By Jane Smith

Two weeks after the parking meters were activated in downtown Delray Beach, the City Commission agreed on July 10 to issue two types of parking passes for residents. One pass is available to any resident who can show a utility bill or a Florida driver’s license with a Delray Beach address. Those residents pay $12 for the annual parking pass that allows three free hours daily between noon and 6 p.m. on the side streets that are metered, west of the Intracoastal Waterway.
City Manager Mark Lauzier told the commissioners that the city’s Parking Management Advisory Board did not support the resident parking pass. But its Downtown Development Authority did and wanted parking on Atlantic Avenue to be included.
“Atlantic Avenue is too prime to be included,” Lauzier said.
The commissioners agreed to exclude Atlantic but expressed support for a resident parking program. “We are inviting our residents back to the downtown,” Mayor Shelly Petrolia said.
Residents had asked for the program because they felt their taxes were used to purchase the meters and for repairing the side streets and city-owned parking lots and garages.
“It’s another benefit to being a Delray resident,” Commissioner Ryan Boylston said.
The other type of parking passes will go to curing what was seen as an oversight. Both will be available around the end of September.
Tenants who live above the stores and offices along Atlantic Avenue used to park on the side streets or in the city-owned lots for free. Some even lost parking spaces to the city and its Community Redevelopment Agency for redevelopment.
About 50 people are in this category. They can now pay $96.30 for an annual parking pass that allows their vehicles to park all day and overnight in the city-owned lots and garages, west of the Intracoastal Waterway.
The city clerk, who oversees the permits, will make sure that residents of the newer condo and townhouse buildings on the side streets do not apply for an extra place to park their vehicles, Lauzier said. They already have garages as part of their condos or townhomes, commissioners said.
Petrolia, who voted against installing the parking meters, thinks the parking management system has become complicated. The city paid for the meters, then had to hire a company to manage them and enforce the parking times, the mayor said.
“If it was really to turn over the spaces on Atlantic Avenue, then we should have increased enforcement of the time limits,” Petrolia said. “But instead, staff is talking about using the meters to make money for the city.”

By Dan Moffett

South Palm Beach council members considered some ambitious plans to renovate or replace Town Hall during the last year — but it may be that their options are more limited than first thought.
Town Manager Mo Thornton says an architect hired to review the condition of the aging building is concerned that it may not have sufficient elevation to comply with today’s flood plain standards. If the structure is sitting too low, in other words, renovation might not be feasible. The only option would be to demolish and replace it.
“We’re waiting to get the results of an elevation survey,” Thornton said. “Then we’ll know for sure whether the building is renovate-able or not.”
The Federal Emergency Management Agency has revised elevation building standards to improve resistance to storm surge and flooding. If the Town Hall doesn’t meet the standard, renovation could require raising the entire structure to comply with building codes and insurance requirements.
“That would be too costly to do,” Thornton said.
The council hired North Palm Beach architect John Bellamy in June to review previous proposals for the building. Thornton gave Bellamy high marks after working with him in her last job as manager of Atlantis. She said she expects to have a report from Bellamy before September.
“I’m confident he can tell us what’s possible and what it will take to get it done,” she said. The Town Hall was constructed 42 years ago originally as a public safety building and has undergone multiple repairs and additions. Last year the council unanimously rejected as too costly and extravagant a $6 million proposal from another architect to replace the hall with a five-story building.
In other business:
• Town Clerk Maylee DeJesus resigned in July to take a position as deputy city clerk in West Palm Beach.
DeJesus came to South Palm Beach in January 2016 from Palm Springs, where she served eight years as assistant deputy clerk. In 2017, DeJesus was named president of the Palm Beach County Municipal Clerks Association.
Thornton said the town has begun advertising for a new clerk and is looking for candidates with financial backgrounds. The job pays about $55,000 per year. The town also is continuing its search for a new police chief and has received several dozen responses from qualified applicants, Thornton said.
• After months of debate, the council unanimously agreed on how much to fine violators of a new ordinance that prohibits dogs on the beach. Police will give first offenders a written warning, and then all subsequent offenses will draw fines of $100 each.
Mayor Bonnie Fischer had objected to a previous proposal that would have fined repeat offenders as much as $250 for each violation. “I think that is just too high,” she said.
• The council’s next regular meeting has been scheduled for 7 p.m. Aug. 21. The meeting was postponed to accommodate vacations and ensure a quorum.

Sargassum clogs a harbor along the shore of Guadeloupe. The windward sides of the islands are much harder hit than the leeward sides. French America Climate Talks

By Cheryl Blackerby

A natural disaster has hit the Caribbean. Barbados has declared a national emergency, and the sprawling St. James Club resort in Antigua has been forced to temporarily close its doors and direct guests elsewhere. Marine experts are looking at damaged coral reefs and sea turtle mortalities.
And Puerto Rico has another emergency on top of last year’s catastrophic hurricane damage.
In a region with its share of hurricanes, active volcanoes and earthquakes, the Caribbean has a new problem, one never seen before 2011 — sargassum.
The seaweed is being dumped by ocean waves on some of the most beautiful beaches in the world, and it’s arriving faster than it can be removed. It’s clogging waterways, shading coral reefs and killing marine mammals that drown underneath its thick mats stretching for miles.
And this is happening in a region that generally has very little seaweed.
Sargassum has always been in Florida, the Bahamas and other islands. But scientists are alarmed at research that shows the seaweed piling up on shores since 2011 is not the same plant as that in the past, which arrived at predictable times of the year from the Sargasso Sea. This new species is coming from the south near Brazil and is quickly spreading on ocean currents that are deviating from normal patterns.
The Caribbean islands worst hit are Barbados, Guadeloupe, Antigua and Martinique.
Mexico’s Riviera Maya is also seeing massive amounts of seaweed.
Residents, hotel employees and military personnel are being called on to clean the beaches by rake and wheelbarrow to preserve sea turtle nests and the area’s famous white sand.
Beyond the beaches, the bigger picture is even worse: Satellite imaging shows the seaweed growing and spreading over a swath of ocean from Brazil to West Africa and north to Florida, a new and troubling phenomenon.
“We saw it for the first time in 2011. It was really bad in 2014 and 2015. This year is the worst, with no end in sight,” Dr. Hazel Oxenford, professor of fisheries and marine ecology at the University of the West Indies in Barbados, said in late July.
“It’s essentially a natural disaster with long-term effects on fisheries, coral reefs and sea grasses. We’re looking at some significant problems,” she said.
Marine scientists were surprised by this seaweed, which hadn’t been seen in the Caribbean in the past. Researchers at first assumed it had drifted south from the Sargasso Sea in the North Atlantic, where the open-ocean seaweed is generally found. But satellite imagery and ocean current data showed an unusual stretch of sargassum off the coast of Brazil.
Dr. Jim Gower, a remote-sensing expert with Fisheries and Oceans Canada, Institute of Ocean Sciences, tracked the sargassum and by 2013 he had reached a conclusion: Satellite observations showed the seaweed event of the summer of 2011 “had its origin north of the mouth of the Amazon in an area not previously associated with sargassum growth. … By July it had spread to the coast of Africa in the east and to the Lesser Antilles and the Caribbean in the west,” he said in a report published in The Journal of Remote Sensing Letters.
Dr. James Franks, a fisheries biologist, and his colleagues at the University of Southern Mississippi Gulf Coast Research Laboratory came to the same conclusion about why a once seaweed-free part of the ocean is now filled with seaweed. Tracking the seaweed mass-blooming events back in time showed its path from the tropical Atlantic east of Brazil.
“Invariably, in all of those instances, it tracked back to the tropical region (Brazil). None of it ever tracked northward into the Sargasso Sea,” Franks told Science Magazine in June 2018.
In the Caribbean, islanders were stunned and bewildered by the piles of sargassum as much as 6 feet high dumped on their beaches. They hoped it was a one-time event, but that wasn’t the case.
Sargassum, which is essential for sea turtle hatchlings that ride the ocean currents on the nutrient-rich mats in the first few years of their lives, is now a danger to turtle hatchlings on land, where the seaweed smothers nests and poses obstacles on their beach path to the ocean.
“The Barbados government declared an emergency and is using military personnel to help. Removing it requires a tremendous amount of manpower. They are using appropriate methods, not machinery but rakes, to preserve turtle nests and sand,” Oxenford said.
In the ocean, turtles and marine mammals can’t surface and may drown under the thick seaweed, a new species that has larger blades than seaweed usually seen in the Sargasso Sea.
“We have had a few mortalities (of turtles) this year,” Oxenford said. “But we have very active conservation groups that are helping.”
She and other scientists are studying the sources and causes of this new sargassum, which has marine researchers scrambling to understand it.
“It’s a new source of sargassum. It’s not from the Sargasso Sea, but from Brazil and West Africa. It’s coming at the whim of the ocean currents and trade winds, which normally have a pattern,” she said.
Ocean currents are deviating from normal, another mystery that is alarming scientists.
“There’s been tremendous variation in the ocean current patterns,” Oxenford said.
No one knows with certainty what is causing the massive seaweed bloom, but there are educated guesses.
“The causes run a whole gamut, with a combination of higher water temperatures caused by climate change, higher nutrient levels, and pollution from deforestation and industrial development,” Oxenford said.
The one bit of good news is that the sargassum is piling up on the windward side of the islands, and most hotels in the Caribbean are on the calmer leeward side. Hotels have temporarily closed — this is the second time since 2011 that the St. James Club has closed (from July 1 to Oct. 1 this year) because of seaweed — but luckily the sargassum hit at a time when Caribbean hotels traditionally close for renovations.
To make matters worse for the big resorts on the windward side, most are located on bays and coves, which quickly get choked by the seaweed piling up in the waterways and blocking passage for boats.
No one can predict how long this seaweed event will last or how bad it will be in the future.
“We’re not going to get it stopped in a hurry. It’s a long-term problem. It would be like stopping hurricanes,” Oxenford said. “We have to learn to adapt.”

