By Rich Pollack

    A war of words between a candidate for Highland Beach Town Commission and the leader of the church that is the town’s only polling location prompted town leaders to move the March 14 election to Town Hall.  
    In a 3-2 vote late last month, commissioners agreed to move the polling place to the town’s public library despite being informed that leaders of St. Lucy Catholic Church had a change of heart and rethought their reluctance to continue serving as a polling place.
    Last month, the Rev. D. Brian Horgan, of St. Lucy Catholic Church, told the town the church would no longer be a polling place unless he received an apology from Town Commission candidate Carl Gehman.  
    Gehman, who had scheduled a meeting with Horgan to ask for equal time after hearing from a third party that the church had voiced support for another candidate — a claim Horgan denies — was asked to leave the church office several times.  
    Church leaders say Gehman became “very agitated” when he and his wife arrived at the church for a meeting that was canceled at the last minute because of a scheduling conflict.
    “This whole thing wouldn’t have happened if he had just sat down with me,” Gehman said.
    Horgan’s memos revoking permission to use the church as a polling place sent town officials scrambling to find a new location.  
    During a special meeting late last month, however, former Vice Mayor Ron Brown — who is running for mayor — told commissioners he was bringing a message from Horgan that the church would be more than happy to host the election.
    That decision brought a sharp response from Vice Mayor Bill Weitz, who said he thinks the church reconsidered to provide an advantage to a few candidates in the election.
    “This is simply a political stunt to support certain candidates,” Weitz said. “I think it’s time we go on record to say we can have the election on a neutral site.”
    Weitz said he thinks the initial actions of the church, in revoking permission to hold the election on its property and to not allow election parking on the site unless it received an apology from Gehman, were unfair to the town, which was an uninvolved third party in the dispute.
    “It should be clear that there was an inappropriate ultimatum on this commission,” Weitz said. “We were being coerced.”
    Weitz’s motion to move the election drew support from Commissioner Rhoda Zelniker and Mayor Bernard Featherman and opposition from Commissioners Carl Feldman and Lou Stern.
    “I think it’s part of the charm of a small town to hold an election in the Town Hall,” Zelniker said.
    Feldman, who is running for mayor against Brown, said he had no problem with holding the election at the church, but said because there are eight candidates running for three seats, it would be best to have a “candidate-free zone” to make sure candidates didn’t get in the way of church members going to Mass.
    Stern said he thinks moving the election to town facilities would be an inconvenience to residents since the library would have to be closed for the day and other facilities could be impacted.
    Because of limited parking, Highland Beach Town Hall and the adjacent library have not been considered as a polling place in the past, especially with the availability of the church, which has many more available parking spots.
    Interim Town Manager Valerie Oakes told commissioners she is planning to close administrative offices in Town Hall and the library on election day in order to free up additional parking spots.
    Horgan said that the church would open its parking lot — which is just a short walk from Town Hall — to the town on election day.
    Oakes said the town has 57 spaces available, including five handicapped spots, and that the Police Department will be available to assist with traffic control and parking if needed.
    She also pointed out that many residents walked to the polling place or rode their bicycles.
    Resident Barry Donaldson, who is running against Zelniker for a three-year term, said he was concerned that the change in polling places could confuse some voters who have been voting at the church for years.
    Oakes, however, said the town will be conducting a communication campaign, including letters to registered voters, to ensure residents know of the change.  
    In addition to Gehman, those running for the two-year seat Feldman is vacating are Melissa Ebbs, Elyse Riesa and Peter Rodis.

Las Ventanas has been sold to Pollack Shores Real Estate Group

Photo provided

By Christine Davis

    Las Ventanas, a mixed-use development on 15 acres in Boynton Beach, sold for $109.31 million in mid-December. Prudential Insurance Company of America, a New Jersey corporation, and Epoch Properties sold to Pollack Shores Real Estate Group of Atlanta. ARA, a Newmark Co., represented the seller.
    The development, which was built in 2009 at Woolbright Road and Federal Highway, includes 42,000 square feet of retail space, as well as 494 housing units, which were more than 90 percent occupied at the time of sale, according to ARA.
                                
    For sale: 7,892-square-foot, single-story building on North Federal in Boca Raton; built in 1981, renovated in 2009, barrel tile roof, lush landscaping, parking for 36 vehicles; asking $3 million.
    If and when someone pays the price, the American Red Cross will vacate its Boca Raton office and employees will work at home, at the West Palm Beach office, and, of course, at local swimming pools, condo clubhouses — any place where swimming lessons and CPR classes are needed.
    Real estate is far less important than work done in the community, says Robin Hicks Nunley, executive director of the local Red Cross chapter. The Red Cross doesn’t need its own building to carry out its work. And, as always, it can use more volunteers.
                                
    The Morton Group Inc. plans to commission two sculptures for the sculpture garden of its new condominium, Metropolitan. Michael and Brad Morton, a father-son team, have invited South Florida artists to present their portfolios for consideration.
    Artists should submit portfolios to info@MetropolitanDelray.com.
    “Our vision for the Metropolitan is to become the epicenter of the flourishing Delray Beach art scene,” said Michael Morton. “The Sculpture Garden and the Metropolitan reflect our founding principles of creating contemporary, art-inspired living with the highest level of design, architecture and quality finishes.”
    The Metropolitan, a luxury residential project to be completed in 2018, is at 33 SE Third Ave., Delray Beach. Designed by Delray Beach architect Richard Jones, the five-story building will include one- and two-bedroom units up to 1,600 square feet, and priced from the $600,000s. It will also have retail shops, office space, a rooftop deck and a public plaza.
                                
