By Mary Thurwachter

A portion of the development site for Water Tower Commons has been sold to the Related Group for $14.76 million from Lantana Development, a partnership of Kenco Communities’ Ken Endelson and Wexford Capital.
The sale, registered early in November, came after Lantana Development and the Related Group won approval from the Lantana Town Council to build 360 apartments on 16 acres at the north end of Water Tower Commons, the mixed-used development on Lantana Road east of Interstate 95.
To finance the apartment complex project, Related of Miami, one of the country’s largest real estate conglomerates, took a $52.2 million loan from Regions Bank.
The anticipated completion date is expected in 2020, according to commercial real estate broker Jay Bailyn, who represented the buyer and seller.
“This was expected,” said Lantana Mayor David Stewart, who said the Related Group, which has about 4,000 multifamily units in its development pipeline, was just waiting for some approvals from the town before the closing.
Lantana Chamber of Commerce President Dave Arm said another reason for the timing of the purchase is that developers were waiting for the entrance lane off of Lantana Road to be paved. That has happened.
“You should see building happening soon,” Arm said.
The first phase of the residential building will include 360 apartments in 14 multifamily buildings, a clubhouse with a resort pool, recreation areas and other amenities such as carports and garages. A 6-foot wall will surround the residential development.
A second phase of residential development received approval from the Town Council on Sept. 24. That project will have 348 units on 18 acres, which are also expected to be purchased by the Related Group before construction begins. The plan calls for four multifamily buildings, 18 big houses, a main clubhouse, resort pools and open recreation areas.
Water Tower Commons has been in the offing since 2014, when Lantana Development and Wexford Capital bought the land, which previously housed the A.G. Holley tuberculosis hospital, from the state for $15.6 million.
The commercial portion of the project lags behind the residential due to a challenging retail climate, Ken Tuma, a principal with Urban Design Kilday Studios, said in September. Walmart showed interest in an upscale store, but the idea never materialized.
Tuma said the project has been on the wrong side of a change in the retail industry, but that things are more positive now, especially as the residential buildings come to fruition.
Having the residential units on site, Tuma said, has made the commercial development “much more marketable because of potential for people living within the community.”

By Mary Thurwachter

After perusing Town Manager Deborah Manzo’s list of accomplishments from the past year, the Lantana Town Council was all set to award her a 5 percent raise, the top end of merit raises available to town employees this year. But before a vote was taken Nov. 26, Police Chief Sean Scheller stepped behind the podium to encourage the town to do better, or risk losing its prized manager to another municipality sure to come after her, he said.
“Over the last six years since I’ve been chief, she has taken me under her wing and showed me so much I wouldn’t have known. I guarantee you’re never going to find another manager like her,” Scheller said.
Town Attorney Max Lohman pointed out that the manager wasn’t able to get the 2.4 percent cost-of-living raise other employees receive.
After more discussion, council members decided on 7 percent (upward of $9,000).
Her current salary is $138,825, which Mayor David Stewart said was in line with pay for other managers of similarly sized municipalities in Palm Beach County.
“She’s one of the hardest working individuals I have come across,” said Vice Mayor Edward Shropshire, who made the motion for 7 percent.
Stewart praised her work to secure multiple grants for the town, find federal money to make repairs to town buildings after Hurricane Irma hit, get properties on the tax rolls, renegotiate the garbage pickup contract with Republic Services, participate in the League of Cities and routinely balance the budget.
“She brought in $2 million in grants alone,” said council member Lynn Moorhouse. “I grade her above and beyond.”
Stewart had proposed a 5 percent raise and voted against the larger increase.
“It does not send the right message when some employees only get a 2.4 percent raise, even though she maybe deserves it,” he said.
But council members made it clear Manzo is a valuable asset they don’t want to lose.
At Stewart’s recommendation, the terms of Manzo’s agreement changed to require that instead of 12 weeks’ notice, as her current contract dictates, if she chooses to leave, she would need to give 20 weeks. Her severance pay, if the town dismissed her, would cover 20 weeks instead of 12.
Manzo, who worked previously as assistant manager in Greenacres, was hired by Lantana in 2012 with an annual salary of $97,476. Within six months, she had refinanced the town’s water and sewer bonds, saving Lantana about $1 million over nine years. Her glowing evaluations translated to top raises.

By Jane Smith

Construction work to replace the pavers in four barrier island crosswalks on East Atlantic Avenue has stopped for the season and will resume in May, according to a Delray Beach department head.
The four crosswalks at the intersections of Gleason Street and Venetian Drive with East Atlantic have reopened, Susan Goebel-Canning, Delray Beach public works director, wrote in mid-November.
“During the project, we identified a water main leak,” Goebel-Canning wrote. “The leak needed to be addressed prior to construction of the crosswalk, so it appeared that construction ceased.”
The project was on a tight schedule with an anticipated Dec. 3 completion date. Fixing the water main leak pushed the crosswalk work into the holiday season, according to Goebel-Canning.
“As a result, two-thirds of the project was completed before we needed to open the road again,” Goebel-Canning wrote. “You will see fresh asphalt, which allowed the road to be open.”
Some East Atlantic Avenue merchants had complained to the City Commission about the road work during high season.
Sales were off about 30 percent compared with the same period last year at C. Orrico Delray Beach, said store manager Sue Vidulich.
“We were absolutely affected,” she said. “Customers could not turn left onto Seabreeze Avenue to enter our parking lot. They had to drive down Atlantic and make a U-turn. Guests at the Seagate Hotel could not find a safe place to cross Atlantic to get to our store.”
Vidulich is happy the construction ended in time for the Holiday Beachside Stroll on the Saturday after Thanksgiving. The women’s clothing boutique, which sells Lilly Pulitzer fashions, planned to make it a festive day.
The Florida Department of Transportation owns Atlantic Avenue on the barrier island. The crosswalk pavers have shifted, creating an uneven surface, and need to be replaced.
FDOT does not permit the use of pavers in its streets, although the department did allow the pavers at the time the crosswalks were installed about 10 years ago, said Barbara Kelleher, FDOT spokeswoman.
Under FDOT rules, cities can use stamped concrete, which looks like pavers.
The city’s Community Redevelopment Agency will cover the $329,965 cost to R&D Paving LLC of West Palm Beach for the upgrade.