Crews work to rid the beaches of Cancun, Mexico, of seaweed. In Mexico, residents, hotel employees and military personnel have been called on to clean the beaches by rake and wheelbarrow to preserve sea turtle nests and the area’s white sand. Reuters

Dealing with sargassum
The Antigua Hotels and Tourist Association and the Caribbean Hotel and Tourism Association have released a guide for residents and hotels dealing with the sargassum crisis.
Some of the suggestions:
• Leave or bury the sargassum on the beach.
• Use rakes and wheelbarrows to gather and transport the sargassum, being careful not to disturb sea turtle nests.
• Incorporate sargassum into landscaping after it’s cleaned of sea salt. It provides a nutrient-rich source of compost, fertilizer and weed control.
• Eat it. After it is thoroughly cleaned, it can be cooked in lemon juice and coconut milk: “The most popular preparation is a quick fry, followed by simmering in water, soy sauce and other ingredients.”

By Steve Plunkett

As his trial date nears on felony charges stemming from a 2016 shooting incident at his house, onetime Vice Mayor Richard Lucibella proclaimed his innocence and renewed his attacks on how Ocean Ridge police treated him.
“I look forward to a public airing of the facts, including the fact that I was not intoxicated, never fired a weapon and never assaulted either of the two able-bodied officers who broke three of my ribs AFTER slamming me, face-first, into the pavement,” Lucibella said in a written statement to The Coastal Star.
He and his defense attorney, Marc Shiner, went to court July 20 to renew Lucibella’s demand for a speedy trial, which they originally filed in March. The case was docketed for a calendar call Aug. 20.
“OK, so a demand for speedy trial was filed, this case is already set for trial, I believe it’s set within the window,” said Circuit Judge Daliah Weiss, who left the Aug. 20 court date as set.
Lucibella is charged with battery on a law enforcement officer and resisting arrest with violence, both felonies, and firing a weapon while under the influence of alcohol, a misdemeanor. He has pleaded not guilty.
After the hearing, Shiner said he refiled the demand for speedy trial to ensure that Weiss knew the timeline of the case. Judges at a calendar call hear the cases of people who are in jail first, then move to the oldest cases, he explained.
He said the trial might not begin for a week or two after the calendar call. “Nothing’s certain in the courthouse,” Shiner said.
Lucibella was arrested Oct. 22, 2016, after Ocean Ridge police went to his oceanfront home to answer neighbors’ reports of hearing gunfire. They confiscated a .40-caliber handgun and found five spent shell casings on the backyard patio.
He and a police supervisor, Lt. Steven Wohlfiel, were both on the patio and “obviously intoxicated,” the officers said. Both men denied firing the gun. Officers later determined the seized gun was Wohlfiel’s.
Lucibella resigned his vice mayor and town commissioner positions Dec. 7, 2016.
His trial was first scheduled for April 2017 but was postponed to July 2017, then October, then this April and now August after Shiner and Assistant State Attorney Danielle Grundt needed more time to question witnesses and then Shiner hurt his leg. Weiss is the third judge on the case, following routine reassignments of Judges Charles Burton and Meenu Sasser.
“These charges were leveled, and then doubled, in an effort to hide the abuses of power by these officers and their Chief,” Lucibella said in his statement. “I look forward to demonstrating that the Chief of Police involved himself in this investigation after admitting he’d been drinking so heavily that night, his wife had to drive him to the police station.”
The State Attorney’s Office declined to comment on Lucibella’s remarks.
Chief Hal Hutchins said Lucibella’s statements mostly repeated claims he and Shiner have made all along.
“They’re entitled to say whatever they like,” Hutchins said. “We should let the criminal justice system do its job.”
Early on, the chief said he had some wine with dinner that Friday night and had his wife drive to avoid even a suggestion of DUI.
Nubia Plesnik, one of the arresting officers, is privately suing Lucibella over injuries she says were a result of the incident.

By Jane Smith

Commuters will have to endure at least another three months of construction at the Woolbright Road/Interstate 95 interchange and another month at the Hypoluxo Road interchange.
The Woolbright interchange needs more work and is expected to be finished by the end of October, said Andrea Pacini, Florida Department of Transportation spokeswoman. Construction started there in January 2016.
The Hypoluxo/I-95 interchange should be finished by the end of August, Pacini said. Work started there in June 2015.
The two projects are part of a $32.5 million, five-interchange contract that also covers Donald Ross Road in Jupiter, 10th Avenue North in Lake Worth, and Hillsboro Boulevard to Southwest 10th Street in Deerfield Beach.
Community Asphalt Corp., a division of OHL North America, was supposed to finish construction in November. That means FDOT will fine the contractor $8,401 per day since Nov. 4, Pacini said.
“When a contractor has exceeded contract time, they are not eligible to receive weather days or holidays,” she said.
“The contractor’s past performance rating is also being penalized, which can affect their ability to bid and win future FDOT work.”
The contractor has been working through challenging, unforeseen conditions and design issues on this project, said Fallon McLoughlin, OHL North America spokesman. “We are confident that these issues have been resolved and we plan to have construction completed by early fall.”
At the Woolbright interchange, the contractor has “substantial work outstanding. The contractor needs to complete the widening of the I-95 northbound off-ramp, finish the south-side widening, construct the sidewalk, install drainage and add lights and traffic signals,” she said.
That’s why the FDOT contract administrator is estimating an end of October completion date. The Hypoluxo Road interchange is nearly done, Pacini said.
“The contractor needs to finish grading, sodding and striping there,” she said.

