan. 23: Basic boating safety class offered by Coast Guard Auxiliary, 8 a.m. in the meeting room at Harvey E. Oyer Jr. Park, 2010 N. Federal Highway, Boynton Beach. Fee $40. Call Sandy Meridy, 734-2244.

Tip of the month
    South Florida boaters who take their vessels on the ocean and have a satellite beacon such as an EPIRB or a PLB in case of emergency probably know that the beacons must be registered with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
    But they might not realize that beacon registrations must be updated every two years.
    If the boat or phone number associated with the beacon registration changes, the registration also must be updated with NOAA.
    Updating a satellite beacon registration is simple: Go to www.beaconregistration.noaa.gov and use the beacon’s 15-digit ID number to update or confirm the information.
    If an emergency beacon is sold, the seller should notify NOAA so the new owner can register it.
    Owners who have questions about registering or updating their emergency beacons can call NOAA at 888-212-7283 or email Beacon.Registration@noaa.gov.

Willie Howard is a freelance writer and licensed boat captain. Reach him at tiowillie@bellsouth.net.

Teens do some floorwork on the mat at Buddha Lounge in Delray Beach.

Students in Jo Boccassini’s class do a pose called rope sirsasana. For some kids, the stranger and more challenging the pose, the better.

Photos provided

By Janis Fontaine
    
    Today, yoga is so mainstream, you’ll find yoga classes in hospitals, schools and even rehab. It’s noninvasive, low-impact, and can be done (to some degree, at least) by everyone, regardless of fitness level. Experts prescribe yoga for ailments ranging from high blood pressure to carpal tunnel syndrome to headaches. There’s even yoga for flat feet.
    Now parents —  kids, too — are turning their attention to yoga as a means of handling school stress, anxiety, depression, ADD and ADHD, issues with self-esteem, and the physical manifestations of those conditions, like insomnia and stomach problems.
    When kids start a class with Jo Boccassini, who teaches at Yoga Sol in Delray Beach, they think yoga’s focus is on the body and the ability to perfectly mimic the teacher’s body shapes. But as they learn the poses, their minds also become engaged and they like the way yoga feels, Boccassini said.
    “What they’re really starting to like is the quietness. Deliberate stillness. I’m teaching them larger concepts — how to live, really live.”
    Principles that make the world a better place, like nonviolence, not lying or stealing, and not being greedy or taking more than your fair share, come into play. “Then they talk about this stuff at home,” she said.
    Some of her students have parents who practice yoga, but “some parents just know their kid needs it,” Boccassini said. She tries to make her teachings “specific to the child.”
    She’s observant. If she sees one method or tactic isn’t working, she tries something else. And always, she remembers, it has to be about having fun (but with structure).
    “I want the kids to feel supported by the Earth and safe in my class,” Boccassini said. A few years ago, some people wanted to come in and observe the kids in class, so she spoke to the kids about it.
    “The next day the kids said they didn’t want anyone watching them,” she said. “They valued that time and felt really strongly that that was their time, so I don’t let people just come in the room.”
    Now parents wait in the outer vestibule and they can’t come in without an invitation.
    Boccassini, who moved to Boynton Beach from Hollywood a few years ago, teaches kids from ages 5 to 12, but she hopes to add a group for teens ages 13-16 soon.
    When a parent pulls her aside to tell her how amazing she is, she always says, “It’s not me. It’s your kid!”
    If you can’t wait for Boccassini to offer yoga for teens, don’t worry. Right down Federal Highway, you’ll find YogaFox’s Buddha Lounge and Ganesha Garden, owned and operated by husband and wife team Keith Fox and Kelly Brookbank.
    Their free Teen Yoga Program teaches kids yoga while also teaching loftier pursuits, such as being good citizens of the Earth and helping the less fortunate.
    The YogaFox Teen Program meets at 4:15 p.m. on Thursdays at the Buddha Lounge or in the garden in the back when the weather’s nice. It’s teens only. No adults except for the teacher are allowed.  
    “We also make it open for them to come for free to any class, so they often come on weekends,” Kelly said. She says 10 or 15 kids show up every Saturday.
    YogaFox is also certifying kids to become yoga teachers, and Lexi Hidalgo is one of the first.
    Lexi, who graduated at the top of her certification class at age 13, loves teaching kids and says newcomers are sometimes nervous or afraid that she’s going to be mean or strict about doing the poses, but that contradicts the basic tenets of yoga, she says.
    “Yoga is about doing whatever is good and right for your body,” Lexi said in a video blog posted at www.yogafox.com.  
    But offering free yoga costs money, so Fox and Brookbank had to find a way to finance it. The couple started YogaFest four years ago in Fort Lauderdale to raise money for their teen program.
    They were committed to offering more to these kids. They wanted to broaden their horizons, to show them the world outside South Florida, with a community service trip to Costa Rica. The kids planted trees, and picked up garbage, and they made friends with the local kids, teaching them yoga.
    When the kids left, they gave away most of their possessions to the friends they made. Headphones, clothing, jewelry all meant more to them in the hands of someone else.
    YogaFest 2016 will be held April 2 in Fort Lauderdale, and will fund the fourth teen trip to Costa Rica.
    Fox and Brookbank simply can’t turn away some people because they can’t pay for a class. “We offer a ‘by donation’ class at 10 a.m. one morning a week,” Brookbank said. Money raised from YogaFest, which she calls their “karma fund,” pays for those classes, too.
    “Every penny we raise goes to fund our work to bring yoga to others.”
    Anything less would not be acceptable to a yogi.

If You Go
• Jo Boccassini teaches Yoga Kids at Yoga Sol, 215 NE 22nd St., Delray Beach. Classes focus on life concepts like creating balance and building strength and self-awareness. Info: 954-562-5645 or floatingyoga108@mac.com.
• Kelly and Keith Fox host a Teen Yoga Program at 4:15 p.m. Thursday at The Buddha Lounge, 1405 N. Federal Highway in Delray Beach. No adults allowed. Info: 704-756-9245 or YogaFox.com

Gulf Stream School students celebrate after winning their fourth consecutive division title

against rival St. Vincent Ferrer, which was previously undefeated. Gulf Stream School goalie Tyler Zankl (center)

runs with teammates (l-r) Landon Brady, Charlie Shannon, Joseph Fimiani, Kyale Shirajee, Liam Hart,

Pierce Silver, Addison Linch, Jack Liebowitz, Alex Erbstein, Rainer Radke, Barrett White and Nickolas Zalenikovski.