By Jane Smith

Construction work at the Woolbright Road interchange in Boynton Beach has yet another completion date.
The contractor is now saying end of December for most of the work to be finished, said Andi Pacini, Corradino Group community outreach spokeswoman for Interstate 95 projects. “Punch list items will most likely push final acceptance into 2019,” she said.
Corradino Group contracts with the Florida Department of Transportation.
The substantial work remaining includes finishing the widening of the I-95 northbound entrance ramp, finishing the widening of the southbound exit ramp to provide free flow of right-turn traffic onto westbound Woolbright Road, building sidewalks and adding lighting and traffic signals.
“Crews have been on site working on these activities,” Pacini said.
Woolbright and Hypoluxo Road interchanges are part of a $32.5 million, five-interchange bid in Broward and Palm Beach counties.
Construction work on the Hypoluxo Road interchange started in June 2015, and work on the Woolbright Road interchange began in January 2016, Pacini said. The other three projects are in Palm Beach Gardens, Lake Worth and Deerfield Beach.
The contract end date for all five projects was Nov. 3, 2017. As a result, FDOT has been fining the contractor $8,491.01 per day for all five since Nov. 4, 2017, Pacini said.
At Hypoluxo Road, the contractor needs to finish striping, complete the pedestrian signal wiring at the I-95 southbound entrance ramp and complete punch list activities. FDOT is anticipating an end of December completion for the five projects, Pacini said.
Work at the five locations is taking place mostly overnight to ease the impact on traffic.

ABOVE: The construction fence was gone, but the dumpster and portable toilet remained at the 3140 Polo Drive construction site Nov. 23. BELOW: The sign above Peter Klein’s front door vents about the duration of the 3-year-old project.

Photos by Jerry Lower/The Coastal Star

By Steve Plunkett

The green-shrouded chain-link privacy fence surrounding 3140 Polo Drive, what is easily the town’s longest-running single-family home construction project, came down just before Thanksgiving, but there’s no promise of when the front lawn will be green.

“The last thing that’s going in is the grass because [the new owners] don’t want anybody walking on it, any other contractors walking on it,” Town Manager Greg Dunham said in a Nov. 9 update for town commissioners.

Dunham, who had been lobbying owners James and Jennifer Cacioppo to grade and landscape their property as soon as possible so the fence could be removed, said the latest delay came from installing columns and a wall around the two-story house’s paver driveway. Each column had a specially sized cap for the top, and workers cemented them into position while the construction manager was away.

“Each piece has a specific spot they’re supposed to go, and they put them on in the wrong place. So they had to take them off,” Dunham said.

Redoing the caps delayed putting in landscaping, which delayed grading the front yard, Dunham said. But “they are landscaping in the back. You just can’t see it,” he said.

Dunham said the Cacioppos got the building permit for their 8,560-square-foot house in February 2016. Town Commissioner Paul Lyons noted that meant the three-year anniversary of construction is coming.

“They’re in a race with the house [at 528 Palm Way] at this point in time,” Dunham said half-seriously. The contractor for Gary Cantor, that home’s owner, filed notice of demolishing the previous structure in late May. The shell of Cantor’s new one-story Bermuda-style home is already up.

Lyons and Commissioner Joan Orthwein both have said residents are complaining about the slow progress at 3140 Polo Drive.
Peter Klein, who lives across the street, says the work passed its three-year mark months ago. Site-clearing started in February 2016, he said, but the previous home was demolished in August 2015.

“We have been looking at that cyclone fence for years,” said Klein, who hung a yellow banner on the front of his house exhorting the Cacioppos to “Finish the Job!”

Klein and his wife, Jennifer, bought their property in 2011 and tore down and rebuilt in just over 12 months, he said.
The Cacioppos have given their contractor more than 100 change orders, he said he has been told. “Entire rooms have been ripped out and redone. I have seen it firsthand,” Klein said.

By Rich Pollack

Before he launched his career as a senior administrator at independent schools in Maryland, Gray Smith was an English teacher and lacrosse coach who would come to South Florida on spring break to visit with family.

Occasionally, Smith would visit Gulf Stream School — where cousins were students — and lead a lacrosse clinic.

“Everyone was so warm and friendly, and the setting is pristine,” he said. “I remember thinking, ‘If I ever become a head of school, this would be a great place to be.’”

Fast forward a couple of decades and what seemed at the time a long-shot wish has become a reality.

In late October, Gulf Stream School’s Board of Trustees voted unanimously to name Smith — now Dr. Gray Smith — as its newest head of school. He will take the reins in July from Joe Zaluski, who is retiring after 14 years of leading the faculty and staff.

Smith says his time visiting in the 1990s and his three years as an English teacher and football and lacrosse coach at Pine Crest School in Fort Lauderdale gave him an opportunity to learn about the Gulf Stream School and what makes it special.

“I’m incredibly excited to come back and be the head of school,” he said.

Smith said he saw a posting for the opening for a head of school at Gulf Stream and jumped at the chance to be considered.

“It was such a great opportunity, it couldn’t be ignored,” he said.

However, Smith wasn’t the only one who sought to lead the 80-year-old school that serves about 250 students from pre-kindergarten to the eighth grade. In all, 35 candidates applied.

During the nine-month national search, led by a committee working with educational consultant Heads Up and search firm Triangle Associates, the group of applicants was whittled down to six finalists.

“All six of them were fabulous,” said parent Tandy Robinson, who led the search committee along with co-chair Penny Kosinski. “We would have been lucky to have any one of them lead the school.”

In the end, however, after three of the six visited the school to meet with faculty, parents and students, Smith was the board’s unanimous choice.

“After close examination of each of the candidates, it became clear that Dr. Smith with his significant previous experience ... is the right person to guide Gulf Stream School into its next exciting era of growth,” board of trustees President Devon Coughlan wrote in a letter to parents and others in the Gulf Stream School community.

“Dr. Smith has the wisdom, experience and leadership skills necessary to preserve our heritage, nurture our first-class team of faculty and staff and fulfill our mission of empowering students to succeed by inspiring intellectual curiosity and celebrating both efforts and accomplishment.”

Prior to accepting the position at Gulf Stream School, Smith, 46, served four years as the head of school at the Harford Day School in Bel Air, Md. He previously served as head of the middle school at Severn School in the Baltimore area and before that served as assistant head of the upper school and dean of students at The Boys’ Latin School of Maryland.

He also held teaching and coaching positions in Kentucky and at Pine Crest, where he was a teacher and assistant lacrosse coach in 2002 when the team won the state championship. He later served as head coach in 2003.

Smith hopes to follow Zaluski’s tradition of teaching a class on a regular basis. While he won’t coach lacrosse, he said he might take to the field to host an occasional clinic.

He and his wife, Sarah, have two sons, James, 8, and Ward, 5, who will both attend the school.

Smith said that during his visit to the school earlier this year, he was once again impressed by the staff and faculty and by the school community as a whole.

“It’s evident that the school has benefited from excellent stewardship,” he said. “The teachers are among the best I’ve ever met and it’s clear that everyone is aimed at doing what’s best for the kids. What else could a head of school ask for?”

After being featured in The Coastal Star last year, Capt. Christopher Colletta finished his Army service, and while studying in France took part in a D-Day remembrance (above). Photo Provided

By Ron Hayes

At this time last year, Christopher Colletta, born and reared in Delray Beach, was the executive officer of a tank company deployed to Camp Casey in South Korea.