By Rich Pollack

HIGHLAND BEACH — In the world of high-level professional sports car racing, few were as well respected — and feared by competitors on the track — as Devinder “Dave” Maraj.
The founder and driving force behind highly regarded Champion Racing, and the owner of Champion Porsche in Pompano Beach, Mr. Maraj guided his race team to victory from the mid-1990s to the late 2000s in some of the most competitive and challenging races in the world, including the 24 Hours of Le Mans.
That win, in France in 2005, marked the last time an American team won the grueling endurance race.
So when word of Mr. Maraj’s drowning death late last month began circulating among people in the auto world, disbelief set in and then quickly turned to shock and grief.
“Dave’s professionalism and demand for excellence was in a league by itself,” said Scott Atherton, president of the International Motor Sports Association and someone who knew Mr. Maraj well professionally. “He was the benchmark example of a team owner and competitor.”
Mr. Maraj, 65, who lived in Highland Beach, was discovered in the water near the Boca Raton Resort and Club by Boca Raton police divers early on Sunday, July 22, after friends had reported him missing. Boca Raton police are investigating his death as an accidental drowning.
Although Mr. Maraj — originally from Trinidad — had folded the racing team in 2008, he continued to operate Champion Porsche, which grew to be the largest-volume Porsche dealership in the world. Mr. Maraj had previously owned a Broward County Audi dealership.
“Dave was a great man to deal with,” said Cliff Ray, auto show coordinator for the South Florida Automobile Dealers Association, of which Mr. Maraj was a member for about 20 years. “He was always cordial and kind.”
In recent years, Mr. Maraj had traded his love for auto racing into a passion for sailing, according to Atherton. Still he linked the two together, naming his racing sailboat 24 Heures, or 24 Hours in French.
Atherton said there was a common denominator between Mr. Maraj’s success in auto racing as well as in business.
“Dave’s greatest strength was his ability to surround himself with outstanding people who knew how to get things done,” he said.
While the 24 Hours of Le Mans may have been Champion Racing’s greatest accomplishment, it was just one of many victories for the team, which raced for more than a decade.
Champion Racing won the American Le Mans series championship in 2003, 2004 and 2005, racing as an independent team, frequently competing against teams run by manufacturers, which had greater resources. The team, later racing under the Audi Sport North America name, won two more times.
“Dave’s team was always the one to beat on the global scale,” Atherton said. “Champion was the one everyone measured against.”
Very detail oriented, Mr. Maraj was known as a no-nonsense kind of owner, both with the team and the dealership.
“With Dave, nothing was left to chance,” Atherton said. “He was the most intense — and quietest — competitor I ever dealt with.”
Atherton said his organization provided decals that paid tribute to Mr. Maraj with his name and favorite saying, “One Last One,” for teams to place on their cars during a recent race.
“Dave was held in the highest regard possible,” he said. “He passed way too soon.”
Memorial services were held July 27 at Glick Family Funeral Home in Boca Raton.

By Jane Smith

Barrier island residents may see some water-related changes starting in October after Boynton Beach passes its $91.1 million budget.
Condo residents of four complexes south of Woolbright Road in Ocean Ridge will be part of a $400,000 request to study how their aging septic systems can connect with Boynton Beach’s wastewater system, according to Joe Paterniti, interim utilities director.
Paterniti made his department’s budget presentation July 17 at the Boynton Beach budget workshop.
The force main would go under the Intracoastal Waterway to serve condo communities along State Road A1A, Paterniti said.
The complexes involved are Ocean Ridge Yacht Club, Crown Colony Club, Colonial Ridge Club and Turtle Beach Club.
In addition, Boynton Beach has developed a master plan for its water reuse system, said Colin Groff, assistant city manager who used to be the utilities department director.
About 60 big water customers indicated they are interested in having the reuse water to use for irrigation, Groff said. Most of these are on the west side of the Intracoastal, he said.
Two likely clients on the east side of the ICW are golf courses at The Little Club in Gulf Stream and the St. Andrews Club in Boynton Beach.
“Between October and January, we’ll contact them again to make sure they are still interested,” Groff said.
The reuse irrigation pipes would be installed under Federal Highway to coincide with the Florida Department of Transportation’s repaving project, he said at the July 17 budget workshop.
The pipes would then cross under the Intracoastal at the Boynton Beach-owned Jaycee Park.
The two golf courses may have to wait a year to get the reused water.
“We may have to build a pump station on the west side of the Intracoastal to supply condo complexes in Boynton Beach that want to have the reuse water for irrigation,” Groff said.
The four-year project is estimated to cost $8 million, Groff said.
Boynton Beach also is proposing a 2.2 percent rate increase for its water customers in Ocean Ridge, Briny Breezes and the County Pocket. That increase also will take effect in October.

By Jane Smith

Boynton Beach residents and others using city services will have to be patient for the next two years while the city builds out its Town Square complex.
Civic buildings, including the City Hall, Public Library and Fire Station 1, will be demolished and staff will work out of different locations around town.
The library is closed and will reopen 9 a.m. Aug. 13 in a shared space with the Congregational United Church of Christ at 115 N. Federal Highway. The city’s Community Redevelopment Agency purchased the church building that originally was a bank and a nearby parking lot in the spring.
The city recently agreed to hire Jade Communications of Boca Raton for $25,878 to upgrade the Wi-Fi capabilities at the temporary library site.
“People will have to be patient and pay attention where they are going,” said Colin Groff, assistant city manager in charge of Town Square. “We will put out notices wherever we can — social media, in utility bills, signs at the site.”
The city held a plant giveaway at its already closed Civic Center on July 19. The cuttings came from plants around the City Hall, Civic Center and the library.
About 150 people came to the plant giveaway, said Eleanor Krusell, city spokeswoman.
The remaining plants around city buildings will be replanted elsewhere around Boynton Beach — medians and parks, Krusell said. With its private development partner E2L Real Estate Solutions, Boynton Beach hopes to create a new downtown in the 16-acre area, bordered by Boynton Beach Boulevard on the north, Northeast and Southeast First Streets on the east, Southeast Second Avenue on the south and Seacrest Boulevard on the west.
Private development will include apartments, restaurants and a hotel in the $250 million project. The city’s share is about $118 million.
The historic high school renovations will be complete in March, Groff said. But it won’t be able to hold city recreation programs until the City Center complex is finished in early 2020, he said.
“There won’t be more than 40 parking spaces available until the new garage, part of the City Center complex, is ready,” Groff said. People can still rent out the second floor for banquets and weddings, he said, but they must provide offsite parking.

City Hall move: September
City Hall staff will move over two weeks in mid-September to Quantum Park, Groff said. City Hall will reopen Sept. 24 at 3301 Quantum Blvd.
The City Commission, CRA meetings and other city advisory board meetings will be held at the City Hall Commission Chambers during August. In September, they will move to the Intracoastal Park Clubhouse at 2240 N. Federal Highway.
Fire Station 1, which also serves Ocean Ridge and Briny Breezes, will divide its staff and vehicles between Fire Station 4 on South Federal Highway and Fire Station 5 on High Ridge Road.
“We will be the last to leave,” said Fire Chief Glenn Joseph. The departure time will be in mid-September. One lieutenant and two firefighter/paramedics with a rescue vehicle will work out of the South Federal Highway station, he said.
About 70 percent of the emergency calls are medical, Joseph said. The fire truck and three staff members (lieutenant and two firefighter paramedics) will work out of Fire Station 5.
Joseph expects the response times to increase by 30 seconds. His team will monitor them and if they rise over 1 minute, the team will look for space east of Interstate 95. Joseph knows it won’t be easy to find a building big enough to house the fire truck.

Dwarfed by construction cranes already on the job site, city and county tourism officials joined representatives from Kolter Hospitality and KAST Construction for a groundbreaking to celebrate the Courtyard by Marriott in downtown Delray Beach. Jerry Lower/The Coastal Star

By Christine Davis

Kolter Hospitality, the company developing the new Courtyard by Marriott, will move its headquarters from West Palm Beach to Delray’s Pineapple Grove District next summer. That news, announced by Kolter President Scott Webb after ground was broken for the hotel in July, is expected to bring 50 jobs, along with another 60 needed to run the Courtyard by Marriott, in addition to the 75 to 125 construction workers needed to build the hotel.

The 150-room hotel will have 2,000 square feet of meeting space and a rooftop pool and should open by September 2019. Rendering provided

The Courtyard by Marriott, at 135 SE Sixth Ave., will be Kolter’s second hotel in town, joining Hyatt Place. It is scheduled to be completed by September 2019.
“We see the value of investing in Delray’s economy and we are once again demonstrating this commitment,” Webb said. “The interesting thing about the hotel business is, we are not competitive with the local economy, but rather more symbiotic in nature. This hotel will put, on average, about 175 people every day out into the community looking to eat and shop, and this, in turn, will create even more jobs for Delray.”
 According to Kolter’s website, the hotel will have 150 guestrooms, 2,000 square feet of meeting space, a rooftop pool and parking.

Jeb A. Conrad started work as the new president and CEO of the Greater Delray Beach Chamber of Commerce in May. Previously, he was the president of the Bloomington Chamber of Commerce in Indiana. Conrad, a graduate of Indiana University School of Business, held leadership roles at Greater Kokomo Economic Development Alliance and Indianapolis Economic Development. He also worked for Simon Property Group and the Indianapolis Water Co., both based in Indianapolis.

During the second annual Downtown Delray Beach Summer Sidewalk Sale, from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Aug. 25-26, shops and galleries will offer savings and a chance to win a “Summer Fun Delray Beach” prize package.  For details, visit DowntownDelrayBeach.com/SidewalkSale.