Jerry Lower/The Coastal Star

By Ron Hayes

    DELRAY BEACH — As chairman of the Boca Raton Resort & Club and director of Discover Palm Beach County, R. Scott Morrison helped pass a penny bed tax to benefit local cultural organizations.
    In 1982, its first year, $1,251,000 was collected.
    This past year the tax, now at 5 cents, raised $42,700,000 to support the arts, sports and tourism in the county.
     Mr. Morrison, a South County resident since 1980, died Nov. 16 in Boca Raton, surrounded by his family and friends. He was 76.
“Though it’s been a while since his association with the Palm Beach County destination marketing organization, those who knew him only had words of praise as a very good man who contributed greatly to our destination’s tourism development,” said Jorge Pesquera, Discover The Palm Beaches’ current president and CEO.
    Mr. Morrison’s involvement with the fabled Boca Raton resort and the county’s tourism development were only part of his work to promote the area.
    During 35 years as a resident of Boca Raton, Gulf Stream and Delray Beach, he served as a director of the Florida Hotel and Motel Association, chairman of the American Hotel and Motel Association and president of the Palm Beach County Hotel-Motel Association.
    He also served as an adviser and board member with the Junior League of Boca Raton, the St. Andrew’s School, the former Caldwell Theatre and former College of Boca Raton.
    Born Sept. 15, 1939, Mr. Morrison was a fifth-generation San Franciscan.
    A graduate of Michigan State University’s Hotel, Restaurant and Management School, he began his career with the ITT Sheraton Corporation.
    As an assistant manager at the New Orleans Sheraton, Mr. Morrison met his future wife, Norma.
    “It was a blind date and we were married nine months later at the Catholic church on Tulane Avenue,” Mrs. Morrison recalled. “It’s lasted 52 years.”
    As the wife of a hotel manager, she learned to move — from New Orleans to Boston, back to New Orleans, then Key Biscayne, the Ozarks, South Carolina and in 1980 to Boca Raton.
    After leaving the Boca Raton Resort & Club in 1986, Mr. Morrison built three hotels in Japan, Europe and the United States.
    He was also a founding stockholder of Extended Stay America and a frequent lecturer at Florida Atlantic University and Palm Beach State College.
    Locally, he was a member of the Boca Raton Resort & Club, the Gulf Stream Bath & Tennis Club and the Seagate Club in Delray Beach.
    In his leisure hours, Mr. Morrison was an avid sport fisherman and hunter at his second home in Santa Fe, N.M.
    “He could play golf, but he preferred to fish and hunt,” Mrs. Morrison said. “He was a gentleman, a sportsman, a family man, and everyone would say he had a booming laugh. Everyone mentions his laugh.”
    A Mass of the Christian Burial was held Nov. 21 at St. Vincent Ferrer Catholic Church in Delray Beach.
    “At the reception after the service we had 187 people who just came,” Mrs. Morrison said. “We didn’t send out invitations, but the church was packed.”
    In addition to his wife, Mr. Morrison is survived by a son, Robert Morrison III, three daughters, Kelly Husack, Kim Lessard and Kristin Guttroff, and seven grandchildren.
    Donations in Mr. Morrison’s memory may be made to Covenant House, St. Vincent Ferrer Care Ministries or New Hope Charities.

By Steven J. Smith

    GULF STREAM — Robert Craft will be remembered perhaps more as an upholder of composer Igor Stravinsky’s legacy than as a noted orchestral conductor, writer and lecturer in his own right, according to music scholars Leon Botstein and Thomas McKinley.
    Mr. Craft, 92, died Nov. 10 at his home in Gulf Stream.
    Botstein, a renowned conductor who is also president of Bard College near Kingston, N.Y. — where Craft was born Oct. 20, 1923 — said Mr. Craft’s real achievement in life was “to bring Stravinsky alive” and to prevent the composer from descending into a barren old age.
    “They met in 1948, and Craft introduced Stravinsky to different types of modern composition,” Botstein said. “Without Craft, I think Stravinsky would have fallen silent as a composer.”
    McKinley, professor of music theory and composition at Lynn University in Boca Raton, agreed Mr. Craft was “very influential” in the course of 20th-century classical music because of his relationship with Stravinsky.
    “He basically was Stravinsky’s private secretary for the last 20 to 30 years of his life,” McKinley said. “Late in his life, Stravinsky sort of shocked everybody by changing his style. He had done that before as a younger man in his early, famous ballets ‘The Firebird,’ ‘Petrouchka’ and ‘The Rite of Spring.’ In the ’50s, he changed his style again, into what is known as the atonal or 12-tone style, after Craft introduced him to this type of music.”
    McKinley said that Mr. Craft’s collaboration with Stravinsky on books such as Conversations With Igor Stravinsky, Memories and Commentaries and Expositions and Developments provide invaluable insights into Stravinsky.
    “Many people thought Craft may have written some of it for Stravinsky,” he said. “But I generally trust the books. I certainly don’t think Craft put words into Stravinsky’s mouth.”
    Botstein maintained Mr. Craft took on traits of Stravinsky’s personality that emerged in those books, which were published in the 1950s and 1960s.
    “It’s widely believed that Craft wrote those books,” Botstein said. “He was a terrific writer and a very smart man. Very sophisticated. But he essentially invented Stravinsky’s opinions.”
    Botstein disagreed, however, with assertions that Mr. Craft wrote some of Stravinsky’s later musical works, including Requiem Canticles, completed in 1965-66.
    “I believe those to be entirely Stravinsky,” Botstein said. “Craft didn’t ghost-write. Instead, he was a man whose creativity was best realized in someone else, much like Cyrano de Bergerac. Craft’s own talent came alive through the medium of Stravinsky. After Stravinsky died, though, Craft became a very elegant and interesting writer of music.”
    Mr. Craft also wrote memoirs in diary form of his life with Stravinsky, including Stravinsky: Chronicle of a Friendship, first published in 1972, a year after the composer’s death in New York. A later memoir, An Improbable Life (2002), recounted his own story from his youth in Kingston to 2002, including his move to Gulf Stream in 1987. The memoirs provide a broad picture of some of the leading cultural figures of the mid-20th century who moved in Stravinsky’s orbit, including W.H. Auden, T.S. Eliot, Paul Horgan and Aldous Huxley, among many others.
    Mr. Craft’s many recordings as a conductor include an 11-disc set of works by Stravinsky, 10 discs of works by Arnold Schoenberg, and two discs of music by Anton Webern, all for the Naxos label.
    He is survived by his wife, Alva Craft, and his son, Alexander Craft.
    At the end of his life, Mr. Craft was so identified with Stravinsky that the legendary composer became his only creative outlet, Botstein said.
    “But he was a man of exceptional accomplishment,” he said. “Both musically and in the writing, he created an English language that for Stravinsky never existed. And he became a great American writer — a man, at 92, who could look back on his life with a sense of pride and accomplishment.”