    Premier Listings, at Royal Palm Place, 310 S. Federal Highway, Boca Raton, recently launched its luxury division, Premier Listings Luxury, which focuses on properties of more than $1 million. Veteran agent Jennifer Govberg heads the new division. For information, call 844-521-SOLD.
                                
    Gar Finnvold has joined Douglas Elliman’s Delray Beach office, at 900 E. Atlantic Ave., in its Sports & Entertainment Division. Finnvold has more than 16 years of real estate experience and specializes in East Delray Beach, Boca Raton and south Palm Beach County properties.
    Finnvold was a pitcher for the Boston Red Sox in 1994, making eight starts.
                                
    Bowen Realty has opened a new office at 851 SE Sixth Ave., Delray Beach. Agents are Katy Moraskie, Robert Temelkoski and Kathy Hoynoski, and the broker owner is Darell Bowen. For information, visit www.DarellBowenRealty.com.
                                
    Hypoluxo Island resident/Realtor Patricia “Patti” Towle, who moved her license from Illustrated Properties, Manalapan, to Sotheby’s International, Palm Beach, in October, listed two non-waterfront properties on Hypoluxo Island in January. Neither property has been on the market for more than 20 years.
They are: 434 Beach Curve Road, a two-bedroom home priced at $639,999; and 205 SE Atlantic Drive, a two-bedroom home close to the beach, priced at $614,995.
                                
    At RE/MAX Complete Solutions, 17 of its 18 agents received company awards in 2016.
    Of that number, during 2016, eight achieved the Executive Club status for earning $50,000-$100,000 in commissions, eight achieved the 100 percent Club status for earning $100,000-$250,000 in commissions, and one achieved the Platinum Club status for earning $250,000-$500,000 in commissions.
    Also, one agent received Hall of Fame status, a RE/MAX career award for agents who have  earned at least $1 million in commissions during their careers with RE/MAX. The broker/owner of RE/MAX Complete Solutions is Jenniffer Lee. Its two locations are 199 SE 12th Ave., Deerfield Beach, and 21301 Powerline Road, Suite 106, Boca Raton.
                                
    Douglas Elliman released its fourth-quarter South Florida reports in mid-January. Overall, for Boca Raton, the report noted that the condo market outperformed the single-family market this quarter, and it noted a sharp decline in luxury condo inventory.
    Among luxury condos (starting at $610,000), compared to this time last year median sales price surged 69.2 percent to $1.1 million; days-on-market was 76 days, down from 121 days; and listing inventory fell 29.8 percent to 275.
    For luxury single-family homes (starting at $869,900), median sales price fell 23.5 percent to $1.31 million; days-on-market was 159 days, up from 117; and listing inventory jumped 36.5 percent to 565.
    For the Delray Beach market, the report noted that prices closer to the beach were soft, and in general, the luxury market price trends did not keep pace with overall market. Compared to last year, metrics for luxury single-family homes (starting at $1.2 million) showed that median sales price increased 2.4 percent to $1.7 million; and days-on-market was 143, up from 115.
    Trends for luxury condos (starting at $285,000) showed that median sales price fell 12.1 percent to $450,000; and days-on-market was 110, up from 84.
                                
    Club President David Dweck will speak on real estate trends at the 23rd anniversary meeting of the Boca Real Estate Investment Club at 7 p.m. Feb. 9. He will offer tips for investing in the real estate market. Registration begins at 6:30 p.m. The meeting, which costs $20, will be held at the Renaissance Boca Raton Hotel, 2000 NW 19 St., Boca Raton. For information, call 391-7325.
                                
    The Realtors Association of the Palm Beaches with the City of Boynton Beach will host their fifth Annual Barrier Free 5K Charity Run, Walk & Roll at Congress Avenue Barrier Free Park, 3111 S. Congress Ave., on Feb. 11. The 5K starts at 7:30 a.m. and the registration fee is $35. For information, contact Wally Majors at 742-6255 or majorsw@bbfl.us or visit www.boyntonfoundation.org.
                                
    Celebrating the completion of extensive renovations, the YMCA of South Palm Beach County will host a ribbon- cutting ceremony from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Feb. 14 at its DeVos-Blum Family YMCA branch, 9600 S. Military Trail, Boynton Beach. Renovations include a new performance training area, a wellness center with new cardio and free weight equipment, updated locker rooms, an outside patio area, and new tile and paint. The event is open to the public and there will be door prizes, refreshments, demos and tours.
                                
    In support of Naoma Donnelley Haggin Boys & Girls Club, more than 200 guests attended the Holiday Trunk Show Preview Party in November and even more shoppers bought holiday gifts during the following two days. The trunk show raised more than $100,000 for the club.
    Sponsors included The Seagate Hotel & Spa; Searcy, Denney, Scarola, Barnhart and Shipley PA; Lang Realty; and the Mark Gerretson Memorial Fishing Tournament.
    Co-chairwomen of the Trunk Show were Susan Mullin, Kari Shipley and Lynn Wilkins.  
    The Naoma Donnelly Boys & Girls Club of Delray Beach is located at 1451 SW Seventh St.
                                
    At their fifth annual Toy Giveaway in December, Abe Ovadia and his team at the Ovadia Law Group in Boca Raton gave a holiday toy to each of more than 300 members of the Boys & Girls Clubs of Palm Beach County. The children were bused to the event, where they received toys from Santa Claus their parents had selected from a catalog.
    Ten Publix locations donated food, which was distributed to the participating families. Ovadia Law Group is at 4800 N. Federal Highway, Suite D204, Boca Raton.
                                