As it does each August, the Boca Chamber is facilitating community-building events during Boca Chamber Festival Days 2018. Events pair the chamber’s for-profit members with nonprofit members. Held at various locations in South Palm Beach County, wine tastings, museum visits, cocktail parties, pizza tossing, bowling, and a karaoke contest will raise money and awareness for nonprofit members. To take part, visit bocaratonchamber.com and click on events, then choose community events from the drop-down menu. Navigate to August for a full list.

The Boca Chamber Education Foundation’s Young Entrepreneurs Academy is enrolling students in grades 6-12 through Sept. 14. During the 25-week curriculum, students will work with leaders of industry, community members and educators to develop life skills, generate business ideas, conduct market research, write business plans and launch their own companies. The program culminates with a shark tank-style event where students will pitch their ideas to a panel of investors and ask for funds to support their business ventures. For more information, go to bocaratonchamber.com/yea.

Ranked from nearly 14,000 U.S. real estate sales associates, a handful of local agents made “The Thousand” list, which is compiled by Real Trends, an online real estate research and consulting firm, done in partnership with The Wall Street Journal. For individual agents to be ranked, they must have closed 50 sides of a transaction or $20 million in closed sales volume in 2017.
Paul Saperstein of Re/Max Advantage Plus of Boynton Beach closed 137 sides, and was ranked 198. For volume, David Roberts of Royal Palm Properties, Boca Raton, was ranked 34, with a volume of almost $189 million in closed sales. Pascal Liguori, an agent with Premier Estate Properties, Delray Beach, was ranked 45, with a closed sales volume of $167.759 million.
For team rankings, the team must have closed 75 sides of a transaction or $30 million in closed sales volume in 2017. Boca Raton’s Premier Estate Properties team, D’Angelo/Liguori, with Carmen D’Angelo, Gerard Liguori and Joseph Liguori, ranked 241 with a closed sales volume of $126.11 million.

Gail Adams Aaskov, broker of Ocean Ridge Realty, has moved her office to 326 W. Boynton Beach Blvd., Boynton Beach. Her real estate office had been a fixture in Ocean Ridge since 1981. Agents Maria Carrasco, Christiane Francois, Al Fries, Albert Medina, Denise Medina and Sandy Wolforth and Administrative Assistant Sonia Wexler will continue their real estate work from this new location. Contact them at 276-3220.

Next month, Lang Realty will launch a lifestyle real estate channel, Lang TV to stream worldwide online (at (langrealty.tv), featuring South Florida agents, real estate, lifestyle activities, interior design and travel.
“As marketing platforms continue to evolve, this innovative format is designed to provide our agents with a competitive advantage in connecting with potential home buyers, sellers, other agents and local businesses throughout South Florida,” said Scott Agran, president of Lang Realty.
Produced by BYL Network, Lang TV will stream on smart TVs and will broadcast throughout Lang’s 11 offices and online at langrealty.com. For more information, call 998-0100.

More than 300 guests attended the opening of the new Movie Bistro Restaurant and Bar in May. Following complimentary cocktails and appetizers, guests attended a complimentary movie on Cinemark Palace 20 and XD’s Premier level. Movie Bistro, a full-service restaurant at Cinemark Palace 20 and XD, 3200 Airport Road, Boca Raton, offers lunch, dinner, happy hour and dessert, whether diners plan on going to movies or not.

The second annual Culinary Job Fair is set for 2 p.m. Aug. 7 at Benvenuto Restaurant in Boynton Beach.
It’s the brainchild of Sherry Johnson of the Secret Garden, a culinary business development center.
Sponsored by the Boynton Beach Community Redevelopment Agency, the city of Boynton Beach, Palm Beach County, PNC Bank, Community Action and PBC Career Resource Center, it’s meant to help anyone looking for a job in hospitality. That includes chefs, front- and back-of-house workers, prep cooks, stockers, deli specialists, nutritionists, bartenders and dishwashers.
The list of vendors participating is available online at cccgbb.org/culinary-job-fair.

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

GULF STREAM — William Scott Tiernan, who grew up in Delray Beach, died July 27 in Laramie, Wyo. He was 67. 
Mr. Tiernan — who went by “Grand Dude” when with his grandchildren and by “Wild Bill” when on his Wyoming ranch — was born in West Orange, N.J., on May 18, 1951. The second of four kids, he grew up on the ocean in Delray Beach and spent his childhood summers surfing on Cape Cod and in East Hampton. 
He attended high school at Avon Old Farms in Connecticut, where he lettered in football, wrestling and lacrosse. After graduation, he served on the school’s board and donated a wrestling room in honor of his late father, John W. Tiernan.
After a series of adventures and surf trips around the world, Mr. Tiernan moved to Gulf Stream — just down the road from the home he grew up in — where he became a partner in the real estate brokerage firm Allmon, Tiernan & Ely. He also served on the board of his family’s company, Mark, Fore & Strike. After his retirement, he bought a property just outside Laramie, where he built a ranch and enjoyed making huge metal sculptures — much to his kids’ and grandkids’ delight. 
Mr. Tiernan is survived by his mother, Lynda Scheerer Stokes of Gulf Stream; the mother of his four children, Kim Allmon Tiernan of Guana Cay, Bahamas; his three sons: Scott Durand Tiernan of Newport Beach, Calif., Parker Knight Tiernan of Delray Beach and John Sears Tiernan of Great Falls, Mont.; a daughter, Cary Tiernan Butterfield of Bermuda; Cary’s three children: Ava, Cruz and Elle Butterfield; three siblings: Michael Whitaker Tiernan and Ann Purcell Tiernan of Delray Beach and Martha Tiernan Ely of Gulf Stream. Scores of family and friends will remember fondly his bright blue eyes, surfer dude hair, and thirst for adventure.  A celebration of Mr. Tiernan’s life will take place at a later date.

— Obituary submitted by the family

By Steve Plunkett

The city’s downtown post office is staying put, postal officials announced July 5.

The U.S. Postal Service told Boca Raton in February that it had been unable to get a new long-term lease on the facility at 170 NE Second Street. 

“The Postal Service and the landlord since have been able to come to a long-term agreement to stay at the current location,” USPS spokeswoman Debra Fetterly said.  Landlords James and Marta Batmasian bought the site, which has housed the post office for decades, in 2013.

Mayor Scott Singer called it “a great outcome” ending months of concern for city officials and downtown businesses and residents.

“I’m glad the Postal Service listened,” Singer said.

Residents crowded a room in the Community Center Annex on March 29 to plead with postal officials not to relocate the post office, saying it was part of the city’s history. The lease was set to end July 13.

Damian Salazar, a USPS real estate specialist, said the agency wanted a lease for at least 10 years with three five-year renewals.

James Batmasian, who attended the meeting, told Salazar that was the first he had heard that the Postal Service wanted a longer lease and offered on the spot to redo a four-year lease he and his wife had negotiated in September.