By Mary Thurwachter

    LANTANA — Judy Black was passionate in promoting environmental conservation and committed to creating gardens.
    “She was a leader in the environmental movement,” said Ilona Balfour, who worked for a number of years with Ms. Black on the  Friends of the Lantana Nature Preserve. “She was always supporting everybody. She will be sorely missed.”
    After a long illness, Ms. Black, 67, of Lantana (on Hypoluxo Island), died Nov. 15 at a second home she and her husband of 29 years, Richard Schlosberg, had in Washington, Conn. She was born in New York City on Sept. 27, 1948.
    Ms. Black served as president of the Hypoluxo Island Property Owners Association for four years.  
    She frequently coordinated with the Lantana town manager on association activities.  
    She also supervised the neighborhood association’s Tree Program to save the ecologically essential native tree canopy. She oversaw the plans, brought them to fruition, and with several other members and town staff, helped plant the “Four Corners” entry onto the island, as well as the “y” entry to the south part of the island.
    “She turned her own small front and mostly paved back yards into verdant habitat, protective of endangered and threatened migratory birds,” her husband said.
    Ms. Black coordinated the HIPOA’s annual picnic for about four years. She continued administrative and coordinating activities during a three year transition and recruited new, competent and younger leadership.
    One of her recruits was Lyn Tate, current treasurer of the HIPOA.
    “Not only was Judy a special person because she was so brilliant, but she gave unconditionally to the island and the town,” Tate said. “She always thought before she spoke. She was always wise in her approach.”
    Along with her husband, Ms. Black was a frequent attendee at Town of Lantana council meetings and town Nature Preserve meetings where her infrequent comments were always substantive and to the heart of an issue. Her brief statements helped save the native habitat which several years ago became the Lantana Scrub Nature Preserve.
    Ms. Black, Schlosberg said, “served capably and was very widely respected as the non-town (of Manalapan) representative on the La Coquille Club board and Town of Manalapan La Coquille subcommittee during a prolonged period of intense debate, defending the retention of the traditional non-town membership inclusive structure, and against challenges to the club’s existence.
    She was often a rare voice promoting Hypoluxo Island-wide (joined Lantana and Manalapan) activities.  
    Ms. Black had a successful career in advertising. She was a vice president of marketing for Bozell throughout many corporate combinations from BJK&E to True North. Within advertising, she specialized in new media. She researched and wrote studies well received (and some seminal) in the use of cable television, then of the Internet, as they relate to advertising.  
    For years, she assisted, leading a subcommittee, then headed up as chairperson the American Association of Advertising Agencies New Technologies Committee.  
    “She was in demand by clients for her company,” her husband said. “She spoke around the world, from New Zealand to Brazil to Finland, for example, enthusiastically and with insights from her research on the potentials from technical vantage points of the then undeveloped new mediums of cable TV programming and the Internet as advertising outlets.”
    Ms. Black Black was recognized by the advertising industry as one of  Mediaweek's 10 All-Stars in the media field in 1995 and was  on the cover of Marketing & Media Decisions magazine as one of the seers of the future of advertising.  She continued to follow both the advertising industry and new media field. Later, she worked for Cablevision.

    Ms. Black earned a Master of Arts degree in education from the Bank Street College School of Education and a Master of Business Administration from Columbia University School of Business. Her undergraduate degree was a B.A. in art history from Barnard College.  
    “She kept dear friends she met from school to business her entire life,” Schlosberg said.
    Survivors, in addition to her husband, include her brother, Leon Black, his wife, Debra, and their four children.
    Ms. Black was predeceased by her mother, Shirley Black Kash, who died in 2014, and her father, Eli M. Black, who died in 1975.
    A tree planting ceremony in her honor is being planned for a later date.

By Mary Thurwachter

    The site plan for Water Tower Commons, the new development at the former A.G. Holley site, will finally come before the Lantana Town Council on Dec. 14.
   The plan was on the agenda in October and November, but the matter had to be postponed while Palm Beach County officials had a chance to approve a traffic study for the area, just east of I-95 on Lantana Road.  
    Lantana finally received the study, with some conditions, late on the afternoon of the Nov. 23 council meeting. That didn’t allow enough time for town staff to comb though the study and share recommendations with council members, hence the postponement.
    But because the matter appeared on November agendas, public comment was heard at the November meetings.
    “This is an opportunity Lantana will never have again,” said Dan Tischler, who lives just east of the A.G. Holley site on North Eighth Street.
    “I read four fast-food restaurants and a gas station and my heart just sank,” Tischler said. “I want it to be a destination that people living here will be proud of.”
    Tischler suggested upscale dwellings and a store such as Whole Foods Market for the Water Tower Commons property.
    “We’re only going to get one shot at this,” Tischler said. “This is going to affect our grandchildren.”
    Dustin Mizell urged the council to push hard for a quality project on the 73-acre tract, former home to the A.G. Holley tuberculosis hospital, which closed in 2012 and was torn down last year.
    “Unless we step back and really look at this project, it could be another missed opportunity,” he said.
    Another resident, Edward Shropshire, said he was concerned about building heights up to 75 feet in the conceptual plans he found on the town’s website, which he called “jaw dropping.”
    Ken Tuma of Urban Design Kilday Studios, speaking for the applicant, Southeast Legacy Investments, appeared at the Nov. 23 council meeting but withheld his presentation until Dec. 14.
    “We’re very excited to show you our plans,” he said. ”We’ve got a great PowerPoint presentation for you.”
    In other news, the town learned that its clerk, Crystal Gibson, would be leaving. Gibson, of Lake Worth, has been town clerk for seven years and took a position as operations manager for the community services division of the city of Palm Beach Gardens.
    Council members praised her work and she was given a standing ovation.

—Willie Howard contributed to this story

By Steven J. Smith

    SOUTH PALM BEACH — Bradley James Stewart Jr. was known as a jack-of-all-trades — and a master of pretty much all of them, according to his daughter, Sara Watson.
    “He was an incredible handyman and was particularly gifted as an electrician,” she said. “My mom and dad bought a lot in Key Largo and he built a house from scratch. And there were 17 electric switches at the front door!”
    Mr. Stewart died Nov. 16 at his Leesburg, Va., home, because of complications from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. He was 90.
    Born Oct. 5, 1925, in Bowling Green, Ky., Mr. Stewart was just 16 when Pearl Harbor was attacked. He joined the Navy at age 17 and soon found himself elevated to the position of personal secretary to Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, in Hawaii — mainly because of an unusual office skill he possessed.
    “He was one of the few yeomen who could type,” Watson laughed. “And he could type really fast. They didn’t have many women working in jobs like that during the war. It was the Navy and they just had men.”
    After the war, Mr. Stewart studied agriculture at Western Kentucky University, then moved to Florida in 1947 to finish his studies at the University of Miami. When he left school he worked all kinds of jobs, his daughter said.
    “He was a bartender, then he worked on a shrimp boat for a while,” Watson said. “Then he and his brother started the first newspaper in Fort Myers Beach. It only ran weekly.”
    After a teaching stint at Warfield Elementary School in Indiantown, Mr. Stewart next headed out to California, where he worked in a factory and was injured in a car wreck. He came home to Florida to recuperate and it was there he met and wed his nurse, Gloria Gehl. The two were married for 50 years until her death in 2006 and had two children, Sara and Bradley James III.
    Watson said her father eventually settled into a career with Delta Airlines in Miami — first as a baggage handler on the night shift. He was soon promoted to a ticket agent position, however, primarily because of his appealing demeanor.
    “He just had a natural, friendly personality,” Watson said. “You couldn’t help liking him.”
    Delta’s district office in West Palm Beach next lured him to work there and he remained with the company’s marketing division for 30 years until his retirement. But he continued to juggle new career opportunities with his involvement in a variety of civic organizations.
    “He went to work for the Holiday Inn Downtown in West Palm, which is no longer there,” Watson said, adding Mr. Stewart went on to help found a local branch of Skal International, which is an organization of tourism professionals dedicated to friendship and networking opportunities in the industry. In addition, he served a term as president of the Kiwanis Club and co-founded the Bon Vivants, another social club in the area.
    Then there was his work with bees. Mr. Stewart became interested in bees when he was about 12 or 13 and had a neighbor who had bees. As a Boy Scout, he pursued a merit badge for beekeeping. At age 85, he revived that passion while living in South Palm Beach and started his own beekeeping business, farming out his 17 hives — each hive consisting of 60,000 bees — for production of his “Backyard Honey,” which he mostly gave away.
    “He was definitely one of a kind,” Watson said. “He was very generous and kind. And he could do anything — carpentry, electrical work, painting. He could wear a tuxedo and not get a drop of paint on it.”
    Mr. Stewart is survived by his children Sara and Bradley James III, three grandchildren, a brother, two sisters and several nieces and nephews. Donations in his memory are requested for the Palm Beach County Beekeepers Association at 531 N. Military Trail, West Palm Beach, FL 33415 or the Florida State Beekeepers Association, 5002 NW 64th Lane, Gainesville, FL 32653.