Delores Rangel, executive secretary to the Delray Beach City Commission, was the force behind Project Holiday, which sends boxes of candy, toiletries and paperback books to service members all over the world.

Over in South Korea, U.S. Army Capt. Colletta was hoping some of those boxes would reach his 75 comrades in Apache Company, 1st Battalion, 9th Cavalry Regiment. He had emailed Rangel after learning about the project.

By Christmas, 241 Project Holiday boxes had found Colletta and his men.

This year, Delores Rangel is still the city’s executive secretary, busily gearing up for her 13th annual Project Holiday.

Last year, Colletta was nearing the end of his military service.

“I’ll be in the Army for about six more months, until May, which is when I plan on transitioning to civilian life,” he wrote in an email then. “I intend to earn a master’s degree in international affairs at a school in Europe, but those applications are still in progress.

“Wish me luck!”

A year later, we wondered whatever happened to him.

Turns out Colletta has been around.

After leaving the Army on May 15, he returned briefly to Fort Hood, Texas, then took off on the sort of road trip many dream about and few take.

“I went west from Austin through El Paso, up New Mexico to the Four Corners, then all the way up to Yellowstone,” he reports by email. “I ended up visiting my brother in Colorado after that, and then driving all the way from there back home to Delray.

“I lived on my own out of my car, setting up shop at campsites along the way.”

And his plan to earn a master’s degree “at a school in Europe”?

He’s living in Paris these days, a long way from South Korea, and pursuing that degree at the prestigious Paris Institute of Political Studies, known as Sciences Po.

“I am studying International Affairs, focusing on security issues, diplomacy and East Asia. I figured that would provide the most continuity from my professional experiences serving in Korea to a future career. I am loving every minute of it.”

He’s in good company. Sciences Po was founded in 1872, and its alumni include 32 heads of state or government, seven of the past eight French presidents and three past heads of the International Monetary Fund.

But he hasn’t lost touch with the military. Through a former Army colonel teaching a class on American military power at the institute, Colletta was put in touch with the Paris chapter of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, which brought him to the Suresnes American Cemetery outside Paris for the Nov. 11 ceremony marking the end of World War I.

The VFW, along with the Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts and the Army’s 173rd Airborne, helped out by displaying all the flags containing the insignia of American military units that served in WWI.

“I just felt privileged to be in attendance,” Colletta wrote. “The president, secretary of state, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, chief of staff of the Army, NATO supreme allied commander, congressmen … they were all there.”

Colletta will have Paris until May 2020, when he expects to complete his master’s degree in international security.

“After my degree, I still have to decide where I will work,” he concluded. “I could continue serving in the federal government in the Department of State, for instance, or look to the private sector for work in a think tank, perhaps.

“The opportunities are many with my experience and in this city, and I hope to let you know where I end up in 2020!”
Meanwhile, back in Delray Beach, Delores Rangel is preparing to send another year’s mailing of packages to a few of the 1.3 million men and women on active duty, including about 450,000 who will spend the holidays in “hot spots” such as Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria.
“I have six names on the list to receive packages so far,” she reported just before Thanksgiving. “Of course one name is all I need, as I can send the boxes to that one person, who can then share.”
Project Holiday is accepting donated items through Dec. 7 and welcomes volunteers to help pack them on Dec. 9, at the Delray Beach Community Center, 50 NW First Ave.
“We are aiming for 11 a.m. for packing,” Rangel said. “We start at 8:30 to organize, but all are welcome to come and go as their schedule permits.”
Colletta’s parents, Kathy Schilling and Joseph Colletta, hope to be there.

For a list of requested items and drop-off locations, visit mydelraybeach.com.

By Jane Smith

Delray Beach is streamlining its special events policy to make it easier for festival organizers to apply and know their public safety costs up front while keeping the focus on hometown events.
City commissioners unanimously approved the revised policy at their Nov. 13 workshop.
“We went from an 88-page guidebook to a trifold pamphlet,” acting Assistant City Manager Jeff Goldman told the commission. “We received feedback that we were overbilling and that the process to apply was overly long.”
The new policy will go into effect on Jan. 1.
Goldman said the public safety costs have been streamlined to cover the average salaries of a police officer and a firefighter/paramedic. Previously, the public safety costs could vary by the rank of the police officer and firefighter/paramedic who staffed the event.
Now, the event organizers will know their public safety costs when they apply, Goldman said, unless they make the event larger and need more protection as a result. He worked with Suzanne Fisher, the city’s Parks and Recreation director, to revise the special events policy.
The seven types of events of the past were reduced to three: commercial events that charge admission, community events that are free and athletic events.
Concerts and festivals that charge entrance fees are listed under the commercial events category. Community events are defined as parades, free concerts and festivals, and the GreenMarket. Athletic events include 5K, 10K and marathon races, charity/fitness walks and bike races.
The application fee for all events is $150, which is nonrefundable. The application deadlines are 90 days before the events for commercial and community, and 45 days for athletic events.
Applications for commercial and community events will be processed in 60 days and ones for athletic events in 30 days. Previously, the city had 180 days to process applications for “major events” and parades. The city will take late applications by charging an additional $100 fee.
The city also listed what it considers to be its hometown events. They are: Veterans Day ceremony, Turkey Trot races, Surf Festival, 100-foot Christmas tree and related events, Holiday Parade, First Night, Fourth of July festivities, Kids Fest, Spring Fest/Egg Hunt, National Night Out, Family Fun Day and free Friday concerts on the Old School Square grounds.
The St. Patrick’s Day Parade was not listed, but it will be another city-sponsored event, produced by the city’s Fire and Rescue Department, Goldman said. The March parade will be the 51st.
Goldman and Fisher also strengthened the definition of a nonprofit entity’s application to include providing “detailed information about how the proposed event serves a public purpose to foster an authentic and inspiring community that celebrates our history while building toward the future.”
That should eliminate for-profit companies that masquerade as nonprofits. “We were dealing with nonprofits that did not benefit our community,” Mayor Shelly Petrolia said.
The city will subsidize 50 percent of costs to the nonprofits in all three types of events.
The application size was reduced to four pages from six and now can be completed online, Goldman said.
For events on the Old School Square grounds, the commission had asked that no events be held on the front lawn between the Cornell Museum and Atlantic Avenue. “It looks junky with cars on the front lawn,” Petrolia said.
Goldman and Fisher will meet with Old School Square staffers to remind them of that requirement while discussing where they can hold the two events that are part of its 10-year lease with the city.
“We will make sure it works for us,” Goldman said.
Commissioners agreed to wipe the slate clean for four nonprofit organizations that owed the city a combined $12,954. In the future, those event producers, regardless of whether they are for-profit or nonprofit, will not be allowed to host an event unless they pay the amount owed to the city.
Event producers also will be asked to follow the city’s green practices that reduce or eliminate the use of plastic and Styrofoam and discourage the use of single-use plastics, such as straws.
In addition, Petrolia asked how the limit of major events to one per month in the previous policy would be accomplished under the revised policy.
“We have the right to say no,” Goldman said.
The City Commission now has approval power over commercial events with recommendations from the Special Events Office and its Technical Advisory Committee, consisting of staff from various departments such as police, fire, parks, code enforcement and public works. That power gave the commission some comfort.
“We need to give our citizens relief” from too many events, said Commissioner Bill Bathurst.