    The Boca Chamber’s Golden Bell Education Foundation’s Young Entrepreneurs Academy CEO Round Table and Elevator Pitch Contest is 5:30-8 p.m.  Feb. 8, in Parrish Hall at Saint Andrew’s School, 3900 Jog Road, Boca Raton, The event is free and open to the public.
    At this event, 17 students, who have been working for four months on their projects, will each do a 60-second pitch for his or her business. The top three performances will be awarded by judges Michelle Adams from CenterState Bank, Tara Auclair from Modernizing Medicine, Michael Orr from Minuteman Press, and Emily Santos from IBM.
    Also, a panel of Palm Beach County executives will answer questions from the audience and discuss their paths to professional success. Scheduled to participate are: Daniel Cane, CEO and co-founder of Modernizing Medicine; Andrew Duffel, president and CEO of the Research Park at FAU; John Duffy, founder and CEO of 3Cinteractive; Patricia Maczko, Florida market president at Comerica Bank; and Ira Bornstein, COO of TouchSuite.
                                
    In early January, the Cultural Council of Palm Beach County’s second conversation of this season’s Culture & Cocktails, “Heritage Values,” attracted more than 140 people. Two star appraisers from Antiques Roadshow on PBS, Kathleen Guzman, managing director of New York from Heritage Auctions, and Nicholas Dawes, Heritage’s vice president of special collections, were interviewed by Scott Simmons.
                                
    FloridaEscape.com has rated a food tour that stops at emerging art districts in Boynton Beach and Delray Beach as one of the “Best Food Tours” in town.
    “The best rating from FloridaEscape.com is humbling, which motivates us to keep on striving to make the Taste History Culinary Tour one of the best authentic experiences providing locals and visitors with a fun and insightful cultural food, art and history tour,” said Lori Durante, the nonprofit operation’s executive director.
    Each tour includes tastings at four family-owned eateries, juice bars, teahouses and pastry shops and showcases art galleries and historic buildings. For information, call 638-8277 or visit www.tastehistoryculinarytours.org.
                                
    Locals enjoying staycations at the Boca Raton Resort & Club can now try out a new attraction that pairs bocce with booze.
The resort’s new Mizner’s Monkey Bar & Bocce Garden offers complimentary play during the day and requires a $30 rental fee in the evening (or free with a $100 bar tab).
The  garden is just adjacent to the croquet lawn. Hotel guests can wander over to the new Har-Tru bocce court, and after 6 p.m. they can take a seat at the adjacent Mizner’s Monkey Bar to enjoy cocktails.
    For information or to make a reservation at the resort, visit www.bocaresort.com.

    Thom Smith and Amy Woods contributed to this report.


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

Emmanuel Tinebra and Donniel Busey (right), owners of Posh for Hair in Manalapan,

bought the salon in January 2016 and recently oversaw its makeover.

The salon has been in business for more than 30 years.

Tim Stepien/The Coastal Star

By Amy Woods

    Posh for Hair in Manalapan has been making customers beautiful for more than three decades. The salon finally did the same for itself.
    Between cuts and color, manicures and pedicures and a full complement of aesthetic services, the 2,000-square-foot space in Plaza del Mar underwent a remodeling. White walls received a welcome coat of grayish-plum paint, glass and laminate made way for taupe-stained wood, and outdated tile with worn grout lines was torn up and replaced.
    “We totally changed the floor,” said Donniel Busey, who bought the business in January 2016 with co-owner Emmanuel Tinebra. “We don’t have popcorn ceilings anymore. Everything is really relaxing.”
    The remodeling took five weeks to complete and was finished in time for the partners to celebrate their first year at Posh for Hair.
    “We’ve been getting so much amazing feedback from snowbirds who haven’t seen the change, and they are loving it,” Busey said. “The look of our salon now is really plush. You feel like you’re getting pampered instead of shuffled around, and that’s what I want for my clients.”
    In addition to the cosmetic improvement, Posh for Hair received a new computer system that creates personal profiles, sets appointments and accepts credit cards.
    “It was very old-school in here,” Busey said. “It was cash and carry, fast-paced and not relaxing.”
    Clients who have come to the salon since the remodeling can enjoy a spa-like experience instead of a rudimentary shampoo, trim and blow-dry.
    “I like being able to set the culture, and I like being part of a team,” Busey said.
    The 47-year-old hairstylist always knew she wanted to enter the beauty industry and found an opportunity to capitalize on her trade by investing in a well-established company. Posh for Hair originally was owned by Edith Burlison, who died in July at age 92.
    “She was still doing hair up until the end,” Busey said. “For me, I saw a connection with her. I wanted to get approval from her. I felt like she was an excellent professional businesswoman because the salon is still here 35 years later.”
When Busey took over with Tinebra, Burlison became an employee and, eventually, a legacy.
“She made a name for Posh,” Busey said.
    Fourteen employees work among eight cutting stations, four color areas, three manicure tables, three pedicure chairs and a skin-care room. Tinebra manages it all.
    “It’s not easy,” said the 54-year-old concierge of sorts, who regularly drives 10 or so clients to and from the salon to get their hair done. “My job is to make everyone happy. The most important thing is the service we give.”
Posh for Hair, Plaza del Mar, 271 S. Ocean Blvd., Manalapan; 582-4447; 9 a.m.-7 p.m. Tuesday; 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Wednesday, Friday and Saturday; 9 a.m.-8 p.m. Thursday; facebook.com/posh4hair