For more than  60 years, Wright by the Sea has been a favorite hotel destination in Delray Beach.

The founder’s daughter, Gay Wright Vela, celebrated her 80th birthday with family and friends.

Here, Vela with her grandchildren: (clockwise from front) Christian Vela, George Anast, Russell Vela,

Meg Anne Anast, Alex Anast and Angie Vela.

Tim Stepien/The Coastal Star

The staff celebrates after Caffe Luna Rosa was named Restaurant of the Year

by the Greater Delray Beach Chamber of Commerce for the second year in a row.

Photo provided by Michiko Kurisu

By Christine Davis

    Fite Shavell & Associates agent Jack Elkins said he closed more than $26 million in property sales over the summer and, since then, has already listed a few luxury waterfront properties, including 1920 and 1940 S. Ocean Blvd., Manalapan, which are owned, Elkins and public records say, by 1920 S. Ocean Blvd., LLC.
    Other sources, though, report the owner is Billy Joel.
    Property records show 1920 S. Ocean, a 13,216-square-foot estate, was bought in March 2014 for $11,836,000. It’s now for sale for $19.5 million.
    “The price includes the furniture, some new and some that had already belonged to the owner,” Elkins said. The 1940 S. Ocean 1.94-acre lot was bought in May 2014 for $6.5 million and is now listed for $9.5 million.
    While Elkins does not confirm the Billy Joel connection, he’s happy to sing the properties’ praises.
    “Each sits on about two acres and has ocean and Intracoastal Waterway frontage,” he said. He’s already had calls, including some inquires on buying the two parcels together. “There’s nothing like it that comes close, except the Ziff estate,” Elkins said.
    The nine-bedroom, eight-bath Mediterranean-style estate was built in 2005 and is completely renovated by its present owner. The main house, which stayed within the original footprint, was reconfigured to better use the space, Elkins said. “It was a beautiful but more formal Mediterranean-style home. It’s now a chic beach house.”
    Greg Bonner of B1 Architects oversaw the design, and Ellen Kavanaugh was consulted regarding interior décor.
    Why is “the owner” selling, you may ask? “At the time the properties were bought, it was still a down market, and the owner saw the value. Both properties were good investments and undervalued,” Elkins said.  Most likely true, but hey, maybe Joel decided to settle down in his other beachfront Manalapan home just up the street.
    As reported in The Coastal Star last spring, Joel purchased that property shortly after the two that are currently on the market. With 20,000 square feet, nine bedrooms, 16 baths, gatehouse, media room, billiard room, bar, library, elevators and wine cellar, it was built five years ago as a spec house by Robert Fessler on a parcel carved from the historic Harold S. Vanderbilt estate. Its price tag was $20 million.
    Call Elkins at 756-9720.
                                     
    Here’s the scoop: The Ice Cream Club really takes the cake (so to speak) when it comes to all flavors of vanilla (and chocolate and strawberry).
     The Ice Cream Club started its first ice cream parlor in 1982 in Manalapan and produces its product in Boynton Beach. Year after year, the National Ice Cream Retailers Association has consistently awarded The Ice Cream Club blue (and red) ribbons — so many in fact that this year, the association named it, “Grand Master — Ice Cream Maker.”
     Flavor, texture, color, melt-in-your-mouth-ability, all these were rigorously tested and applauded by the Department of Food Science and Nutrition at the University of Minnesota and Clemson University, along with the fact that the company’s ice cream surpasses strict standards concerning microbiology and bacteriology. You can put it to the test yourself at The Ice Cream Club, 278 S. Ocean Blvd., Plaza Del Mar, Manalapan.

                                       
     Nico Hallwass was appointed director of operations at Eau Palm Beach Resort & Spa, Manalapan. Most recently, Hallwass was the general manager of The Paul hotel in New York City.
                                      
    Introducing its new Buddha Bar and showcasing its recent renovations, Thaikyo restaurant invites the public on Dec. 12, to stop by for light bites, cocktails and entertainment. RSVP to 588-6777. Thaikyo is at Plaza del Mar, 201 S. Ocean Blvd., Manalapan.
                                      
    Stars from Hollywood’s Golden Age are highlighted this December at The Palm Beaches Theatre during its weekly $5 classic movies series presented at 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. Thursday through Saturday.
    Admission is $5 per film. The theater is at 262 S. Ocean Blvd., Manalapan. Visit www.pbifilmfest.org or call 362-0003.  
                                      
    The Container Store launched its Holiday Hugs Program in South Florida in partnership with Joe DiMaggio Children’s Hospital.
    Drop off new unwrapped books, small toys and games, toiletries, gift cards and stocking stuffers in collection bins at its Boca Raton location before Dec. 15 and store employees will package the gifts into a Holiday Hug bag and deliver them to the hospital in time for the holidays.
    “Every holiday season, the Container Store embraces the spirit of giving by helping those in need in our local communities,” said Melissa Reiff, the company’s president and COO. “Our hope is that our customers will join us in providing these gifts to the thousands of children who have to spend the holidays in the hospital.” The store is at Town Center Boca Raton, 6000 Glades Road, Suite 1002.
                                      
    Jennifer Govberg and Marie Mangouta of the Govberg Team, along with broker/owner Jim Balistreri, recently launched the Balistreri Realty International Luxury Division and its new office, the division’s sales gallery, in downtown Boca Raton. The office is at Royal Palm Plaza in Royal Palm Place, 100 Plaza Real South, Suite F. Call 886-1646.
                                      
     In October, Rick Versace, CEO of A1A Airport & Limousine Service in Boca Raton, was named the Taxicab, Limousine & Paratransit Association’s 2015 Limousine & Sedan Operator of the Year. Currently, he’s working on franchising A1A Limousine nationwide. Versace has served as president of the Florida Limousine Association for the past five years.

                                      
    Peter L. Gladstone was named a 2016 Lawyer of the Year in Family Law and his firm, Gladstone & Weissman, P.A., received a 2016 Best Law Firms Tier 1 ranking by U.S. News — The Best Lawyers in America, a legal-related peer-review publication.
Additionally, Tova N. Verchow has joined the firm as an associate attorney. Gladstone & Weissman, P.A’s main office is at 101 Renaissance Centre, 101 N. Federal Highway, Suite 702, Boca Raton.
                                      
    Bloomberg Businessweek ranked Florida Atlantic University’s part-time MBA program first in South Florida and 27th among public universities in the nation.
                                      
    Palm Beach State College leaders accepted Gov. Rick Scott’s statewide “Ready, Set, Work” challenge calling for the achievement of 100 percent graduation rates for full-time students. Palm Beach State College’s graduation rate for full-time students currently stands at 38.65 percent within three years and 51.73 percent within four years.
    The college has already embarked on a comprehensive improvement plan that includes enhancements in instructional support and class scheduling, provision for more advisers and better advisement tools.
                                      