Bob Ganger’s Gulf Stream home was built by Lila Vanderbilt Webb. Tim Stepien/The Coastal Star

By Brian Biggane

To say Bob Ganger has a passing interest in local history is like saying Shakespeare had a passing interest in writing plays.
After Ganger and his father went to check out a beachside house in Gulf Stream that had been built by a member of the Vanderbilt family, he not only bought it but wound up writing a book about the woman who built it and its history.
And after meeting Harvey Oyer (president of the Palm Beach County Historical Society at the time) at a dinner party more than 20 years ago, Ganger joined the organization, eventually joining its board of directors. He and Oyer also teamed up with others in a successful effort to restore the old Palm Beach County Courthouse.
Ganger, 82, blames the transient nature of this area for a lack of appreciation of history among its residents.
“When you realize a million new people come into the state every couple years, and with no background on who we are, over time the local history gets diluted,” he said. “We’ve found that, both in Palm Beach County and Delray, very few people have a clue as to who we are, and how we got to be what we are.”

Q: Where did you grow up and go to school?  How do you think that has influenced you?
A: I grew up in Bronxville, a tiny New York City suburb newly inhabited by recent veterans of World War II who were motivated to make up for lost time and provide their families with a great home.  The local high school was highly competitive. My class graduated 75 students who achieved well over 125 advanced educational degrees.  I managed to graduate with honors from Yale and Harvard Business School, based largely on the disciplines taught at an early age. 
Believe it or not, my high school class still gets together for five-year reunions. The latest was the 65th!

Q: What professions have you worked in? What professional accomplishments are you most proud of?
A: My professional career was almost entirely in the food industry. After a brief stint in the Air Force Reserves, I started at General Foods as an assistant product manager on Jell-O, and retired 32 years later as VP of planning and development. Our company was purchased by tobacco giant Philip Morris in 1985 and I was tasked to recommend a long-term strategy for the company’s future participation in the food industry. I’m proud of the fact that my plan is still being executed almost 30 years later, even after Philip Morris divested their food interests. 
After executing the first add-on acquisition, Kraft Foods, I retired to become a consultant to start-up consumer product companies, some of which have been quite successful. 

Q: What advice do you have for a young person seeking a career today?
A: The business world has changed dramatically since I began my career, but one fact is still apparent: Life is too short for someone not to enjoy his or her work, but one is naïve if a “perfect job” is a career assumption. In 32 years at General Foods, I probably had 20 jobs, some of which were unpleasant but educational nonetheless. Each job provided new perspectives on the business world. In today’s fast-moving environment, gaining new perspectives is a must for success in virtually any career plan.

Q: How did you choose to make your home in Gulf Stream?
A: On Easter Day 1969, my dad and I visited a house on the beach that was willed to Good Samaritan Hospital and had been empty for years. It was built by a Vanderbilt but divided during the 1930s into two separate dwellings. A developer had an option to acquire both dwellings when the original owners, both widows, passed away. Both houses were slated to be torn down. We decided to find another potential owner and make a bid. 
Then Joe Kennedy, a patient in the hospital, passed away, leaving the institution a large gift. The hospital decided that our quick nickel was superior to a slow dime. We acquired the house in late 1969, and I moved in full time after my father died in 1991.
Parenthetically, my wife, Anneli, and I restored our house starting in 1994. To assure that the restoration was legitimate, we researched the plans of the original owner, Lila Vanderbilt Webb, granddaughter of Commodore Vanderbilt. Her story compelled me to write a book on who Lila was, and why she decided to build a house in Gulf Stream.  The book, titled Miradero, was judged by the Independent Publisher Book Awards as the best nonfiction for 2005 among independently produced U.S. publications.

Q: What is your favorite part about living in Gulf Stream?
A: Besides living in a lovely home, Gulf Stream provides an environment allowing me to engage in “small town” public service. My interest in local history led to a position as vice chair of the Historical Society of Palm Beach County, and chair of the Delray Beach Historical Society. I have also served as chairman of the Florida Coalition for Preservation, president of the Gulf Stream Civic Association, and as a commissioner for the town of Gulf Stream. Believe it or not, these assignments all relate to one another from time to time.

Q: What book are you reading now?
A: I am re-reading A Land Remembered, by Patrick Smith. While fictional, it captures the essence of pioneer life in Florida during the last half of the 19th century. 

Q: What music do you listen to when you want to relax?
A: When my friend Dana Gioia was chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, I made the mistake of telling him how guitar music was my ultimate “relaxer.” He sent me enough guitar CDs to play for the rest of my life.

Q: Have you had mentors in your life?  Individuals who have inspired your life decisions?
A: Late in my business career, I became associated with Hamish Maxwell, then chairman of Philip Morris. He was an extraordinary thinker. He surrounded himself with very bright people, and absorbed information like a sponge. In retrospect, his decision-making saved his company and industry from an almost certain early demise. We both retired on the same day and remained in contact until he died in 2014 at age 87.   
By the way, I have “smoked” one cigarette in my life, on April Fool’s Day 1952.

Q: If your life story were made into a movie, who would play you?
A: Possibly Michael Caine — for revenge. Years ago, we were both in Fort Lauderdale at the same time, and some teenagers mistook me for Mr. Caine. I signed dozens of autographs and had photos taken. 

Q: Who/what makes you laugh?
A: Bring back Rowan and Martin. I love corny humor.