By Steve Plunkett
    
    A group led by a former Chamber of Commerce president wants a judge to overturn Boca Raton’s new ordinance reserving city-owned land along the Intracoastal Waterway for public uses only.
    ForBoca.org Inc., which in a lawsuit said it is committed “to social welfare and protecting private property rights,” claims the ordinance limits the use of such city land — and the Wildflower property in particular — in a way that is “wholly and patently inconsistent” with Boca Raton’s comprehensive plan.
    The group also says the ordinance violates a state law that prohibits using an initiative or referendum process to change zoning.
    The litigation stopped in its tracks a City Council discussion of the ordinance planned for Jan. 9.
    “I was informed … we got served [notice of the lawsuit] regarding this issue so I suggest that maybe we delay this discussion until you’ve had an opportunity to talk to your legal counsel,” City Manager Leif Ahnell said.
    The next day City Attorney Diana Grub Frieser asked council members to talk about what legal strategy they wanted her to take in an executive session closed to the public on Jan. 17.
    “The essence of the lawsuit is to challenge that ordinance, to say that that ordinance ... procedurally was not a proper subject for an initiative,” Frieser said.
    ForBoca.org was created in March and is headed by Mike Arts, who led the Greater Boca Raton Chamber of Commerce for two decades and sat on the City Council from 2006 to 2009.
    “We will strive to promote real solutions that keep our community prosperous and appealing,” Arts says on the not-for-profit group’s website.
    The group’s address is the Tallahassee office of lawyer Mark Herron, who is also listed as a ForBoca.org director. Herron successfully represented City Council member Robert Weinroth and Deputy City Manager George Brown last year in an ethics complaint about their appointments to the Airport Authority Board. The city paid Herron’s $10,000 legal bill.
    ForBoca.org’s other director is former City Council member Al Travasos.
    The city bought the 2.3-acre Wildflower parcel, on Palmetto Park Road at the northwest corner of the bridge over the Intracoastal, for $7.5 million in 2009. It had been negotiating for several years with the Hillstone Restaurant Group to put a restaurant there along with a waterside walkway open to the public.
    A citizen-launched petition drive to overrule the plan gathered over 1,700 valid signatures, far more than the 1,030 required, and put the referendum question on the November ballot. It won by a 2-1 margin.
    James Hendrey, who chaired the initiative effort, called the ForBoca.org lawsuit “ridiculous.”
    “I’m totally amazed,” said Hendrey, who with his wife, Nancy, hired an attorney to review the pertinent case law and forward his findings to Frieser.
    “We aren’t sure that the City Council, which tells the city attorney what to do, will represent the will of the people,” Hendrey said.
    The council in July changed the land-use designation of the northern part of the site from residential to commercial and rezoned it from single-family residential to local business district. The southern portion was already zoned local business.
    The former Wildflower nightclub got special permission to put a parking lot on the then-residential portion, something that would not be allowed today, city officials said.
    The city has not removed fences surrounding the property.

By Rich Pollack

    Highland Beach Town Commissioner Carl Feldman wants to make sure a large chunk of county-owned property at the south end of town known as Milani Park doesn’t become Milani parking lot.
    Feldman, who is running for mayor in March, has been working with residents of the Boca Highland community — adjacent to the 5.4-acre parcel the county purchased nearly 30 years ago — to come up with a proposal that he thinks would be in the best interest of the town and its residents.
    For decades, Palm Beach County has wanted to turn the property, near Spanish River Boulevard and bisected by State Road A1A, into a park.
    Last last month, Feldman and Boca Highland residents brought a proposal to the Town Commission that would do just that on the west side of A1A — but not quite the way the county envisioned.
    “We’re proposing that the town and Boca Highland landscape and maintain the property as a public park,” Feldman said.
    The plan for the passive park, Feldman said, might not include any parking spots and it would also require the county to agree not to develop the parcel on the east side of A1A as a beach park.
    During discussions of the issue at the commission meeting last month, Vice Mayor Bill Weitz suggested the town propose the parcel be left as green space rather than calling it a park.
“I’d be cautious about calling it a park,” he said. “If you call it a park, you’ll need to have parking spaces.”
For years Palm Beach County leaders have wanted to transform the parcel, purchased from Cam D. Milani in 1987 for about $4 million, into a beachfront park open to the public. Highland Beach and its residents, however, have resisted that effort.
    Following a series of legal battles, the town and the county came to an agreement in 2010 in which the county agreed not to develop the property until 2020 and possibly another 10 years after that.
    The agreement requires the county to alert the town in 2019 whether it plans to develop the property as a park or opt to defer development for another five years.
    Feldman said one reason he’s bringing the proposal up now is that residents saw as many as 30 cars parked on the west side parcel one night last month and were told by county parks department officials that a nearby community received permission to allow cars to park there.
    Last summer, the town and the county worked together to put up “No Trespassing” signs on the property east of A1A, as well as a fence, after reports of trespassers’ building bonfires and drinking on the beach, disturbing turtle nests and painting graffiti on a seawall.
    Feldman brought the proposal to the Town Commission to gauge support from both the elected officials and residents.
    “The main thing is to beautify the area for the town,” he said.  
    Commissioners expressed support for the proposal and said they will discuss it further after receiving additional information.