    The Gold Coast Tiger Bay Club elected three new directors for three-year terms: Josh Donner, Lawrence Greenberg and Robert Pick. Also, the club returned two members to its board: Armand Grossman and Nancy Hite.
    The club’s programming includes Saled Shemirani speaking on “From Monarchy to Mullah, the State of Terror” on Dec. 9, and Kamal Fereg speaking on “Infidels Living Under Sharia Law” on Jan. 13, 2016. 
    The club’s events are held at City Fish Market, 7940 Glades Road, Boca Raton, at 11:30 a.m.  To join the club or attend the luncheon, call 852-0000, or visit www.goldcoasttigerbayclub.com.
                                      
    In October, the Delray Beach CRA received Florida Redevelopment’s Roy F. Kenzie Creative Organizational Development and Funding Award for its initiatives in the redevelopment of the Delray Beach Fairfield Inn & Suites.
    The product of a 2010 request for proposals issued by the CRA for 7.7 acres along the West Atlantic Avenue corridor, the 95-room hotel is the first major private development project to be completed in that area of the CRA District in a decade.
    Several CRA economic development incentives were leveraged with Prime Hospitality Group’s private financing to bring the $11.5 million project to fruition. Community input led to a voluntary local hiring program that resulted in 48 percent of the hotel’s permanent jobs going to local residents.
                                      
    The fourth annual Best Bite On The Avenue restaurant competition is scheduled for 6 to 8:30 p.m. Dec. 9 in Delray Beach. The participating restaurants are Anthony’s Coal Fired Pizza, Caffe Luna Rosa, City Oyster, Deck 84, Martier, Pizza Rustica, Prime and Tryst.
    Benefiting from this “fun-raiser” are the HOW Foundation of South Florida and Project Holiday.
    It will be held at Crane’s Beach House Boutique Hotel at 82 Gleason St., Delray Beach. The cost is $10 per person. Call 278-1700.
    And some announcements from Crane’s Beach House: In October, Adam Artille was promoted to the position of front office manager, and it was named to the Expedia Insiders Select List of the “world’s best hotels” as judged by the experience of Expedia travelers.  
                                      
    Corcoran reports strong real estate sales for the third quarter of this year, increasing county-wide over last year.
    The average price in the South Palm Beach to Gulf Stream submarket rose by more than 50 percent versus last year and last quarter, though median price rose by just 13 percent year-over-year.
    This dramatic jump in average price is explained by several sales at the very high end of the market this quarter, including one $33 million sale in Manalapan.
    Sales in Delray Beach rose slightly year-over-year. Days on market fell, while median price, average price and average price per square foot rose versus last year.
    Sales in Boca Raton were up compared to last year, while average days on market declined. Median price, average price, and average price per square foot all increased moderately over last year.
    Bill Yahn, Corcoran senior regional vice president for South Florida, said the third quarter was an active sales period reflecting increased buyer interest in owning a Palm Beach County property.   “Strong buyer demand drove sales and prices upward,” Yahn said.

Send business news to Christine Davis at cdavis9797@gmail.com.

Young ‘doc’ helped bring horses to Europe after WWII

Now a part-time resident of Briny Breezes, Harold ‘Doc’ Burton

aboard the SS Mercer Victory ship in 1947.

Burton family photo

Related story: Heifer International can arrange animals as gifts

By Ron Hayes  

    What do you do with a Victory ship after the victory has been won?
    On Dec. 31, 1946, one of those former World War II cargo carriers, the SS Saginaw, left Newport News, Va., to cross the Atlantic.
    On board were 960 horses, 30 cowboys and a very young veterinarian named Harold Burton.
    A Victory ship that had once waged war was bound for Europe once again, to wage peace.
    Three years earlier, 44 countries, led by the U.S., had created the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration to aid people liberated from the Axis powers.

    “I had my Army discharge papers and I had a diploma from the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine,” Burton remembers. “I had just turned 25 and I was broke and this was an opportunity to make $23 a day.”

    To friends and neighbors in Briny Breezes, “Doc” Burton is a 94-year-old retiree with a cheerful disposition and a sly sense of humor. Nearly seven decades ago, he was a young vet from Hereford, Md., struggling to keep 960 horses healthy in the middle of Atlantic storms until they reached Gdansk and the Polish farmers struggling to recover from the war.

    “The majority of countries like Poland were just countries of small farmers, and they had nothing to farm with,” Burton explains. “The Germans had gone across it one way, and the Russians had gone across the other way, and there was just nothing there.”

    As the SS Saginaw’s veterinarian, he was among the elite. The seagoing cowboys were provided by Heifers for Relief, a charity organized by the Church of the Brethren to provide cattle to needy countries. But while the cowboys slept on tiny bunks or hammocks, Doc Burton lived and ate in the officers’ quarters.

    Still, the job was no vacation cruise.

    “One time a horse grabbed me by the left shoulder blade, picked me up, shook me and spit me out,” he recalls. “I weighed 140 pounds at the time, and I can still feel the pain.”

    This was not what the Maryland farm boy had envisioned when he asked the family doctor if he should became an MD or a DVM.

    “Well,” the wise old doctor said, “if you become  a physician, the patients lie to you all the time, but if you become a vet, the animals will never lie to you.”
    Young Harold Burton became a vet. “And I never did have an animal lie to me,” he says. “The owners sometimes, but never the animals.”

Burton, a winter resident of Briny Breezes.

Photo provided by Joan Nichols

No luxuries, for anyone

    Burton’s shipload of horses traveled first to Kiel, Germany, then through its canal to the Baltic Sea and on to Gdansk, where the horses were unloaded.

   “We saw whole families living in bombed-out buildings with only two walls,” he remembers. “They made artificial walls from old sheets and debris and anything that might keep out the cold. What they ate was what they could get ahold of.”

    The horses Doc Burton helped deliver were intended to help the Poles re-establish farming. “But I’m confident they hadn’t had any protein for three or four years at least,” he says, “so you can bet some of those horses were eaten.”
    On another voyage, he docked in Trieste, Italy, to unload horses bound for Yugoslavia, but his elite status as ship’s vet offered no luxuries on the return trip. The ship’s refrigerator broke in the Adriatic and all the meat on board went bad. Stopping at Gibraltar to repair and restock, the purser announced that he’d made a marvelous deal. They would dine on lamb all the way home.

    The ship departed, the cooks cooked, and soon a sickening odor escaped the kitchen. Their delectable lamb was disgusting goat meat.

    “But our first mate loved peanut butter, which he had on board in gallon cans, and our baker could bake the most delicious rolls,” Burton says, “so some of us thrived on peanut butter and rolls until we got home.”

    Burton made only two trips on the old Victory ships, delivering nearly 2,000 horses to war-torn countries fighting to recover. Most of his days were spent at the home ports in Savannah, Ga., or Newport News, Va., getting the horses in shape for the voyage.

    “In Savannah, I had a $3 a week room on the third floor of the YMCA and ate in the basement dining room in a local home,” he recalls. “Cornpone drowned in blackstrap molasses.”

    By 1947, when the UNRRA shut down, 360 Victory ships had delivered about 300,000 animals to help war-torn countries recover.

    The Heifers for Relief project never shut down. As Heifer International, it has provided farm animals to more than 22 million families in 125 countries, and still does.

Married with children

    Doc Burton went home to Maryland and married Betty Dwyn. “I married her for her money when she was a kid and I was a kid and it turned out she had $80,” he says. “But I kept her anyway.”

    On Dec. 27, they will have been married 68 years. None of their four children became a “Doc.”

    “Not on a bet,” he says. “They saw me wake up at night to go on a farm call I’d already gone on four times during the day.”