Related story: Boca Raton, Delray cases put state’s property rights law in spotlight

By Jane Smith

Two weeks after the City Commission reversed course and rejected a settlement of their lawsuit, two East Atlantic Avenue property owners sent Delray Beach a 60-day notice to stop using their property near the Old School Square grounds.
“It’s in retaliation for the settlement being rejected,” City Attorney Max Lohman said at the end of the Nov. 6 City Commission meeting. He resigned later in that meeting.
At the Nov. 13 commission workshop, interim City Attorney Lynn Gelin said the city has 60 days to remove the palms and other landscaping from both ends of a horizontal parking strip. The palms will be replanted near the city’s Train Depot, west of the interstate, Gelin said.
“I hope the citizens are paying attention,” Mayor Shelly Petrolia said. “This is a reaction to their settlement being rejected.”
One of people who sued the city, bakery owner Billy Himmelrich, declined to comment.
In late May, Himmelrich and his business partner sued the city for $6.9 million in an attempt to build four stories on their parcels just east of the Old School Square cultural center. They own two parking lots and two buildings that house Tramonti and Cabana El Rey restaurants. Both restaurants have long-term leases that expire in 2024, Himmelrich said.
They claimed they did not receive the written notice required by state law when the city changed the zoning in 2015. After 18 months of hearings and meetings, a previous City Commission decided to foster a small-town feel and limit East Atlantic Avenue heights to three stories between Swinton Avenue and the Intracoastal Waterway.
On Sept. 25, the City Commission agreed to accept the settlement offered by a 3-2 vote and carve out the Himmelrich parcels from the limited height district.
Lohman then joined with Himmelrich’s attorney to cancel an Oct. 19 hearing on the city’s motion to dismiss.
When all commissioners were present for a second vote in mid-October, Lohman took about 10 minutes to tell the commissioners about the location of another property owner who also wasn’t notified of the height reduction.
The other property owner’s building sits next to the Himmelrich buildings, prompting Commissioner Ryan Boylston to switch his vote to oppose settling the lawsuit.
As of press time, the city’s motion to dismiss did not have a hearing date.
Attorney resigns
Lohman resigned before his contract was terminated.
Petrolia listed four reasons for ending his contract, including his canceling the city’s motion to dismiss in the Himmelrich lawsuit after one 3-2 vote and his inability to quickly find the other property owner who had not been notified.
Petrolia also prefers an in-house city attorney who will contact the commissioners before their meetings or workshops.
On Nov. 13, Gelin, already assistant city attorney, was selected to be the interim city attorney. She said Lohman worked out of the city two days a week and that she was up to the challenge.
“This is my dream job,” Gelin said. “I am 200 percent devoted to the city.”

Michael LaCoursiere, civil engineer for the Gulf Stream Views development, answers questions from residents of the County Pocket and Briny Breezes. Pocket residents say the townhomes will be on land that historically takes runoff from their neighborhood. Jerry Lower/The Coastal Star

By Dan Moffett

Representatives of the Gulf Stream Views townhouse project say they are committed to being good neighbors to Briny Breezes and County Pocket residents as construction at the site is about to begin in earnest.

“If we damage anything, we will fix it,” Glenn La Mattina, senior vice president of developer NR Living, said during a question-and-answer session with some 100 residents in Briny’s ocean clubhouse on Nov. 13. “We’re willing to work with you.”

Questions from the County Pocket side of the room focused mostly on potential drainage issues. From the Briny side, the questions were mostly about traffic and possible road damage issues.

Michael LaCoursiere, the project’s civil engineer from West Palm Beach, said the plans passed “rigorous review” by Palm Beach County, particularly concerning stormwater drainage.

“We’ve done everything they’ve asked us to do,” LaCoursiere said. “The site is going to hold its water. Less water is going to run off the site after construction than before it.”

He said developers are installing an underground system of storage chambers to catch water, and the site will be bowl-shaped to prevent runoff from moving to the north or south.

Pocket residents Liz Loper and Susan Knowles told LaCoursiere that although the site may hold its own water, it could cause flooding to the neighborhood on the south side. For decades the vacant lot has functioned as a drain field for the pocket’s runoff, they said.

Loper worries that after the development is built, the water will have nowhere to go, especially during storm surges and king tides. Historically, she said, runoff flows north from the pocket to the development site.

“I’ve been here for 18 years and it’s not perception, it’s reality,” Loper said. “It flows down the street into that field, and now with the walls going up, that’s not going to happen. And that’s what our concern is.”

No parking on road

Briny Mayor Roger Bennett said the town recently received word from Palm Beach County officials that it is the sole owner of Briny Breezes Boulevard, a public thoroughfare that will be an important access road to the development.

“The nice thing about having ownership of Briny Breezes Boulevard is that we can put up ‘no parking’ signs on the south side,” Bennett said. “And that’s one of the first things we’ll do.”

He said the town has received assurances from the developers that they will repair any construction damage to the road. “They gave a guarantee to the Town Council,” Bennett said.

Bradley Miller, the project’s land planner, said the impact on traffic flow will be negligible. He said the development should add about 98 vehicle trips per day to the neighboring streets, well within statutory limits. The gated entrance will be on Old Ocean Boulevard. Each unit will have a two-car garage and the site will have 10 spaces for guest parking.

Miller said pedestrian access to the beach will continue to be open north and south of the complex, though Gulf Stream Views residents will have private access through a gated entrance on Old Ocean.

The six-building, 14-unit project is scheduled for completion in December 2019 and will deliver a community of “high-end, luxury” two-story homes, La Mattina said. Pre-construction prices range from $1.8 million to $2.7 million. The 3,400-square foot units will have three bedrooms and 41/2 baths.

NR Living, based in Secaucus, N.J., paid $5.4 million for the site in June and took out a $17 million construction loan shortly after.
Briny’s corporate board and the Florida Coalition for Preservation organized the question-and-answer session.

By Jane Smith

Fido and Bella can scamper the beach on Dec. 15 at Boynton Beach’s Oceanfront Park when the city operates a pop-up dog park from 9 a.m. to noon.
“We will staff it to make sure everyone has a good time,” said Wally Majors, Recreation and Parks Department director.
The northern half of the 960-foot-long beach will be fenced off that Saturday morning to contain the dogs in one area. “People will be required to keep their dogs on leashes until they reach the sand,” Majors said.
The fencing will aim to keep dogs from property to the north, which is county beach and does not allow dogs; and to the south, away from other Oceanfront Park guests and the private beaches in Ocean Ridge.
Park rangers will monitor the dogs and their owners. The rangers will ensure the dogs have Palm Beach County licenses, which show their rabies vaccines are current. Owners won’t have to register for their dogs to use the beach.
Parks maintenance workers will set up the fencing, starting at 7 a.m.
Although Boynton Beach owns the beach at Oceanfront Park, it is in Ocean Ridge and subject to its ordinances. Ocean Ridge does not allow animals, including dogs on leashes, on the public beach. Owners of private beaches can allow dogs on their beaches.
Jamie Titcomb, Ocean Ridge town manager, plans to update the commission at its Dec. 3 meeting.
“I already told them about Boynton Beach’s plans,” he said. “It falls under the same purview of anyone holding an event on the beach.”
Boynton Beach parks staff will make sure the dogs are spayed or neutered, Titcomb said.
“We will hope for the best,” he said.