By Steve Plunkett

If mayoral candidate Bernard Korn votes in the city’s Aug. 28 special election, it will be the first ballot he has ever cast in Palm Beach County, the county’s top elections official says.
Korn registered to vote for the first time April 9, according to Supervisor of Elections Susan Bucher. Her office has no record of his voting in previous elections or even signing up to vote.
“That’s all I can find,” Bucher said.
Korn’s voter registration may also be the first official document he has showing a Boca Raton address: 720 Marble Way on the barrier island. But he also asked Bucher’s office to send any mail to 19078 Skyridge Circle, a house far west of the city that he and his wife, Kathy, bought in 2000.
Property records showing his ownership of the Skyridge Circle house — plus his use of a Pak Mail of West Boca post office box on campaign documents — have raised questions about Korn’s residency ever since he opened a campaign account in January.
Outside City Hall on June 12, he said he has been asked “a thousand times” about where he lives — “I’ve been a resident since 2000,” he said, adding it was “all in the documents.”
“The City Clerk’s Office, the Supervisor of Elections, the state Division of Elections — they’ve all signed off on it,” Korn said as he passed out palm cards and shook hands with people going into the City Council meeting.
But City Clerk Susan Saxton, who acts as the elections supervisor for Boca Raton contests, said she does not check residency beyond making sure a candidate signed the city’s sworn affidavit.
“How could we check? If they’re renting there’s really no way” beyond taking them at their word, Saxton said.
Korn on May 11 signed a notarized statement that he is “a qualified elector” of Boca Raton and has been a resident for “not less than thirty (30) days prior to the first day of the qualifying period for candidates.” He submitted the document May 21, the first day of qualifying, thus becoming an official candidate.
Also qualifying for the mayor’s race were lawyer and Mayor Scott Singer and lawyer Al Zucaro.
Korn’s campaign took an unusual detour April 1 when he signed on as campaign treasurer of Richard Vecchio’s short-lived run for mayor. Korn simultaneously was treasurer of his own campaign. Vecchio did not follow through on officially qualifying.
Korn’s April 9 voter registration was one of two steps he took that month to establish Boca Raton residency. On April 12 he filed a Declaration of Domicile in Palm Beach County’s official records stating 720 Marble Way is his “predominant and principal home” and has been for “5 (five) years.”
Property appraiser records show he and Kathy Korn have a homestead exemption for the Skyridge Circle house, which is in the gated Saturnia community west of U.S. 441, that started in 2001 and continues today. Homestead exemptions are granted “if your property is your permanent residence,” Property Appraiser Dorothy Jacks says on her website.
Jacks’ records show the house at 720 Marble Way also has a homestead exemption — for Vecchio, who like Korn is a registered real estate broker.
Neither Korn nor Vecchio returned a phone call or replied to an email seeking comment by press time.
On the same day Korn registered to vote using the Marble Way address, he re-registered with the state two franchise businesses he operates — Undiscovered Properties Inc. and Travel Lines Express Inc. — using the Skyridge Circle address.
Campaign finance reports for May, the latest available, show Korn has received no contributions from individuals or businesses. He has lent his campaign $2,602.72 so far.
Zucaro lent his campaign $3,500 during the nine days in May he was a candidate. Singer, who has taken contributions since October, has $84,345.
Singer and Zucaro both have voted regularly in past elections, records show.
The website Korn uses to solicit clients for Undiscovered Properties and Travel Lines Express also seeks support for his 2020 campaign to become president of the United States.
On July 24 the City Council will consider asking voters whether a candidate should be a resident for a year to qualify. The proposed language also would disqualify a person who has a homestead exemption on a residence outside the city during that time.

Candidate forum
WHAT: Candidates in the Aug. 28 special election will answer questions posed by a moderator from the Federation of Boca Raton Homeowner Associations.
WHO: Running for mayor are real estate broker Bernard Korn, lawyer and current Mayor Scott Singer and lawyer Al Zucaro. Running for City Council Seat A are consultant Kathy Cottrell, actress Tamara McKee and lawyer Andy Thomson.
WHEN: 7 p.m. Aug. 9
WHERE: Municipal Building, 6500 Congress Ave.

The Most Rev. Gerald M. Barbarito, Bishop of Palm Beach, presided over the Rite of Installation of the Rev. Father D. Brian
Horgan (far right) on June 10 as the fifth pastor in the history of St. Lucy Catholic Church. Tim Stepien/The Coastal Star

Carved from an overgrown tract of mangroves,
church has grown into centerpiece of Highland Beach

Related Story: Celebrating 50 years of St. Lucy Church

By Janis Fontaine

Hundreds of Catholics in southern, coastal Palm Beach County call St. Lucy Catholic Church in Highland Beach their home church. The small house of worship on A1A is wedged between towering condominiums that sprouted up around it since it was founded in 1968.
This year, the church celebrates its golden jubilee, marking half a century of providing spiritual guidance, respite and comfort, in keeping with the parish mission statement: “Our community welcomes all, judges none, embraces and protects the vulnerable, and seeks to make the stranger, the unloved and the unwanted feel at home.”
Maureen Mooney Stamper of Boca Raton has been attending St. Lucy for nearly 20 years, first as a tourist, then as a snowbird and now as a full-time resident. Early in the church’s history, 75 percent of parishioners were seasonal. Now the opposite is true — only 25 percent are snowbirds.
When Stamper lost both her son and her husband in 2014, she recalled, “It was because of my faith that I was able to get through it.”
Stamper found comfort in the arms of her church family and has blossomed again. “I thought I’d never be me again, but I became a better me,” she said.
That good feeling comes from the joy of giving back to the church that helped her through hard times. “I never realized what I could do,” Stamper said. “Father mentored me.”
She became a lector, then a eucharistic minister, honors she treasures. “I’ve gotten more out of it than I have given,” Stamper said. “I’m so proud of the work the congregation does.”

ABOVE: Following installation Mass, the Rev. Father D. Brian Horgan greets parishioners. He came to St. Lucy in 2013 to assist Father Gerald Grace, who has since retired. BELOW: Horgan spends a moment in reflection during his installation service at St. Lucy Catholic Church. Photos provided by Lashells Photography

ABOVE: St. Lucy Catholic Church members representing the Parish Council attend the June installation of the Rev. Father D. Brian Horgan. Tim Stepien/The Coastal Star

Michelle DeGennaro and Rosemarie Amato are co-presidents of the St. Lucy Council of Catholic Women, a charitable ministry of the church. The group has more than 130 members, making it one of the largest groups of its type.
“Lucky us!” DeGennaro said. “We are a very active group. We really want to help and there are plenty who need it.”
The group supports child-related charities, including Birthline, Aid to Victims of Domestic Abuse, Place of Hope and Boca Helping Hands. The council also gives an annual college scholarship to a young Catholic woman.
Amato is a former New Jersey snowbird, now a Boca Raton resident, who has attended St. Lucy since 1988. She’s devoted to the church and the CCW, and enjoys planning its major annual fundraiser, a fashion show. Amato says, “Whenever we ask for help, we get it. No one ever tells us no.”
Parishioner Peggy Gossett-Seidman — who also serves as a commissioner for the town of Highland Beach — has been attending St. Lucy for more than 25 years. St. Lucy still holds up as the heart of the community and there’s also a great deal of “doing good deeds quietly,” Gossett-Seidman said. “It’s a beautiful reflection of the community, a great lift and a sparkle for everyone.”
For many years, the church has also served as a polling place.

Father Horgan’s influence
On June 10, the church held the official rite of installation of Father D. Brian Horgan as the fifth pastor in St. Lucy’s history. Horgan is known for his kindness, his work with children (he previously taught at Cardinal Newman High School), and his sense of humor.
Horgan has worked at St. Lucy since 2013, and his welcoming attitude is contagious, DeGennaro said. “He’s young, influential and appealing.”
Nearly everyone who speaks about Horgan, who turned 47 on July 4, mentions his youth, and many praise the bishop for sending a youthful priest.
To be viable, a church must attract new members, and that’s certainly part of Horgan’s plan. He welcomes families, encouraging them to sit in the front row. He says parents shouldn’t feel they need to remove a rambunctious tot from the sanctuary during Mass.
To him, a church’s youngest parishioner is just as important as its oldest. A children’s Mass on Friday is becoming one of the most popular services.
The church, which grew from 500 families in 1995 to 1,300 members today, is a multicultural fishbowl, with different cultures living in harmony, all following Horgan’s open-armed example.
Pastoring this new generation of Catholics means embracing the growing Spanish-speaking population. Dianne Barreneche spoke on behalf of the parish’s Hispanic community at Horgan’s installation, praising him for being “so devoted he learned Spanish so he could say Mass in Spanish to his Hispanic parishioners.” The congregation laughed, imagining Father Brian’s Irish-accented Spanish.
Bishop Gerald M. Barbarito spoke at the installation, as did Carl Feldman, the mayor of Highland Beach, and several other civic and church leaders. Hundreds of faithful showed up to take in the pageantry.
Horgan’s self-deprecating sense of humor and way with words set the tone. The young pastor is so agile with words, Barbarito said, he was adding Horgan’s name to his short list of potential eulogists.
The bishop spoke about how well St. Lucy serves its faithful and praised the “wonderful relationship” that the parish has cultivated with the town.
Before moving to the parish hall for a luncheon featuring Irish foods (corned beef, boiled potatoes and carrots), Horgan closed by quoting the Irish poet Keats and then said that the words of St. John Vianney best described his feelings about his parish: “A priest is not a priest for himself, but for others.”
Perhaps DeGennaro said it best: “This little church on A1A you can call home.”
No special events have been planned to mark the 50th anniversary.