    Doc Burton cared for horses, dogs, cats, guinea pigs and monkeys — you name it — for 40 years around Baltimore County and retired to Briny Breezes in his 60s.

    And then one day, maybe 20 years ago, he was thumbing through a farm newspaper back in Maryland when a notice caught his eye.

    The Church of the Brethren’s seagoing cowboys were having a reunion in Manheim, Pa., about a 90-minute drive away.

    “So my son and I went to this reunion of cowboys. I told them I wasn’t a cowboy, I was a vet, and they were thrilled because they’d been looking for a vet. As best as anyone there could tell, I’m the only vet from those Victory ships who’s still alive!

    “I was a big shot from that time on.”

 Mandarin Oriental to join city’s high-end hospitality

The Mandarin Oriental will be part of Penn-Florida’s Via Mizner

mixed-use development at the corner of Federal Highway

and Camino Real in downtown Boca Raton.

Rendering provided

By Mary Hladky

    A Mandarin Oriental luxury hotel is coming to downtown Boca Raton.
    The hotel, with 158 rooms and suites, will be part of the Via Mizner mixed-use project being developed by Boca Raton-Penn-Florida Cos. at Federal Highway and Camino Real.
    The first phase of the project, a 366-unit upscale apartment building, is now rising from the ground.
    In its Nov. 10 announcement about the hotel, Penn-Florida said it also plans 100 luxury condominiums to be called the Residences at Mandarin Oriental that will be connected to the hotel by a sky bridge. SB Architects will design the hotel and condo, which will be managed by Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group.
    Once completed in 2017, the hotel will be the second Mandarin Oriental in South Florida. Its highly rated Miami hotel opened in 2000. Other Mandarin Oriental hotels in the United States are in Boston, New York, Washington, D.C., Atlanta and Las Vegas.
    Mandarin Oriental, known for its service and fine dining, will provide competition to the Boca Raton Resort & Club and the Hyatt hotel that is now under construction at the southeast corner of Federal Highway and Palmetto Park Road.
    “It certainly is a very luxurious landmark hotel,” said Mayor Susan Haynie. “I think it would be a positive for our community.”
    But Haynie, who had not reviewed the site plan as of late November, said she wants assurances that the hotel and condo will be attractive and meet all city codes in light of the controversy surrounding the appearance of The Mark at CityScape. That project next to the Hyatt is a mix of retail, offices and 208 apartments.
    The hotel and condo could escape opposition from residents who have objected to some proposed downtown projects. That’s because the three Via Mizner towers will not exceed the 160-foot height limits in parts of downtown that fall under the Interim Design Guidelines implemented by the city in 2008.
    “I think having a Mandarin Oriental would be good for downtown,” said Ann Witte, a financial and economic consultant who helped launch the city watchdog website BocaWatch.org and now is vice president of BocaBeautiful.org. Both organizations oppose unrestrained downtown development. “I don’t think we will fight the project.”
    That said, she opposes the approval of two modifications Penn-Florida is seeking for a driveway and parking garage at the hotel and condo buildings and continues to call for the design guidelines to be scrapped.
    BocaWatch chairman Al Zucaro, in a Nov. 24 online commentary, criticized the city planning and zoning board’s Nov. 19 approval of the two modifications by a 4-3 vote. He said the board should have required design changes and the city should not approve new developments until a final decision is made on keeping, amending or eliminating the design guidelines.
    The city council, sitting as the Community Redevelopment Agency board, will take up the matter later this year. The city also must approve amendments to Via Mizner’s original plans that did not include the hotel and condos.
The hotel will have a rooftop restaurant, outdoor terrace and bar, banquet and meeting space, ballroom, fitness center, spa and rooftop pool.
    Via Mizner also will include retail, offices, restaurants and a private club.
    “Via Mizner will be one of the premier mixed-use projects in the country and Mandarin Oriental will raise the bar for hospitality and contemporary living in South Florida,” Mark Gensheimer, Penn-Florida president and CEO, said in a statement.
    Penn-Florida has developed many projects in Boca Raton, including One City Centre at 1 North Federal Hwy. and Atrium Financial Center at 1515 North Federal Hwy. Its proposed University Village is working its way through city approvals. The project on nearly 80 acres at Interstate 95 and Spanish River Boulevard would include residential units, retail and office space.

By Steve Plunkett

    A week before a Dec. 7 joint meeting with City Council, commissioners of the Greater Boca Raton Beach and Park District abruptly pulled two items from the agenda.
    Off the table will be any talk of interlocal agreements to replace grass sports fields at Patch Reef Park with artificial turf and to give the city $2 million for beach renourishment. Commissioners also decided not to discuss user fees that park patrons pay.
    The reason: The city spent five months revising the agreements, then returned them Thanksgiving week.
    “I’m disappointed in how this was presented to us,” Commissioner Dennis Frisch said at a Nov. 30 special meeting called in hopes of resolving the issue.
    Arthur Koski, the district’s interim executive director, told commissioners the proposals “will require a significant amount of dialogue and discussion” before they talk with the City Council.
    “You cannot be expected to have waited five months to get a document, receive it a week before a meeting — and during that week, you know, I’ve just come off a holiday — it just is the type of short-fuse kind of timing,” Koski said.
    The proposal for the beach renourishment money would make the district also financially responsible for dredging the Boca Inlet, something it’s never paid for before. The draft of the sports field agreement also incorporates several other interlocal agreements between the city and the district and changes some of the finances.
    “This document is throwing all those (other agreements) away and rewriting our obligations,” Commissioner Robert Rollins said. “I didn’t see anything wrong with the agreement that we signed because that’s the agreement that the city drew up for us to sign.”
    “The agreement changes the relationship between the city and the district that has been in existence for the past 40 years. So it is not something that I recommend to you that you take lightly, and I’m sure you will not,” Koski told commissioners.
    Commissioners worried that the city’s proposal gave short shrift to people who live inside the Beach and Park District but outside city limits.
    “There are things that we cannot do in transferring powers or duties of this district to another agency that is not a representative of certain of our constituents,” Koski said.
    “I can’t agree to this,” Commission Chairwoman Susan Vogelgesang, one of the non-city residents, said after the meeting. “They want us to pay for everything.”
    “I think they look at us as their piggybank,” Commissioner Steven Engel said.
    “I think that we have to be very careful so we don’t become a funding agency. We are an independent agency,” Rollins said.
    Any discussion of park user fees was dropped from the agenda because the proposed agreement says the City Council will be in charge of setting the rates. The council raised fees for youth sports leagues to play at parks in September without consulting the district.
    Koski launched an analysis of who pays how much to use park facilities and how the city and the district split the fees. Some commissioners have asked whether any fees should be imposed on residents who paid for the parks with their tax dollars.
    Still on the district’s agenda is the city’s proposed comprehensive waterfront plan (the district wants to be included) and the recent Royal Palm Polo annexation (residents there are not inside the district’s boundaries and do not pay district taxes).
    Frisch said he hoped council members would agree to let the district start on the second phase of DeHornle Park, which will be getting additional grass fields and restrooms.
    Commissioners said a good starting point for ironing out the friction might be for Koski to meet regularly with City Manager Leif Ahnell as well as more scheduled meetings of the district and the council.

Delray Beach resident Ken Parker gazes upon the Atlantic Ocean at South Beach Park in Boca Raton.