By Steve Plunkett

    Now it’s 20 months and counting.
    Boca Raton City Council members canceled a Jan. 30 joint meeting with Greater Boca Raton Beach & Park District commissioners. It would have been the first time the boards got together since June 9, 2015.
    Arthur Koski, the district’s executive director, announced the cancellation Jan. 9 as he discussed the long-sought addition of athletic fields at city-owned De Hoernle Park. The district built and opened four fields there in 2012 and has been seeking the city’s consent ever since to build four more.
    “It may be a subject for discussion at a joint meeting, and while I’m on the subject, the joint meeting of the 30th of the month has been canceled, and the city will get back to us with new dates,” Koski told his surprised commissioners.
    Beach and park officials want to talk with council members about how to fix tax disparities that future annexations will cause and how to define a nonresident when setting park user fees.
    “The city canceled the meeting, not us,” district Chairman Robert Rollins said. “That’s the meeting I asked back in [September] to put on their calendar, and so I’m terribly disappointed.”
    Briann Harms, the district’s assistant director, called the city clerk’s office earlier that day to ask why the joint session was not on the council’s schedule and learned of the cancellation.
    Late Jan. 30, City Council member Robert Weinroth posted pictures on Facebook of himself, Mayor Susan Haynie and council members Jeremy Rodgers and Scott Singer at an event at the Boca Raton Airport.
    “What a great night to showcase our amazing City to hundreds of CEO’s,” the mayor commented on one photo.
    City officials have not come up with a substitute date, a city spokeswoman said.
    Beach and park commissioners have been trying to schedule a joint meeting since August 2015.
    After several failed attempts, then-Commissioner Dennis Frisch went to the council’s July 26 meeting to ask Haynie and the four council members to use a smartphone app called Meeting Wizard instead of sending letters back and forth from district headquarters to the city manager’s office. “It’s gone on too long,” he said.
    “I’m with you,” Haynie replied. “Let’s just get this moving forward.”
    That effort went nowhere when three city officials did not follow through. Commissioners and council members also tried a scheduling website called doodle.com.
    In August then-Commis-sioner Earl Starkoff proposed having the Jan. 30 session as well as get-togethers on May 15 and Oct. 2.
Council members did not commit to the later dates but said at their Sept. 27 meeting that Jan. 30 was a go.

By Steve Plunkett
    
    The city’s dredge contractor is back to work on a beach renourishment project between the Boca Raton Inlet and Red Reef Park.
    Weeks Marine Inc. left Boca Raton in April after weather delays let it finish only about 20 percent of the job. The New Jersey-based company was at the Port of Palm Beach on Jan. 31 creating a submerged pipeline for the project.
    “We were hoping they would be here a lot sooner. But due to the passing of Hurricane Matthew, they were up in Hilton Head building that project. That sand pretty much got all erased,” Jennifer Bistyga, the city’s coastal program manager, told Greater Boca Raton Beach & Park District commissioners before the dredge returned.
    The contractor still has about 400,000 cubic yards of sand to pump, Bistyga said. The city hired Weeks Marine to move approximately 530,000 cubic yards in from borrow areas offshore onto what it calls its central beach. The sand will make about 1.45 miles of beach 170 feet wider.
    “If the weather will actually cooperate, it will be about 45 days of pumping,” Bistyga said.
    “This operation will be a 24/7 operation until the project is complete,” she added.
    The dredge will start at the Boca Beach Club, just north of the inlet, and will work its way north, opposite the direction it worked in 2016.
    “The last time we started, we started at the northern end of the project area” and worked south, Bistyga said.
    The work was originally scheduled to begin in February 2016 but did not get underway until the end of March. The dredge left April 25; its permit was set to expire April 30 to protect nesting sea turtles.
    The renourishment will cost $11.3 million, with the state and county paying about $4 million. The city and the Beach & Park District agreed to split the remainder, with each paying $3.7 million.
    City officials call it routine maintenance; the central beach was last renourished in 2006.
    In other news for the Beach & Park District, Bistyga said the city will hire engineers this year to design a new pump station for the saltwater tanks at the Gumbo Limbo Nature Center. The existing pump and pipes did not produce enough water flow and were leaking bubbles into the tanks. PVC pipes and a valve box at Red Reef Park were replaced with a new system in March, she said.
    “This has created some temporary relief, about a gallon-per-minute flow, as well as decreasing the bubbles that have been coming into the system,” Bistyga said.
    The new pump station will be constructed east of A1A to reduce the length of the suction pipes in an effort to improve the system, which Bistyga said would be good for 20 years.
    Engineering costs are budgeted at $300,000 in this budget year; construction is projected to cost $2.5 million in fiscal 2018.

By Steve Plunkett
    
    Two months after he bought his $1.6 million waterfront home on a canal west of the Intracoastal Waterway, Jason Pepitone got a letter from Boca Raton code enforcement.
    An outdoor kitchen in the corner of his back yard was built without permits, the April 18 letter said. And the chickee hut over it was encroaching on required setbacks.
    The letter gave Pepitone 20 days to pull a building permit for the kitchen and 30 days to fix the chickee violation. The only way to do that, the letter said, was to remove the hut and place it 5 feet from any property line and 10 feet from the main building.
    That presented a problem: The back yard, at 785 NE 33rd St., is not quite 15 feet deep, so no place in it is both 5 feet from the back lot line and 10 feet from the house.
    Applying for a building permit uncovered more problems. The barbecue/summer kitchen is only 1.7 feet from the west lot line and 0.35 feet from the back line. The code requires 5 feet. And a marble paver deck around the pool extends to the east and west lot lines, instead of leaving 7 feet of green space on both sides.
    Now Pepitone is entangled in a legal battle, one his lawyer says Pepitone isn’t responsible for starting. Pepitone is seeking variances from the city’s Planning and Zoning Board and the Zoning Board of Adjustment, arguing that he was not the one who installed the noncompliant structures.
    “The Petitioner acquired his property on Feb. 13, 2016, and the BBQ, marble pavers and tiki hut had been in place for approximately eight years prior to the petitioner’s acquisition of the property,” Pepitone’s lawyer, Arthur Koski, wrote in the application. “The structures do not impact any adjoining neighbor as evidenced by the silence of said neighbors over the past years.”
    Koski, who is legal counsel and executive director of the Greater Boca Raton Beach & Park District, also represented barrier island residents in a lawsuit against the city over its approval of a site plan for a synagogue and museum on Palmetto Park Road. A separate lawsuit overturned that approval.
    City officials recommend denying Pepitone the variances.
    “The City Code does not provide for establishing zoning setback requirements based on adjacent property owners’ satisfaction,” Jim Bell, the city’s acting deputy director of development services, said in a report to the boards.
    “Although the applicant may not have installed the uncovered pool deck/terrace [marble pavers], outdoor kitchen/barbecue grill structure, and chickee hut in the required setbacks himself, the applicant is responsible for ensuring his property is compliant with city code requirements,” Bell wrote.
    Bell said the pool and a smaller deck were permitted and installed at the property, which is about a half-mile south of Spanish River Boulevard, in 1997. Aerial photos show the marble pavers covering the backyard were put in after 2007. The kitchen was added after 2011, the chickee hut after January 2015.
    Bell also said the pavers might be dumping water onto the neighbors’ properties.
    “There appears to be no swale area or drainage structure in place to address drainage,” he wrote. “As such, the sides of the marble-pavered pool deck may be draining into the properties on the east and west sides of the subject property.”
    The request for variances was postponed from the Oct. 20 meeting of the Planning and Zoning Board. It has not been rescheduled.