Rick Felberbaum cuts pastry for ice cream sandwiches at Proper Ice Cream. Frustrated by slow progress in Boca Raton, he opened his shop in Delray Beach. Jerry Lower/The Coastal Star

By Mary Hladky

As his passion for the practice of law faded, Rick Felberbaum wanted to pursue a new one.
After years of studying and experimenting, he perfected a recipe for what he thought was the best ice cream he had tasted, with innovative flavors such as strawberry and toasted pistachio and passionfruit and salted caramel.
The next step was finding the right spot for an ice cream shop. Felberbaum bought a building at 310 E. Palmetto Park Road, a potentially customer-rich location within walking distance of a number of restaurants, across the street from the Palmetto Promenade apartments and townhomes and a few blocks from the Mark at CityScape apartments.
He then asked city officials to change the allowable use of the first floor of his building from office space to a 971-square-foot ice cream shop.
It took him nearly two years to get approval from Boca Raton City Council members, sitting as Community Redevelopment Agency commissioners, on Jan. 8. Yet he still needed to jump through more hoops before he could launch his business.
Felberbaum threw in the towel. He opened Proper Ice Cream in June — in Delray Beach.
“The city took such a long time to approve my plans, I had to make other plans,” he said in March. “I had no other choice.”
Felberbaum isn’t alone in his frustration with the city’s time-consuming and costly process for approving plans in the downtown.
Critics say the city makes it so difficult for small-business owners that they are shunning the city’s center.
John Gore, president of Boca Beautiful, which advocates for responsible city growth, calls it a “small business-unfriendly atmosphere. The outcomes are stifling small-business growth in downtown Boca.”
“The property owners and business owners downtown are in the midst of a very, if not hostile, at least extremely bureaucratic business environment right now,” said attorney Michael Liss, founder of the Downtown Business Alliance.
The city has strict ordinances governing downtown development that hold large developers and small-business owners to the same standards.
The intent of the ordinances is to guard against overdevelopment and to protect small-town charm in the downtown. They limit building height and density, require developers to provide open space and adequate parking and press developers to use architectural designs in harmony with those of legendary architect Addison Mizner, among many other things.
Large developers have plenty of complaints about these rules and the length of time it takes to get approvals, too, but they have deep pockets and legal teams. Small-business owners can be hard-pressed to pay for attorneys to help them navigate the process, and for costs imposed on them such as for a city consultant’s review of their projects.
Politics plays a role as well. The City Council has faced a backlash from vocal downtown residents who contend the downtown is overdeveloped, with too many large condo and apartment projects already built and too many more in the pipeline.
The most recently elected council members, Andrea O’Rourke and Monica Mayotte, ran as “resident-friendly” candidates who pledged not to ignore the wishes of their constituents.
Some observers say as a result, council members hold developers’ and business owners’ feet to the fire in strictly complying with the rules, and that city staff follows suit. That has translated into a very difficult environment for people like Felberbaum.
The ordinances are not tailored to address all the many different projects that can come before the CRA.
In the case of Proper Ice Cream, the main ordinance governing downtown development has no provision for an ice cream shop. So, it was classified as “retail high” — even though it wasn’t that at all — and subject to the same review as a large condo or hotel project.
City Council members are aware of some of these deficiencies and say they are streamlining the process. They all but apologized to Felberbaum at the Jan. 8 meeting just before they approved his shop.
“Thanks for staying the course,” then-Mayor Susan Haynie told him. “This is a poster child for why we need small-scale IDA [individual development approval] processes so we don’t have to go through the full review process that we do for a larger, more extensive building.”
“We are trying to come up with a way to make it easier for small businesses to succeed, ” said Jeremy Rodgers, who was deputy mayor at the time.
“We can all scream for ice cream, but it shouldn’t have to take months of screaming to get there,” said Mayor Scott Singer.

Luff’s Fish House opened in February in downtown Boca after the owner battled for nearly four years. The Coastal Star

Process cost Luff’s ‘a fortune’
Restaurateur Arturo Gismondi faced similar difficulties as he tried to open Luff’s Fish House in a historic 1927 house at 390 E. Palmetto Park Road.
The architect, Derek Vander Ploeg, described the process as “a herculean effort” that consumed nearly four years and cost Gismondi “a fortune.”
The last hurdles presented themselves in December as Gismondi prepared to open.
He sought permission to use a different roofing material than what was originally approved because the original was no longer available.
He also had painted a portion of the building sea foam green rather than a reddish brown that had been previously approved.
The city cited him for using the wrong color, and he had to appear before a special master who told him he had 90 days to repaint, Vander Ploeg said.
Gismondi did so immediately, but also asked the city to allow him to use sea foam green, or what the city calls spring mint — a change that required an amendment to the IDA needing CRA approval.
But before that, he had to seek an OK from the Community Appearance Board. The city’s consultant also had to weigh in for a second time and concluded green complied with the city’s standards better than reddish brown.
“It has been painful,” Vander Ploeg said in mid-March, while still awaiting a verdict from the city. “It is still unresolved for something that should be simple.”
While the city has begun streamlining its procedures, none of the changes adopted so far would have helped Felberbaum and Gismondi, who could not be reached for comment.
The city, for example, has eliminated the Zoning Board of Adjustment and transferred its responsibilities to the Planning and Zoning Board and has simplified the process for abandonment of rights of way and easements. City staff is working on proposals for additional changes.
The city has not acted on streamlining proposals submitted in 2012 and, after revisions, in 2014 and approved by the Downtown Boca Raton Advisory Committee.

Critics: ‘Streamlining’ isn’t

Vander Ploeg and Glenn Gromann, a former Planning and Zoning Board member who has considered running for mayor, headed up the streamlining proposals.
“They have streamlined nothing,” Gromann said. “Wherever they tried to streamline, they made the rest of the process longer. Since they started to talk about streamlining, it now takes six to 12 months longer” to get approval for a project.
His recommendations included allowing amendments to site plans to be reviewed and approved by city staff and the city manager to shorten the process. Similarly, in the case of a minor revision to an IDA, such as a change in paint color, city staff and the city manager could make the call.
Vander Ploeg said the ordinance governing downtown development already allows city staff and the city manager to review small projects and, if they comply with city ordinances, to be placed on the CRA’s consent agenda so they could be approved quickly. If a CRA commissioner has questions or concerns, he or she could ask to pull the matter from the consent agenda for discussion or debate.
But that provision is rarely used, he said, because CRA commissioners and city staff prefer a full review of every project to avoid criticism.
Liss said the main problem is how the CRA is structured. City Council members also comprise the CRA board, and City Manager Leif Ahnell also is the CRA executive director. He wants an independent CRA with its own executive director.
“Our elected officials have absolutely no vision for what to do about business or property ownership in the downtown,” he said. “A CRA is supposed to be an independent economic engine. Ours just acts to get in the way of anybody conducting business or improving real estate.”
An independent CRA could streamline the approval process just for the downtown, he said.
While the city grinds away at streamlining, Luff’s Fish House opened in February, the latest addition to Gismondi’s portfolio of restaurants that includes Trattoria Romana and La Nouvelle Maison.
Felberbaum, who still has a small law practice, is both making and selling his ice cream at 1445 N. Congress in Delray Beach.
But even before selling directly to the public, he launched a wholesale business providing ice cream to renowned chef Clay Conley’s Buccan and Imoto restaurants in Palm Beach and Grato in West Palm Beach, as well as 1000 North, which counts former NBA star Michael Jordan as an investor, in Jupiter. It also is sold at Joseph’s Classic Market in Boca Raton and Palm Beach Gardens and will soon be sold at a Joseph’s coming just west of Delray Beach.
Felberbaum hopes to go national soon; he signed a contract for a national marketing campaign.
“It is very exciting,” he said in June. “The potential is amazing.”
And his business space in Boca Raton? It’s on the market. Asking price: $2.3 million.

A construction crew works on the foundation of a separate rectory in 1987. Photos provided by the Highland Beach Library

A statue of St. Lucy is visible from A1A south of Linton Boulevard.

St. Lucy timeline

Oct. 3, 1968: St. Lucy Church is officially established after the Diocese of Miami purchased a tract of land, overgrown and mostly mangrove swamp. Under the direction of the founding pastor, the late Rev. Michael Keller, a temporary chapel was erected for services.

1972: A temporary church is built under the direction of the Rev. Patrick Slevin, the second pastor, and dedicated by Archbishop Coleman Carroll of Miami. 

1974: The Rev. Anthony J. Chepanis becomes the third pastor in May. The church buys the adjacent property to the south for a rectory. 

1980s: Needing a larger church, St. Lucy plans to expand, but a lawsuit with Florida’s environmental agency stops the plans because of the protected mangroves. After an arduous, nearly three-year legal battle, the church loses and is forced to grant an easement of more than an acre to the state of Florida for the preservation of the mangroves.