Mark Stowe, his wife, Karen, and son Mark Jr. celebrate 50 years of the Nutrition Cottage in Boynton Beach. Mark Stowe is a licensed nutritionist. Jerry Lower/The Coastal Star

By Sallie James

Boynton Beach residents Dolores and Danielle Arsenault have been shopping at the Nutrition Cottage for 20 years for specialty items like algae-based calcium supplements, whey protein and a turmeric-infused anti-inflammation syrup.
Dolores Arsenault became a fan years ago after store owner Mark Stowe — a Florida licensed nutritionist — resolved Danielle’s digestive issues with nutritional counseling when she was a young child. Today the mother and daughter won’t shop anywhere else.
The family-owned store, which first opened for business in Texas, celebrated its 50th anniversary in November, with organic wine tasting, health food samples and giveaways. The business has been operating from 1815 S. Federal Highway since 1975.
“I would come here before going to a doctor,” Dolores Arsenault said. “(Danielle) had a lot of problems when she was younger and he straightened her out. I trust him.”
It’s that kind of loyalty that has kept the doors open so long, despite competition from national health food chains like Whole Foods. The Nutrition Cottage stocks everything from supplements and soaps to frozen foods, vegan snacks and cosmetics.
The store’s motto is “the difference is knowledge,” and customers who frequent the 1,500-square-foot business swear by the owners’ expertise.
“We call ourselves the supplement specialist. I do personal nutritional counseling. We help educate people to eat the right things to get the right results,” said Stowe, 70, a Delray Beach resident who runs the store with his wife, Karen. “We started as a small independent and that is what we are today.”
Stowe had another store on Atlantic Avenue in Delray Beach for many years, but doesn’t aspire to be like the big chains.
“We didn’t want to change. We like what we do in the space and size we do. We don’t want to be a Whole Foods. My intent was to educate people on nutrition or health and beauty,” Stowe said.
And that’s what he and his wife do every day the store is open.
Stowe knows what he’s talking about. He’s a former president of the Natural Products Association, which represents more than 10,000 retailers, manufacturers, wholesalers and distributors of natural products, and a former co-host of the radio show The Natural Grocer.
Stowe realized the value of healthy living in his 20s, when his weight ballooned to 245 pounds and he began to have headaches and feel lousy. His mother had diabetes so he knew he needed to make changes.
He began reading books by Adelle Davis, considered “the most famous nutritionist in the early to mid-20th century,” and made some lifestyle changes that truly changed his life.
His weight dropped to 190 pounds, where it remains today through “commonsense stuff in nutrition,” he said. His mission has been to share what he’s learned.
“The average person is eating wrong with a diet high in white sugar and refined flour. You wonder why we have all these ailments today because everyone is making the wrong choices,” Stowe said.
Boynton Beach resident Lou Jannacone, 60, discovered the store two years ago after he’d been ill with vertigo. He knew he had to change the way he ate and he turned to Stowe for nutritional counseling.
“Now I don’t eat processed foods. I eat whole foods. I was also very low in vitamin D and no one had ever pointed that out to me,” Jannacone said. “Today I’m here to celebrate.”

The 3 miles of Highland Beach’s beach has been allowed to become a trash dump of human garbage, a minefield of buried dangerous objects and an environment unfit for both humans and wildlife.

Whenever the town and its attorney were asked about beach cleaning, the answer was virtually all the beach is private, but when asked about the entire town’s use of the beach it was virtually all public. The town has used this philosophy for years to get out of spending any money for beach cleaning.

Some individual beachfront property owners have hired tractor cleaning companies while others have done nothing or very little to maintain both their private property and the state-owned beach.

The tractor companies sign a five-page beach cleaning field permit with the Department of Environmental Protection to operate on the beach, stating that they remove everything down to a cigarette butt.

Some of the DEP requirements in the permit are: removal of all accumulated debris from the beach after cleaning; no burial or storage of debris seaward of any frontal dune; no ruts formed on the beach; 10-foot clearance of dune vegetation by equipment; no more than 2 inches penetration into the beach surface; and no blades used. There are additional regulations for turtle season.

The town is working on an ordinance to mirror these regulations, since it has neglected providing any control to date. DEP issues these permits with little oversight and no enforcement.

The tractor companies sign the DEP beach cleaning permit, advertise the work and bill their customers for beach cleaning — while never cleaning anything, other than picking up items the size of a log or pallet that are too big to bury.

It is impossible for them to comply with any of the above permit requirements since the town has not provided contractors or residents any vehicle beach access. All the above rules are impossible to perform and make the beach look like it has been cleaned by raking and burying.

They are in violation of the DEP regulations every minute they are on the beach and now will be in violation of the town’s new ordinance.

Since nearly all of the debris lands on the state portion of the beach before it is dragged up into the soft private property sand by the tractors, or eventually washed or blown up on private property, the town should be responsible for properly maintaining the state (public) portion of the beach.

The only way to have a clean, healthy, environmentally safe and natural beach is by manual removal of the man-made trash, leaving the weed line — “an important food source for beach and near-shore food chains,” according to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.

Robert Patek
Highland Beach

LETTERS: The Coastal Star welcomes letters-to-the-editor about issues of interest in the community. These are subject to editing and must include your name, address and phone number. Preferred length is 200 words or less. Email to editor@thecoastalstar.com. or mail to 5011 N. Ocean Blvd. Suite #2, Ocean Ridge, FL 33435