By Steve Plunkett

    The races are on.
    All three races are contested in Boca Raton’s municipal election and candidates are building sizable war chests to fund their campaigns.
    Voters will choose their mayor and two City Council members when they go to the polls March 14. Susan Haynie, running for her final term as mayor, will face Al Zucaro, an attorney, former publisher of the Boca Watch blog and once a city commissioner and unsuccessful mayoral candidate in West Palm Beach.
    Council member Scott Singer will square off against real estate agent Patty Dervishi, who is also a former treasurer of the Golden Triangle Homeowners Association.
    The contest to succeed council member Michael Mullaugh, who is term-limited out, features Emily Gentile, an officer of the Beach Condominium Association and, until becoming a candidate, the vice chairwoman of the city’s Downtown Advisory Committee; Andrea O’Rourke, a graphic designer and president of the Golden Triangle HOA; and attorney Andy Thomson, who is also on the board of the Golden Bell Education Foundation.
    As of Dec. 31 Haynie had collected $41,456 in campaign contributions. Her supporters include her predecessor, former Mayor Susan Whelchel ($1,000); Marta Batmasian of the Batmasian real estate family ($1,000); land-use attorney Charles Siemon ($200); the city firefighters political action committee ($1,000); and developer Robert Comparato, who wants to buy the city’s golf course ($1,000).
    Singer had been given $65,279 by the end of the year. His contributors include philanthropist Harold Beznos ($1,000); Boca Car Wash owner Andre Weliky ($1,000); and the city firefighters PAC ($1,000).
    Gentile’s contributions totaled $50,480 and included a $25,000 loan to her campaign. Checks came from land-use law firm Dunay Miskel Backman ($1,000); Highland Beach mayoral candidate Carl Feldman ($200); Highland Beach Vice Mayor William Weitz ($100); marketing consultant Larry Light ($1,000); and Jack Fox, president of the Beach Condominium Association ($1,000).
    O’Rourke had gathered $69,504 by year’s end, including $25,000 in self loans. Donations came from former City Council member Peter Baronoff ($250); former City Council member Anthony Majhess ($500); interior designer Nancy Simons ($500); National Humane Society fundraiser Randy Kassal ($400); and real estate agent Katherine Williams ($1,000).
    Thomson had raised $42,956 by Dec. 31, including money from mediator Jeffrey Grubman ($500); Fort Lauderdale-based developer Green Mills Group ($500); attorney David Silver ($500); and Kevin Wrenne ($500) and the Banyan Place assisted living facility he operates ($500).
    Zucaro and Dervishi started their campaigns in January and did not receive contributions in 2016.
    Residents who are at least 18 years old have until Feb. 13 to register to vote for the March election.
    Qualifying to run for city office ended Jan. 11. Boca Raton moved its qualifying period up a month in 2011 to give candidates more time to campaign and to give the city more time to coordinate with the county elections office. Before, office-seekers had to file their paperwork and pay fees in the first seven business days of February; now they do it in the first seven business days in January.
    Other municipalities along the barrier island scheduled their qualifying periods using the county supervisor of elections timetable, starting Jan. 31 and ending Feb. 14.

By Rich Pollack

    Efforts by at least one Highland Beach resident and town leaders to improve pedestrian safety at crosswalks on State Road A1A appear to be paying off.
    Last month, consultants hired by the Florida Department of Transportation conducted a road-safety audit along the main thoroughfare in town to determine if there is a need for additional steps to ensure pedestrian and bicyclist safety.  
    The consultants paid specific attention to crosswalks throughout the town where residents have argued for enhanced signage.
    Resident John Boden, who has been pushing for enhanced crosswalk safety measures after nearly running into a barely visible family while they were crossing A1A at night, said he is pleased with the progress of the study.
    “I don’t think we can be in any better shape than we are,” he said.
    Last month, Boden and Highland Beach Public Works Director Ed Soper accompanied representatives from the Tampa-based consulting firm of Tindale Oliver as they conducted portions of the road-safety audit.
    Boden said he and the consulting firm’s representatives were at several of the town’s nine crosswalks at varying times of the day, including morning, afternoon and night.
    Once the consultants have completed their report, they will submit their recommendation to the FDOT, which will make a decision on what improvements, if any, are to made, said Thomas Miller, FDOT’s area Bike/Pedestrian Safety Program specialist for the region that includes Palm Beach County.
    Depending on what they see as the need at a certain crosswalk, improvements could range from enlarging existing signage to adding lighting that would alert motorists when a pedestrian is in the crosswalk.
    For his part, Boden has been strongly advocating solar-powered rectangular signs with amber lights that would activate when pedestrians enter the crosswalk. He said a national study where the lights were in use showed an 80 percent compliance rate of motorists stopping when pedestrians were in crosswalks.
    The FDOT’s Miller said Boden has been a driving force, along with town officials, in helping to get the safety audit done.
    “The audit is being conducted based on safety concerns expressed by residents,” Miller said.
    Boden first contacted the FDOT in May and also attended a department-hosted public hearing in November in which he spoke on the issue.  
    The department chose to wait until part-time residents returned to Highland Beach before doing the audit in order to get more accurate results, according to Miller.  
    He said that depending on the results of the audit, residents could see enhancements within two or three months.