1984: The property is transferred from the Diocese of Miami to the Diocese of Palm Beach.

On Feb. 12, 1986, Dr. Adelmo Dunghe received his ashes from Father Anthony Chepanis on Ash Wednesday at St. Lucy. Boca Raton News file photo by Tracey Trumbull

1987: The new church is officially dedicated by the Most Rev. Thomas V. Daily, the first Bishop of the Palm Beach Diocese, on Dec. 5.

1992: The new rectory and offices are built close to A1A, (not in protected mangroves). The Most Rev. J. Keith Symons, bishop of the Palm Beach Diocese, dedicated the rectory on Dec. 13.

1997: Father Gerald Grace becomes the church’s fourth pastor.

2013: Father D. Brian Horgan joins Father Grace midyear.

2016: Father Grace celebrates 50 years as a priest in June and retires soon after.

2018: Horgan is officially named St. Lucy’s fifth pastor on May 1 and formally installed June 10. In recognition of its 50 years, St. Lucy is honored on June 20 with this official statement: “The Most Rev. Gerald M. Barbarito, Bishop of Palm Beach, joyfully extends his prayerful congratulations to the people of Saint Lucy Catholic Church in Highland Beach on their golden jubilee. We give thanks to God for the many priests and faithful who have tirelessly given of themselves to Highland Beach and the surrounding area. Thank you for 50 years of loving service to the Gospel of Jesus Christ through your faith and good works.”

ABOVE: The parish budget in 1968 reveals the church’s early expenses — and how much money collections raised.
BELOW: A Sun-Sentinel newspaper clipping discusses the legal turmoil in the community before the church was approved.

By Rich Pollack

Neighbors west of Pompano Beach first noticed the 2013 Hyundai Sonata in a vacant field in April, shortly before the body of affable Highland Beach resident Elizabeth Cabral, 85, was found in her apartment across from the ocean.
Cabral’s car, recovered after someone called the Broward County Sheriff’s Office to report a suspicious vehicle, is just one piece of evidence Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office detectives have collected as they try meticulously to piece together what is thought to be only the second homicide in the history of the small coastal community.
Late last month, the Sheriff’s Office released a one-page, heavily redacted report that confirmed Cabral’s death was a homicide, something many in Highland Beach — including many of her neighbors — had long suspected.
Although the Sheriff’s Office has been unusually tight-lipped about the case, the report provides a glimpse into what may have happened to the woman known to friends and relatives as Betty.
The murder weapon, according to the report, was either a knife or a sharp cutting instrument and there were no signs of forced entry into the condominium. In fact, the door to the unit in the Penthouse Highlands condominium along State Road A1A was unlocked on the night of April 30 when a Highland Beach police officer went to check on Cabral after the car was found.
In addition to homicide, the report states the suspect or suspects committed armed robbery and auto theft.
The crime has left residents and relatives wondering why anyone would want to hurt Cabral.
“She was a wonderful woman,” said Alan Croce, president of the Penthouse Highlands Association and a retired high-ranking law enforcement official in New York. “She was the most outgoing person you’d ever meet.”
Croce said he saw Cabral, who used a walker to get around and was often helped by aides, about a week and a half before police discovered her body.
“She gave me a big hug and a kiss,” he said. “One of her aides was with her.”
Robert Cabral, a nephew of Betty Cabral’s late husband, William, said the couple were comfortable financially, but suspected there was nothing of great value in the apartment that would be taken in a robbery.
“They were not very extravagant,” he said.
The couple, who lived in Cambridge, Mass., before moving to Highland Beach 22 years ago, were together for about 50 years and had no children, Robert Cabral said.
William Cabral worked for the city of Cambridge, mostly with veterans, his nephew said, while Betty held administrative positions at a hospital in town.
After her husband, who suffered from dementia, died in 2017, relatives urged Betty to move into an assisted-living facility. But she chose to stay in her home and remain independent.
Croce said she was friendly with other residents in the building, but didn’t have many visitors other than her aides and a financial adviser who visited regularly.
In recent years, Croce said, Cabral stopped driving and relied heavily on her aides to get around. The aides, he said, would drive her car.
Robert Cabral, who lives on the west coast of the state, said he didn’t know his aunt had died — and didn’t know the circumstances of her death — until very recently.
“Months went by and we knew nothing,” he said. “We don’t even know where the body is.”
He said he and other relatives hope to reach an out-of-state relative of Betty Cabral’s whom the Sheriff’s Office most likely notified of her death.
Deputies towed Cabral’s Hyundai Sonata from near Pompano Beach to the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office headquarters for processing. The keys were on the floorboard.
Like Robert Cabral, Croce is seeking more information about Cabral’s death, hoping to calm other residents in the usually quiet building.
Major crimes are rare in Highland Beach, a town that has a full Police Department with officers routinely on patrol. Highland Beach has repeatedly been rated among the top 10 safest cities in Florida by organizations that conduct ratings.
Highland Beach’s only other confirmed homicide occurred in 1994 when someone fatally stabbed Richard P. Ramaglia, 49, in his home in the 4000 block of South Ocean Boulevard.
Palm Beach County Sheriff’s deputies later arrested Mary Juhnke, 23. Juhnke told detectives an argument over whether she should have an abortion led to the stabbing.
Juhnke later pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and was sentenced to 17 years in prison in December 1994.

By Steve Plunkett

The Greater Boca Raton Beach & Park District wants the city to pay part of the cost of rebuilding the Ocean Breeze golf course.
District Chairman Robert Rollins calls it “Erin’s question” — “How much are they going to give us from the sale of the municipal course?” — after Commissioner Erin Wright first raised the issue months ago.
Wright and her colleagues are sure to seek an answer from the Boca Raton City Council at the next joint meeting July 23. At the May 9 joint meeting, two Boca Raton residents asked council members the same thing.
“I would encourage you to seriously consider not burdening the new golf course with so much debt when there is a substantial amount of proceeds coming from the sale of the existing golf course,” resident Kevin Wrenne said.
Barry Tetrault called the $65 million the city will reap from the sale a “windfall.”
“I haven’t seen or heard anyone on the City Council even acknowledge the fact that they’re going to put money into the [Ocean Breeze] golf course. That’s scary, it really is,” Tetrault said. “Are you going to chip in for the financing of this course?”
Mayor Scott Singer replied that the council has not discussed how to spend the $65 million.
Rollins, at the next Beach & Park District meeting, summarized the reaction.
“It was like watching a hot potato getting tossed there on the council — nobody wanted to touch that. ‘Well, we’ll get back with you, we haven’t thought about that yet,’ ” Rollins said.
Commissioner Craig Ehrnst agreed with Wright and Rollins.
“I don’t think we should foot the bill for everything,” Ehrnst said.
Their request to help pay for reconstructing Ocean Breeze raised alarms on the city side that the district may be running out of money.
“We’re hearing … that they’re wanting us to participate [in rebuilding Ocean Breeze] and we have no plans or anything in the budget or forecast for funding that sort of thing,” City Manager Leif Ahnell told council members a week after the joint meeting.
“We have a number of other projects that are already on the books to be funded by the Beach & Park District that we’re having concerns they may not be stepping up as our partners to pay their fair share, in the millions and millions of dollars,” Ahnell continued.
City Council member Monica Mayotte, at a candidate forum before she won her seat in March, said some of the money from the golf course sale should go toward Ocean Breeze.
“That makes sense — golf for golf,” Mayotte said then.