By Noreen Marcus

Having just won his battle against Boca Raton to build Concierge, a high-end assisted living facility, landowner Robert Buehl gave a verbal thumbs up to the Bert J. Harris Jr. Private Property Rights Protection Act.
“The Harris Act is a wonderful tool,” Buehl said a few days after the Nov. 13 settlement. “It shouldn’t have to be used, but if a municipality forces your hand, then it’s a wonderful tool to have.”
Under the Harris statute, a landowner whose property is “inordinately burdened” by a government action can sue for compensation. Once a claim is filed, there’s a 150-day window to settle or mediate it to conclusion; failing that, the owner must prove how much the government’s action is costing him or her to reach a damage figure.
Buehl never actually filed a Harris claim, but he had threatened a $100 million lawsuit in August, when the Boca Raton City Council rejected his $75 million downtown project. Pre-filing negotiations led Buehl and developer Group P6 to agree to pare down the number of units in Concierge.
They have plenty of company in using the Harris law as a strategic warning shot, or at times a courtroom weapon. Also targeting the Boca council, Crocker Partners has a pending $137.6 million Harris claim over its proposed live-work-play Midtown project. Crocker’s planning partner, Cypress Realty of Florida, has filed its own suit alleging the city is slow-walking its development efforts.
And Delray Beach has a pending Harris case. Old School Bakery owner Billy Himmelrich is challenging the city’s height restriction for a commercial stretch of East Atlantic Avenue.
Just as landowners are attracted to the Harris strategy, cities seem to be repelled by it.
“As far as cities go, it’s a challenging law,” said Lynn Gelin, the interim Delray city attorney who has filed a motion to dismiss the Himmelrich lawsuit. She said a city is allowed to change its development plans, and that Harris burdens a city with having to notify landowners about those changes — or, the law gives them “the opportunity to seek redress in the form of damages.”
Max Lohman, the previous Delray city attorney, said he has handled only three Harris claims during his 15 years as a municipal lawyer. “They don’t come up very often,” he said.
“Most people realize the folly in trying to bring suits for something that’s hard to quantify,” Lohman said. He was referring to exactly how much a government action has reduced a property’s value.
That can’t be what Bert Harris had in mind. Harris, who turns 99 this month, was known as a property rights champion during his 14 years in the Florida Legislature. In 1995, just before the Lake Placid citrus farmer left the House, his colleagues passed his namesake law.
Robert Rhodes, counsel to Foley & Lardner in Jacksonville, remembers that period well. The longtime real estate attorney helped write the Harris law as executive director of the first Florida governor’s study commission on property rights.
Legislators were hearing sad stories about property setbacks and height restrictions, he said. “Any type of land use regulation can be taken to an extreme, and that’s what they were concerned about.”
Eminent domain protections didn’t help because they focus on government “takings,” meaning actions that wipe out a property’s value to its owner.
“So the gap was, what about a situation where the government takes a good chunk of value away, not all of your value?” Rhodes asked. “Should that be compensable for the property owner? That was the policy issue and that’s what generated the Harris Act.”
One important goal was to encourage settlement, Rhodes said. “It’s fair to say litigation is really the last resort in the Harris Act because it provides so many opportunities for the parties to get together to resolve their differences.” He noted companion legislation that created an informal, land use dispute-resolution mechanism involving a special master.
How far the Harris law should reach has incited extensive discussion and some litigation over the past 23 years.
“Florida courts still grapple with its interpretation,” Anthony De Yurre of Bilzin Sumberg in Miami wrote in the National Law Review earlier this year. He extolled a March 2018 decision of the Fourth District Court of Appeal that protected an Indian River landowner’s interest in building a cement plant after rezoning scuttled that plan. The owner had a “reasonable investment-backed expectation” that had been stymied by a board of county commissioners, De Yurre wrote.
The Harris statute has been amended three times: in 2008, 2011 and 2015. Also in 2015, Rhodes won a case in the Florida Supreme Court that reinforced the Legislature’s call to put the brakes on overextending the law. It could not be applied to property that’s adjacent to land “inordinately burdened” by government action, the court ruled.
“The argument could be made about adjacency and even beyond adjacency,” Rhodes said. If Harris covered neighboring land, why not land that’s two blocks away? “People were talking about that possibility, in the property rights realm and those who are familiar with the act.”
The Legislature and the Supreme Court said no that time. But Rhodes said he wouldn’t be surprised if land use lawyers who represent owners and developers devise some other way to extend the Harris law.
“Lawyers can be creative,” he said with a laugh.

By Mary Hladky

A major residential and retail project that would rise in a blighted area on the southwest edge of downtown has Planning and Zoning Board support despite opposition from nearby residents who argue the development is too big and will worsen already clogged traffic on Camino Real.
The planning board voted 4-1 on Nov. 8 to recommend that the Boca Raton City Council approve Camino Square on a 9-acre shopping center site at 171 W. Camino Real, where a Winn-Dixie operated for years before closing in 2010. The Community Appearance Board earlier recommended approval 6-0.
The first phase of the project would include two, eight-story luxury apartment buildings with a total of 350 units and two parking garages on the eastern portion of the site, just west of the Florida East Coast Railway tracks. The second phase on the western portion would have two retail buildings that would be visible from Camino Real and surface parking.
The developer is FCI Residential Corp., a real estate subsidiary of sugar producer Florida Crystals Corp.
After the planning board unanimously rejected the project in January, FCI made numerous changes to its plans.
City staffers acknowledged that the project is much improved, but even so recommended against approval. They want the apartment buildings constructed on the northern portion of the property near existing residential and improvements to internal driveways to make them more pedestrian-friendly.
But the staff’s biggest concern was that the development will worsen already bad traffic congestion on Camino Real.
FCI attorney Ele Zachariades said Camino Square would enhance the city.
“There is one parcel in the downtown that is still blighted,” she said. “We would like to be good neighbors and clean up this area.”
FCI has addressed many of the previous objections and now the project is in full compliance with city rules, she said.
The developer does not want to move the apartments to the northern portion of the site because it makes more sense to build the parking garages along the FEC tracks to act as a sound buffer and the residential buildings west of them. The developer’s traffic consultant said the project would add 565 net daily trips to streets, but would not worsen congestion.
Many residents at the meeting said they welcomed redevelopment of the blighted area. Even so, only two, including a representative of major downtown landowner Investments Limited, spoke in favor of Camino Square.
J. Albert Johnson, president of the 2,400-member Camino Gardens Association, said the city has not kept its promise to upgrade traffic infrastructure.
As a result, the project “will create a nightmare,” he said. “It will create absolute chaos.”
Many other speakers agreed, and a number said the city needs to improve traffic infrastructure before allowing new development in the area.
“We are being overwhelmed by traffic,” said Camino Gardens resident Gertrude Lewis.
When board member Larry Snowden asked whether the city is working to resolve existing traffic problems on Camino Real, city traffic engineer Maria Tejera said there are no plans to do so. He also asked if the developer was willing to decrease the number of rental units to lessen the project’s impact on traffic.
Zachariades said FCI would not. Downtown development ordinances allow FCI to build taller buildings with more units than those proposed, but the developer chose not to do so to avoid creating too much density, she said.
Board member Rick Coffin said Camino Square is a good project, but the developer is at a disadvantage because the city has not addressed traffic issues.
“I am voting in favor of [Camino Square] to put more pressure on the city to live up to their obligations,” he said.
The planning board imposed one condition in granting approval: FCI will have to add a southbound left-turn lane at the intersection of Southwest Third Avenue and West Camino Real to improve road safety and traffic flow.

Many of us who live on the beach in Highland Beach are frustrated with the tractors’ beach “cleanup.” The trash and massive amount of seaweed is churned and buried — and with it all the plastic tangled up in it, from old, barnacled shoes to plastic forks and knives, plastic bottles and styrofoam.

Our beach has gone from having beautiful pristine white sand to having seaweed-with-plastic sand. Not comfortable to walk on barefoot, unhealthy, not pretty and very smelly, too. We spend all our time gathering the trash that’s merely been hidden just under the surface. 

The beach trash-removing companies should do what snow-removal companies do in the North with the snow: They cart it away and dump it at a central location off-site — in this case dump the plastic-laden seaweed in the landfill. It’s as good as trash, unfortunately. 
I really hope the town can resolve this to our residents’ satisfaction. We would like to get our beautiful, clean beaches back and stop being surrogate trash removers ourselves, cleaning up what the hired companies bury or leave behind. 

Kiri Borg
Highland Beach

LETTERS: The Coastal Star welcomes letters-to-the-editor about issues of interest in the community. These are subject to editing and must include your name, address and phone number. Preferred length is 200 words or less. Email to editor@thecoastalstar.com. or mail to 5011 N. Ocean Blvd. Suite #2, Ocean Ridge, FL 33435

By Steve Plunkett

In two words, the state of the city of Boca Raton is “very strong,” Mayor Scott Singer says.