Neighbors’ resistance grows as Tri-Rail faces funding deadline

By Mary Hladky

    Four years after Crocker Partners began conceiving a massive development project east of the Town Center at Boca Raton mall, the developer is now moving ahead to transform the concept into reality.
    Crocker envisions Midtown as a “live, work, play” project that includes 2,500 rental units on nearly 300 acres where no residential now exists. Residents would walk out of their apartments and down the street to their jobs at one of the many office buildings or retail centers in the area. After work, they could head over to nearby restaurants or watering holes.
    Many, theoretically, might not even need cars. People could travel to and from the area on Tri-Rail, provided the commuter rail builds a new station at Northwest 19th Street. Shuttles would transport them to their places of employment or to shopping and dining.
    Such “transit-oriented development” is a fast-growing trend across the country as cities hope to revitalize urban and suburban centers while also reducing traffic gridlock and energy use. Midtown would be the first such development in Boca Raton.
    “Let’s make this into a vibrant neighborhood. Let’s bring in residential, the missing link,” Crocker Partners managing partner Angelo Bianco said at a Dec. 22 Planning and Zoning Board meeting. “… We need to do this.”
    Midtown would lie south of Glades Road between the CSX railroad tracks and Butts Road, with the Town Center mall immediately to the west. Crocker owns three office buildings and the Boca Center retail-office center within the area or on its periphery.
    No artist renderings show what Midtown would look like. In fact, no plans have yet been drawn and nothing has been submitted to the city.
    Rather, Crocker, a longtime developer whose projects include iconic Mizner Park, is starting from scratch. The project first needs a new city ordinance to allow “planned mobility development” in two existing zoning districts. The ordinance also would create a transit-oriented development sub-area that would allow higher densities and less space set aside for parking.
    The city cleared the way for this to happen when it added a planned mobility development designation to its comprehensive plan in 2010 and has since implemented that designation in an area in the city’s northwest section.
    Crocker presented its proposed ordinance, and two other related ordinances, at the December board meeting.
    Board members generally liked the concept, but were overwhelmed by the scope of the project and Crocker’s need to get their approval quickly.
    “It’s like trying to drink from a fire hose,” said board member Kerry Koen.
    Many of their questions centered on how much Midtown would increase traffic in the area and whether Crocker had included an adequate amount of parking for the rental units.
    They asked Crocker to return Jan. 19 with more information, but at that meeting, the developer asked for a delay until Feb. 9 so officials could try to overcome strong objections that cropped up from neighboring homeowner associations after they voiced enthusiastic support for the project on Dec. 22.
    “We are totally against it,” said one Paradise Palms homeowner at the Jan. 19 meeting. “The size and nature of this project at our back door is unacceptable to us.”
    Newly unhappy neighbors are just one of the hurdles facing Crocker.
    Chief among them is getting Tri-Rail to build a proposed new “kiss and ride” station — one with no parking lot — that Crocker says is essential to the success of Midtown. Without it, Midtown as now envisioned will not happen.
    Tri-Rail supports the idea, and urged the city in April to approve the transit-oriented development designation to ensure there is enough demand for the station.
    But pressure mounted to turn the talk into action when Tri-Rail said the proposed ordinances must be approved by March 17 in order for it to commit additional funding for the station. Tri-Rail and the Palm Beach Metropolitan Planning Organization have allocated $1.5 million for planning and design this year and an additional $17 million in 2018 for the next phase of the project, said MPO Executive Director Nick Uhren.
    Tri-Rail also needs Crocker to agree to convey land the developer owns for the station. As of late January, that had not happened.
    To meet the deadline, the city will have to move fast.
    The P&Z board would need to make a recommendation to the council, two hearings would need to be held, and the council would then make a final decision. But the delay in the P&Z board meeting date, and resulting delay in two public hearings, may make it impossible to meet Tri-Rail’s schedule.
    Michael Marshall, a shareholder with the GrayRobinson law firm that represents Crocker, said after the Jan. 19 meeting that he remains hopeful about getting city approvals in time.
    “Funding for the station has to be in place,” he said. “Without the station, this entire concept doesn’t work.”
    The proposed ordinances have yet to spell out who besides Crocker can build the residential units. Representatives of other major landowners in the area, including the Simon Property Group that owns most of the mall, told P&Z members in December they want to build some of the residential units.
    Details about shuttles also need to be nailed down. Crocker runs a shuttle to the Yamato Road Tri-Rail station, but it is now expected that other major landowners would also commit funding for a shuttle system.
    If the ordinances are approved, it would still be some time before Crocker submits plans to the city.
    About 8,300 people commute to the Midtown area to work each day, according to Crocker. The developer believes there will be plenty of demand from people who would love the option of living near where they work and plans to set rental prices affordable to many of the workers.
    The ordinances would permit multifamily dwellings, retail, offices, restaurants, hotels and recreation and cultural facilities. The amount of commercial development in the area would not increase, but existing commercial would be redeveloped.
    Residential density allowed in the proposed transit oriented development is a maximum of 20 units per acre, but Crocker says it will build half that amount. Building heights will not exceed 85 feet because of limits imposed by its proximity to the Boca Raton Airport.
    Parking would be limited to 1.5 spaces per rental unit, a number that assumes not all renters will have cars and will walk or use shuttles to get to work or go shopping.
    A traffic study commissioned by Crocker concluded that the 2,500 apartments would not increase traffic volume on nearby streets, provided the Tri-Rail station is built and shuttles are operating.
    P&Z board members liked the concept of a transit-oriented development.
    “I feel this area is ready for the concept of the zoning,” said Board Chair William Fairman.
    But board members were not convinced that the new residential would not overload streets, that residents will actually use the shuttles as much as predicted or that enough parking will be provided.
    P&Z Secretary Rick Coffin expressed the strongest doubts.
    “I just don’t see putting 2,500 units in that area. I don’t believe the retail employees can afford the rental or condo rates,” he said. “I absolutely cannot live with 1.5 parking spaces. We are not New York City. … People are going to have their cars."