By Steve Plunkett

Who is a resident, and how much should he or she pay to use park facilities?
Those are two questions the Boca Raton City Council and the Greater Boca Raton Beach & Park District will try to answer at a joint meeting July 23.
Michael Kalvort, the city’s recreation services director, gave council members an overview of the mishmash of fees people pay at parks depending on whether they live in Boca Raton, outside the city but in the district, or somewhere else.
For example, Boca Raton rents pavilions at Spanish River Park to nonresidents at a higher, nonresident fee, while the Beach & Park District has a policy not to rent its pavilions in Sugar Sand Park to nonresidents.
“It’s not the most easy thing to understand, but that’s part of the issue at least from my perspective,” Kalvort said at the council’s June 11 workshop. Even defining who is a resident is problematic.
“I can’t tell you the amount of times we have people coming in from unincorporated Boca who have a Boca address and think they’re a city resident,” Kalvort said.
Some of the biggest differences, however, come in renting a baseball field or buying a tennis membership. The Beach & Park District charges residents $17.75 an hour for a baseball field; nonresidents pay $53.25 an hour. Boca Raton’s hourly fees are $25 for residents and $140 for nonresidents.
Kalvort then turned to tennis memberships.
“There are three different facilities that charge three different rates,” he said.
A family tennis membership at the district’s Swim and Racquet Center is $553 for residents and $1,598 for nonresidents. At the city’s tennis center the charges are $323 for resident families and $834 for nonresidents. At Patch Reef Park they are $213 for residents and $384 for nonresidents.
A family swimming membership at the district’s center is $127 for residents; at the city’s Meadows Park pool it’s $164.
“Trying to explain all that to our citizens over the phone or sometimes even in person gets to be very difficult and very complicated,” Kalvort said.
When it comes to sports leagues that use the parks, 36 percent of the current 6,100 youth athletes are nonresidents.
“So about 2,100 nonresidents are utilizing our fields,” Kalvort said. He suggested that when council members meet with Beach & Park District commissioners they consider limiting participation or raising fees for nonresidents.
Council member Monica Mayotte agreed that the system needs to be easier.
“I don’t want us to lose revenue on any changes that we might make, but we need to simplify this for everyone involved,” Mayotte said.
District Chairman Robert Rollins said a number of things Kalvort mentioned should be explored at the joint meeting.
“Having been on this commission for 23 years, I can’t tell you the number of times that we have talked about user fees,” said Rollins, who was re-elected unopposed for another four-year term in June, as was District Commissioner Susan Vogelgesang.
Rollins also recalled his 10 years on the city’s parks advisory board.
“Whenever the discussion came up, ‘Well, they do it this way in Waukegan,’ we’d say, ‘Well, this is Boca. This is a whole lot different than these other areas where you are looking at comparisons,’ ” he said.

By Mary Hladky

Tri-Rail officials have chosen their preferred location for a second station in Boca Raton, but can’t yet guarantee it will be built.
The preferred site is the former King’s Deli property along the CSX railroad tracks at Military Trail and Northwest 19th Street, officials said at a sparsely attended June 20 public meeting at the Spanish River Library.
A runner-up site is just to the south, but it is not as attractive to Tri-Rail officials because it is not directly on Military Trail and so is not as easily accessible.
But at least two obstacles must be cleared before the station becomes a reality.
Tri-Rail needs to get funding to build the station and acquire land. Officials peg the station’s cost at $17 million.
The commuter rail had about $8 million from the Florida Department of Transportation and the Palm Beach Transportation Planning Agency to evaluate potential station sites and to design the station. On June 5, the Federal Transit Administration approved the location, clearing the way for Tri-Rail to seek local, state and federal money.
Its ability to build on either of its preferred locations is uncertain. Developer and landowner Crocker Partners owns both parcels.
Crocker Partners managing partner Angelo Bianco, now in a legal dispute with the city over his proposed Midtown development, said he would not sell either one.
“We have a plan for a development,” he said in late June. The preferred station location “is smack in the midst of that.”
Bianco did not divulge details of his new plan for land his company owns, except to say it is an “extensive redevelopment.”
Tri-Rail spokeswoman Bonnie Arnold said she could not comment on what effect that will have on agency plans.
“We have not even discussed it,” she said June 29.
Communication between Tri-Rail and Crocker has been scant.
Tri-Rail officials said they could not contact Crocker about the land until the FTA approved its preferred location for a station, and had not done so as of the June 20 public meeting.
Bianco said he called Tri-Rail officials after they announced their preferred station site. He said they confirmed the location, but did not ask if he would be willing to sell the land.
Litigation between Crocker Partners and the city further muddies the waters.
Crocker Partners led a coalition of landowners proposing a “live, work, play” redevelopment of about 300 acres in Midtown, between Interstate 95 and the Town Center mall.
Crocker Partners originally supported the second Boca Raton station as a complement to its transit-oriented development where residents of up to 2,500 proposed apartments would walk or take shuttles to their jobs at nearby office buildings or retail stores, and to restaurants and nightlife. Its representatives had hinted they might consider donating land for the station.
More recently, Crocker Partners said the station, while desirable, was not necessary to make Midtown a success.
But momentum for Midtown came to a halt in January, when the Boca Raton City Council delayed voting on two ordinances that spelled out how Midtown could be redeveloped and instead voted to create a “small area plan” for the area that would not be completed until the end of this year.
Crocker Partners sued the city in May, saying its actions created an impermissible building moratorium. By then, other Midtown landowners had started moving ahead with their own redevelopment plans.
If it’s ever built, the station would have two parking lots with 75 spaces, and a drop-off area for passengers getting rides to the station. Buses and shuttles could access the station and bicycle parking would be available. The current scheduled opening date is in 2023.
A 2016 Tri-Rail study found that about 1,000 riders were projected to use the new station on weekdays, enough to support construction. But Tri-Rail also expected that to rise if Midtown landowners built residential.
Several residents attending the public meeting voiced objections to the second station.
Bobbye Miller questioned why Boca Raton needed two stations. “Everyone in my neighborhood is not for this,” she said.
Anthony Catalina, director of planning and capital development for Tri-Rail’s governing agency, said the Yamato Road station is Tri-Rail’s busiest, and rider surveys showed demand for a station in the Midtown area because it would be a more convenient location for them.

Boca Raton Airport Operations Manager Travis Bryan carries a bag of trash from an international flight to the incinerator at the U.S. Customs facility. Jerry Lower/The Coastal Star

By Rich Pollack

At the Boca Raton Airport, trash has become a very big deal.
Since the airport’s new U.S. Customs and Border Protection facility opened a few weeks ago, the airport has been burning trash coming off international flights in a new on-site, medical-grade incinerator, reducing everything placed inside to ash.
The process of destroying any foreign materials that could bring disease or blight, or create other problems in the United States, is an arduous and detailed one, required and overseen by both customs and the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
“One of the highest priorities of the USDA and customs is to make sure that no contaminants enter the country through trash,” said Airport Director Clara Bennett. “That’s why we have such strict procedures in place to make sure everything is burned before it goes into the community.”
Boca Raton is one of only a few airports in the state — and the only one in South Florida — to have an incinerator to burn trash coming off airplanes that cross international airspace.
Other airports, including Palm Beach International, Fort Lauderdale Executive and Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International, use a hauling service to dispose of garbage.
But as plans were being developed for the new customs facility, Boca Raton officials determined it would be most cost effective — and more efficient — to purchase the 1,830-degree incinerator rather than contract with a hauler.
Officials estimate that having a customs- and USDA-certified hauler come to the airport to remove the international trash twice a week would cost about $20,000 a year, almost as much as the $26,000 incinerator, especially since there would be an additional charge for extra pickups.
“This is a much more cost-effective process,” Bennett said, adding that other airports are in contact with Boca Raton to learn more about the incinerator. “The unit will probably pay for itself in a year.”
Since the incinerator is on-site — in a locked area adjacent to the customs facility — Boca Raton Airport staff can also be more responsive and can burn airplane trash, including food waste, on relatively short notice.
All seven of the Boca Raton Airport Authority’s full-time staff members have been trained in a process, which along with other details, was hammered out during a six-month period in cooperation with customs and USDA officials.
As part of the process, the Boca Raton Airport is now an officially regulated USDA garbage-processing facility.
As a result, taking out the trash at the customs center is a lot more complicated than just bringing the garbage barrel out to the curb for pickup.
According to airport Operations Manager Travis Bryan, trash from each plane coming from out of the country — usually between 15 or 20 a week — must be placed in a special trash bag 3 mils thick, then sealed and deposited in specially marked trash cans outside the customs center. Once full, the trash barrels are padlocked.
Although the airport staff has 72 hours to dispose of the trash, Bryan says members of his three-person operations crew check the cans every day and burn the trash when the cans are full.
“Everything we put in has to be reduced to ash,” Bryan said, adding that trash will be burned until it meets the requirement.
A log of each burn is kept and a detailed process is outlined should an accidental spill occur before the trash makes it to the incinerator.
Bennett said she is in the early stages of looking into the possibility of working with veterans organizations and scouting organizations to use the incinerator to properly dispose of retired American flags.
So far, the incinerator has been kept pretty busy with the new customs facility handling 61 flights with 215 passengers in its first four weeks of operation.
“It’s about what we expected,” Bennett said.
Among the flights coming into Boca Raton are those that originated at airports in Ireland, Portugal, Canada, Venezuela and the Bahamas.