“We have world-class services and low taxes and, most of all, nearly 100,000 people making this an unparalleled place to live, work, learn and play,” said Singer, who delivered his first State of the City address since becoming mayor in April to the Federation of Boca Raton Homeowner Associations last month.

High among the city’s accomplishments for the year that ended Sept. 30 were the opening of the U.S. Customs facility at the Boca Raton Airport, providing city-owned land for a new elementary school, and decreasing the time it takes to get a building permit from 31 to 21 days, Singer said.

Fiscal 2018 also saw the opening of the Spanish River Boulevard interchange on Interstate 95 and the establishment of quiet zones for the Brightline express railway, soon to be rebranded as Virgin Trains USA.
Boca Raton’s guiding principles remain the same as they have been for years: to be financially sound, provide world-class services, have a strong partnership with the community and be vibrant and sustainable.

In the coming year, city officials plan to develop a master plan for Boca Raton’s government campus, decide how to revitalize Dixie Highway and promote more art in public places. The city will collect $71.5 million in property taxes; it has 1,873 full-time employees and a AAA bond rating. While Boca Raton’s population is estimated at 98,150, about 250,000 are in the city on an average day, Singer said.

Signature events for the city include college football’s Cheribundi Tart Cherry Boca Raton Bowl, to be played Dec. 18 at Florida Atlantic University, golf’s Boca Raton Championship at the Broken Sound Club in February and the Festival of the Arts Boca, starting Feb. 28.

By Steve Plunkett

After one public outreach session on how to design Wildflower Park and a separate outreach session and an online survey for neighboring Silver Palm Park, consultant Kona Gray was not happy.
“Individually as parks they work. But together it kind of seems disjointed and we’re wondering to ourselves, ‘How can we make that better?’” he told the Boca Raton City Council on Nov. 26.
So Gray and his EDSA Inc. colleagues brainstormed again and decided to revise the drawings for both parks with areas shaped like water drops to have a unifying motif.
“It’s about celebrating water. It’s about giving people the opportunity to engage adjacent to the water,” he said.
EDSA also envisioned replacing its proposed children’s splash pad on the north side of the park with a “signature” water feature and boosting spaces for boat trailers even more, to 60 spots from the current 33. It would also add “floating wetlands” and cantilevered “overlooks” north and south of the Palmetto Park Road bridge to get people closer to the water.
Still in the plans are a third boat ramp, a wide promenade along the Intracoastal Waterway and “shade sails” over park benches.
“It’s festive, it’s fun, it’s a really cool place,” Gray said.
Mayor Scott Singer said “we’re getting there” but warned that money is a concern.
“A dollar spent here is a dollar not spent elsewhere on city needs,” Singer said before he and the four council members debated changes they wanted.
Their alterations included more play opportunities for children, perhaps combined with public art; more parking (the Wildflower dropped to 32 spaces from 50 in the previous plan); moving the restrooms farther from the Intracoastal Waterway; removing a turnaround and any other vehicular uses from under the bridge; and adding concrete stairs from the bridge down to the park on the north side similar to the ones on the south.
Council members also told City Manager Leif Ahnell to explore getting land on the east side of Northeast Fifth Avenue to add a sidewalk and perhaps a turn lane. That corner parcel is vacant now, but the owner wants “eight figures” to sell it to Boca Raton, Singer said.
The city will hold a contest to name the combined parks. Singer and EDSA independently suggested “Centennial Park” (the city turns 100 in 2024), but council member Andrea O’Rourke said too many other cities already use that name.
“I’d much rather it be named for the donor who’s going to give us $25 million for all this, the $25 Million Man or Lady Park, that’s fine with me,” Singer said.
Gray said moving the restrooms will cost $500,000; in all, the consolidated parks will cost $8 million.
Ahnell budgeted $1 million this fiscal year and $2 million the following year to build the park on the Wildflower side. The 2019-2020 budget also has $1.5 million set aside for the Silver Palm side.

By Rich Pollack

When Highland Beach Town Manager Marshall Labadie arrived to lead the town’s staff in October, he inherited a team with quite a few key vacancies.
Outside consultants were temporarily leading the Finance Department, and the Building Department and the Public Works Department director’s positions were unfilled. At the same time, an outside firm was handling code enforcement.
Fast forward less than six weeks after the town manager’s arrival and Labadie is on his way to building a staff that will bring fresh eyes and new approaches to how Town Hall addresses key tasks.
Labadie has hired a new finance director, who is taking a strategic-oriented approach to budgeting, a new building official whose background will come in handy as the town prepares for the potential of sea-level rise, and a code enforcement officer with a focus on being proactive.
Labadie also hopes to have a new public services director and an assistant to the town manager in place by the end of the year.
Filling staff positions quickly, Labadie says, was a priority.
“There are things that have to be in place in order to move forward with mission-critical projects and functions,” he said.
At least one town commissioner credits Labadie’s experience in local government for helping to make sure positions were filled quickly with qualified candidates.
“He’s done this type of work for so long that he knows what to look for,” said Commissioner Peggy Gossett-Seidman. “Everything is definitely moving forward.”
Labadie’s arrival coincided with the town’s transition from an outside firm handling Building Department and code enforcement functions to building and code enforcement services being brought in house.
He quickly hired Jeffrey Massie, an experienced building inspector who held positions in Pompano Beach and Oakland Park in Broward County, to head up the team. Massie’s background as a structural plans examiner will be an asset, Labadie says, as the town faces the potential threat from sea-level rise.
“He will help us ensure that what we build is properly suited for the future,” the manager said.
To reinvigorate the town’s code enforcement functions, which had come under fire from several town commissioners who thought enough wasn’t being done, Labadie brought in Jason Manko, who had previous experience in code enforcement also in Broward County.
“He has a fresh set of eyes on code enforcement with a resident-focused proactive approach,” Labadie said.
Already, Manko is getting praise from residents for his visibility within the community.
“We had a resident stop and say that he’d seen the code enforcement officer about eight times in one week,” Gossett-Seidman said.
Also new to the staff is Matthew Lalla, the town’s finance director. Lalla, who served as a finance director in Hollywood and as interim treasurer in Fort Lauderdale, will help the town reshape its budgeting process to add a more strategic approach, Labadie said.
“We want to ensure that we’re budgeting for our goals and objectives,” the manager said.
Labadie said he is reshaping the public works director position and changing the name to public services director. The goal, he said, is to have that position more focused on key projects and the big picture and less on the day-to-day operations.
Labadie still plans to hire an assistant to the town manager, someone he hopes will focus on communications with residents as well as assisting with project management.
The town has received résumés from more than two dozen people interested in the position, he said.