The city has purchased and installed mats to even out the beach sand and make the inclines

toward the water more navigable for people who come with wheelchairs, strollers or canes. Once the mats

reach the rack line on the beach, they form a T where users can stay to enjoy ocean views.

Tim Stepien/The Coastal Star

By Jane Smith

    Ken Parker, who lost his legs to a serious kidney disease more than five years ago, paid a visit to South Beach Park in Boca Raton late in November.
    “Wow,” he said as he rolled his wheelchair down recently installed beach access mats. “I haven’t been to the beach since before I lost my legs.” He even lowered himself from his wheelchair using a stool and sat in the sand. He wished he had remembered to bring a towel.
    Parker, an advocate for disabled people who worked as an industrial designer, was trying out – at The Coastal Star’s request – the beach access mats that had been installed thanks to the Boca Raton Advisory Board for People with Disabilities.
    The board pushed for nearly four years for the mats, according to board Chair Sandra Gottfried, which allow disabled people who use wheelchairs or walkers, moms pushing baby strollers and people pulling wheeled coolers to move over the sand easily. Even able-bodied beach goers walk on them.
    Boca Raton is the first Palm Beach County city to have the beach access mats, installing them at South Beach Park and Spanish River Park on Nov. 1 – the end of turtle-nesting season.  The bright blue polyester AccessMats will be rolled up by March 1 for the start of the next nesting season.
    For Parker, the mats provide beach access while still maintaining much-valued independence.  
    As a participant at a recent meeting on Delray Beach’s beach plan, Parker told commissioners that while he’s very mobile using his own wheelchair, he wouldn’t be able  to use a special sand wheelchair at the beach unless accompanied by someone strong.
    “It makes a difference between being a disabled person and being independent vs. being a disabled person that is dependent on another person,” he explained at the November meeting.
    Boca Raton’s $11,992 AccessMats are 5 feet wide and start at the top of the beach walkway. They go down the beach to the rack line, where seaweed accumulates, and form a T.
    If the mats went closer to the ocean, they could get wet and become slippery. Because they’re used outside, they do not have to be slip resistant, said Michelle Cook, accessibility specialist at the National Center for Accessibility in Bloomington, Indiana.
    When the mats are used on an incline, they can be slippery, users have reported to Cook. At the South Beach Park Pavilion where the mats are on an incline, their surface was slippery after a rain, Gottfried reported when she saw them after they were installed. “Even for able-bodied people the mats were dangerous to walk on,” she wrote in a Nov. 5 email to the city.
    Boca Raton’s Recreation Services Department took her complaint seriously. It sent staff to check the anchor rods, relayed her concerns to the manufacturer and contacted other Florida cities that use the AccessMats brand. The cities gave positive reviews of the mats, Superintendent Greg Stevens wrote in reply.
    The differences, according to staff, were related to the slope of the beach. At Spanish River Park, the mats sit on level ground. South Beach has an incline where staff will check the anchoring daily.
    The staff also explained the city’s procurement process to Gottfried. The disabilities advisory board had recommended the Mobi-Mat brand, but the city bought AccessMats. Boca Raton rules do not allow a specific brand to be requested. The Recreation Services staff used the specifications of the Mobi-Mat brand in its request for bids, said Buddy Parks, deputy director.
    “Several staff checked it, including engineers,” Parks said. “We checked with other cities and they said they loved it (AccessMats).” The two brands are extremely close in quality, said Cook of the Accessibility Center.
    AccessRec, maker of AccessMats, gave the city a better price, a savings of nearly $2,400. The mats come with a 1-year warranty. If properly installed and maintained, they will last more than 5 years, said Seb Ragon, vice president at AccessRec.
    Gottfried is satisfied that the city staff acted quickly to ensure the safety of all beach goers.
    Mayor Susan Haynie said she has heard only positive things about the mats.
    “The beaches are accessible to all,” she said. “The idea came from our disabilities advisory board and we listened to them.”

The Boca Raton Garden Club continues

its 22-year tradition of offering a holiday ornament.

Photo contributed

By Sallie James

    Holiday decorations with a historic touch are what the Boca Raton Garden Club’s annual commemorative ornament fundraiser is all about.
    This year’s offering — the 22nd ornament in a series that was started in 1994 —commemorates Spanish River Park.
Ornament Chairman Carol Rice and Lenore Alford, who created the series and designed the ornament, presented the newest ornament during the Nov. 24 City Council meeting.
    The three-dimensional ornament depicts the old Spanish River Park tower in the background near a boat dock in a lagoon with a seagull perched on a piling.
    Spanish River Park, at North Ocean Boulevard two miles north of Palmetto Park Road, is an oasis where visitors can picnic, fish and hike.
    Rice noted that Spanish River Park is the first city park featured on any of the ornaments.
    “It was a long, hard struggle to get Spanish River Park. To actually have it become a wonderful park for city use they had to pass many bond issues,” Rice said. “If people hadn’t rallied and voters hadn’t voted the way they did, we would have had a continuous strip of high-rise condos up and down our beachfront.”
    Rice explained how a beach buy-up to counteract condo development in Boca Raton along State Road A1A went from 1966 to 1973 when land was acquired for what would become its three major parks.
    The park is of special significance to Alford, whose late husband, Alan, served as Boca Raton city manager and then as mayor during the time when the city was acquiring the beachfront property for parks. Alan Alford died in October.
    Other ornaments in the series include: Old Town Hall, The Train Depot, Old Betsy, the Pavilion, the Inlet Bridge, the Camino Real Bridge, Boca Hotel and Club and the first Schoolhouse, among others.
    Ornaments cost $18 each and are available by calling the Boca Raton Garden Club at 395-9376 or by visiting the Boca Raton Historical Society gift shop at 71 N. Federal Highway.

By Steve Plunkett

    Disabled people will be able to enjoy the boardwalk at Gumbo Limbo Nature Center when it reopens next spring.
    The boardwalk, which has been closed for repairs since February, will be getting a ramp to make the structure compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act.  Mike Kroll of consultant Miller Legg and Associates, which is developing a master plan for Red Reef Park, gave the Greater Boca Raton Beach and Park District an update on the boardwalk project Nov. 2.
    The boardwalk’s observation tower is intact and will need only minor structural improvements, Kroll told district commissioners. He said he expects the project to be put out to bid and a contractor selected by early January, with repairs on the tower and eastern portion of the boardwalk and construction of the pedestrian ramp to take three to four months. May 1 is the target for completion, Kroll said.
    Separately, commissioners learned that short-term repairs to the pipes that bring seawater to Gumbo Limbo’s fish tanks will cost no more than $30,000.
    On the boardwalk project, workers will use the area between the Gumbo Limbo parking lot and the boardwalk as a staging area, Kroll said.
    When the first phase is finished, park patrons will also be able to access the boardwalk from the golf course parking lot. No access to the tower from State Road A1A is planned due to safety reasons and to avoid disturbing the vegetation, Kroll said.
    Repairs to the western part of the boardwalk should be finished no later than December 2016, Kroll said.
    The boardwalk was closed to the public in February after engineers said joists under the planks had “no positive means of support” and “could fail without warning.” Repairs originally were to be completed by the end of the year.
    In mid-September Miller Legg discovered electrical wiring for a call box and public address system under the planks as well as a PVC water pipe for cleaning the boardwalk. Neither was included in plans to restore the boardwalk and had to be added.
    The city of Boca Raton owns Red Reef Park and Gumbo Limbo, but the beach and park district pays for operation and maintenance of the facilities.

By Sallie James

    The future of a four-story mansion proposed for a pristine stretch of beachside property is up in the air, even though the project was rejected last month by Boca Raton’s Zoning Board of Adjustment.
    The property owner, Natural Lands LLC, has appealed the board’s refusal to approve two variances that would have allowed the house to be built on a narrower lot size with a reduced front yard setback.
    A public hearing is scheduled at 6 p.m. on Dec. 8 during the Boca Raton City Council meeting.
    The 10,432-square-foot, four-story house is proposed for the east side of 2500 N. Ocean Blvd.

   The board rejected both variances after residents claimed the structure proposed would forever change the face of the beach, disorient nesting sea turtles, and set a precedent for future development.
    “The beach-going public and the sea turtles lose another piece of the last natural beach in all of South Florida,” warned resident Kevin Meaney at the Nov. 12 meeting attended by about 30 residents. “Please don’t open Pandora’s box.”
    Natural Lands LLC had sought two variances to build the house: an 11.5-foot variance from the minimum lot width of 100 feet; and a 14.7-foot variance from the minimum front yard setback of 25 feet.
    After hearing concerns from residents, the board denied both. The lot-width variance was denied with a 3-3 vote (four votes are required for approval) and the front-yard-setback variance was denied with a 5-1 vote.
    Attorney Michael Marshall, who represented the property owner, called residents’ claims “rank speculation” and “unsubstantiated facts.”
    “We have a right to build on the property and we have the right to seek a variance,” Marshall said.
    Board chairman Spencer Siegel said if a smaller house were built on the property, the front yard setback would be unnecessary because the house could be placed closer to the ocean.
    Board member Hendrik DeMello said the zoning allows the property owner to build a smaller house without requiring variances.
“What is the hardship, given the location of the property?” DeMello wondered. “It does not have a hardship. I don’t see a hardship. The applicant is required to prove a hardship.”
    Board member John Purland noted the property owner bought the land in 2011 knowing full well what sort of building limitations existed.
    “If the property was purchased and the setbacks had been different at that time, it would be different. But this opens up the door for every property owner,” Purland said. “I don’t see how you could put that (house) in there and justify the variance.”
    Attorney W. Tucker Gibbs, who spoke on behalf of the nearby Ocean Club Condominium residents, said the need for two variances was the direct result of a property owner purchasing an unbuildable lot. He urged denial of both.
    “The applicant has not presented any special conditions that require the setback variance,” Gibbs argued. “He doesn’t have to build a 10,000-square-foot building. He could build a smaller one.”
    Resident Ryan Dick worried that approving the variances would “open up the floodgates” for even more beachside development.
“It opens up a huge can of worms for the future,” Dick said. “When is it going to end? We are granting all these variances for the benefit of a few and it always seems that the few are financially motivated.”
    Resident Mark Mannix, who also spoke at the Nov. 12 meeting, was pleased with the result. “It’s a victory for the people,” Mannix said afterward. “Along that whole beach there are tons of sea turtle nests and there aren’t many places where the sea turtles can go where it’s that dark.”
    He acknowledged the decision could be appealed.
    “I would like to see the city of Boca Raton pay a half a million dollars and make sure no one ever builds on that piece of property,” Mannix said.
    The property has an active history. The Zoning Board of Adjustment first considered the matter in August 2015, voting 3-2 in favor of the project. But approving a variance requires four “yes” votes so the matter failed.
    Natural Lands LLC filed an appeal, which was heard by the City Council in September 2015. The council remanded the case back to the Zoning Board of Adjustment for consideration a second time and the project was denied.

By Rich Pollack

    Yoga instructors and others teaching classes at the Highland Beach Pubic Library will now be designated as independent contractors and required to pay a small monthly fee to use the facility.
    Under a new policy approved at the Dec. 1 town commission meeting, those teaching classes at the library will be permitted to set their own class fees and be responsible for collecting those fees.
    Instructors will now pay the town $10 a month for usage of a small room at the library and $20 for usage of a larger room.
They will also be required to enter into an independent contractor agreement, which will make it possible for the town to complete background checks and ensure that instructors have the necessary insurance.   
    “The new policy clearly defines expectations on both parts,” said Interim Library Director Suzy Hayes.
    The policy prohibits instructors from using town equipment such as computers and copy machines and requires all materials used to promote classes to be approved by the town.
    “This is long overdue,” said Commissioner Rhoda Zelniker. “Many years overdue.”
    Town officials asked for the policy to be developed after it was determined that instructors of some programs at the library were collecting class fees but were not required to pay the town anything to use the facility. Also, no background checks or proof of insurance had been required in the past.
    “We don’t want the town to be inadvertent employers,” said town attorney Glen Torcivia. “We’re simply renting the facility to independent contractors.”
    The new policy also requires anyone who presents at a library program — but who is not paid — to complete a volunteer program presenter application.
    The library staff is permitted to register participants and registration will be conducted on a first-come, first-served basis with town residents given a priority.

Cindy Feder (l-r), Sandy Israel and Emmanuel ‘Malo’ Forde practice their coloring techniques

during an adult coloring club gathering at the Highland Beach Library.

Detail of Israel’s coloring project.

Tim Stepien/The Coastal Star

By Lucy Lazarony

    At the Highland Beach Library, grown-ups are taking a page out of a children’s playbook. They color.
    An adult coloring club meets on Wednesday afternoons.
    “We say arrive any time between 1 and 3,” says Suzi Hayes, interim director of the Highland Beach Library.  “It’s designed to be a way to put down your phone and get away from it all.”
    And there’s no need to stay the whole time.
    “If you want to come in for 20 minutes, that’s fine,” Hayes says. “If you want to stay for an hour or two, that’s fine, too.”  
The aim of the afternoon is de-stressing.  Colored pencils and handouts with various designs and themes are provided.  Classical music plays in the background.
    “It’s also a creative outlet,” Hayes says. “Personally, I’ve had a coloring book and crayons at home for years and years, mostly when a young child was visiting, but I love to color. The first session one resident said she was going to take it home and show her grandchildren. It’s kind of a happy thing. They may be decorating their refrigerator with it or a bulletin board or showing it off to the grandkids.”
    Many of the pictures provided for coloring at the Highland Beach Library are much more complicated than you would see in a child’s coloring book. Hayes chose sample sheets of fish, flowers, birds, stained glass windows, intricate geometric designs, snowflakes, buildings, cars, sports scenes and even the Brooklyn Bridge for any visiting New Yorkers.
    Joan and Leo Pruner, who live in Seagate in Highland Beach, are attending their first coloring session. Compared to oil painting, the coloring is a snap.
    “We used to paint oils and it’s a lot of stuff to drag around and work on,” Joan Pruner says. “So I said, ‘Let’s try this.’ ”
    Joan is coloring an ornate bird surrounded by an intricate design of flowers and Leo is coloring a peaceful underwater scene.  
    Across the table from the Pruners, Malo Forde, 77, also of Highland Beach is coloring a stained glass window with a young woman at its center.
    He was reading The Wall Street Journal when someone asked if he was there for the coloring, so he joined in.  
    “It’s kind of therapeutic and very pleasant conversation,” Forde says.  “So it’s very nice. It’s a lovely, different sort of thing. I am going to bring it back and show my wife that I was doing more than reading the newspaper.”