Attorney Marc Shiner, former Vice Mayor Richard Lucibella and his girlfriend, Barbara Ceuleers,

make their way to Circuit Judge Charles Burton’s courtroom.

Jerry Lower/The Coastal Star

Related stories: Commission sets meeting to hear appeal from fired lieutenant | Town will wait until election to replace Lucibella

By Steve Plunkett

    A jury will decide whether former Vice Mayor Richard Lucibella is guilty of felony battery on an Ocean Ridge police officer and resisting the officer with violence.
    Circuit Judge Charles Burton scheduled the trial to begin at 9:30 a.m. April 10. Lucibella also faces a misdemeanor count of using a firearm while under the influence of alcohol. He has pleaded not guilty to all charges.
    “You’ll see this case develop into a lot more,” Lucibella’s attorney, Marc Shiner, said after a Jan. 10 hearing. “There’s a lot of interesting small-town politics in this.”
    Town police arrived at Lucibella’s oceanfront home Oct. 22 after neighbors complained of hearing gunshots. Officers said they found the vice mayor and one of their supervisors, Lt. Steven Wohlfiel, “obviously intoxicated” on the patio. Officers say they confiscated a .40-caliber Glock handgun and found five spent shell casings on the patio. Police also took a semiautomatic pistol they said Lucibella had in his back pocket.
    According to police reports, when officers Richard Ermeri and Nubia Plesnik tried to block Lucibella, 63, from entering his house, he resisted. The officers wrestled him to the paver-covered ground and handcuffed him. Lucibella needed treatment for facial injuries, and Ermeri and Plesnik also required medical attention, according to the reports.
    Through Shiner, Lucibella has claimed that he is the victim of police overreaction. He maintains officers should not have entered his back yard in the first place, and then that they used excessive force, cracking three of his ribs. Lucibella said outside the courtroom that he has not fully recovered.
    “They’re healing,” he said of the ribs.
    Lucibella resigned his position as vice mayor and town commissioner Dec. 7, the same day the State Attorney’s Office filed formal charges against him.
    Wohlfiel was put on administrative duty after the incident and fired Jan. 4 after an internal affairs report concluded the Glock was his personal weapon, not Lucibella’s, and that two witnesses said Wohlfiel admitted he was the one who shot it. He is appealing his dismissal to the Town Commission.
    Shiner said the internal affairs report undercuts the charge that Lucibella fired the weapon and shows that Ermeri and Plesnik recognized the Glock as belonging to Wohlfiel. “They knew right away,” Shiner said.
    “For some reason,” he said, Town Manager Jamie Titcomb was called to the police station. Titcomb and Lucibella had publicly skirmished over the town budget just one month before, Shiner said.
    And Wohlfiel was not the only off-duty officer drinking that Saturday night, he said. “The chief was intoxicated,” Shiner said. “It’s all left out of the report.”
    Chief Hal Hutchins said earlier his wife drove him to police headquarters that night because he had some wine with dinner.
    Shiner also said Plesnik’s lawyer learned Lucibella has a $10 million insurance policy and notified him that Plesnik plans to sue for neck injuries. In her report, Plesnik said she went to an urgent care center afterward to have her left shoulder, arm, wrist, leg and foot examined but did not mention having any neck pain.
    Shiner said in-house video at the Police Department captures Plesnik cautioning Ermeri to watch his temper. “You’re on tape,” he said the video shows her reminding Ermeri, though Shiner pointed out the audio is hard to hear.

By Jane Smith

    The three largest South County cities continue on separate paths to address problematic sober homes in their residential neighborhoods.
    On Jan. 17, Boynton Beach city commissioners approved a moratorium on all group home applications until June 4. Sober homes fall under the group home category in the city code. The recovery residences cater to people who want to live together in sobriety. Treatment does not occur inside the houses.
    Delray Beach is using a two-pronged approach.
    On Jan. 24, commissioners approved an update to the city’s reasonable accommodation ordinance that requires all group homes to register annually for an accommodation that allows more than three unrelated adults to live together. The city also wants the property owner’s name and signature to prove that the owner knows how the home will be used. The city will use that info if it needs to contact the owner about code violations.
    The previous week, the city hired planner/lawyer Daniel Lauber to help city staff review ordinances and suggest new ones that do not run afoul of federal anti-discrimination laws.
    Boca Raton staff is still trying to decide how to address the changes allowed by the revised federal joint statement U.S. Rep. Lois Frankel helped secure, said city spokeswoman Chrissy Gibson.
    In November, the Justice and Housing and Urban Development departments issued a revised guidance statement that gives local governments the ability to deny a group home application if it violates a city’s “zoning scheme” or puts an undue burden on its finances and administration.
    Boynton Beach legal and development staffs wanted to stop group home applications from coming in while they reviewed the city’s reasonable accommodation ordinance. They wanted time to decide if it might be revised based on the revised federal statement. They chose June 4 as the moratorium’s end date to give time for review.
    At the Boynton Beach City Commission meeting on Jan. 17, the mayor and one resident had a testy exchange about the legality of the moratorium.
    Citing a federal anti-discrimination law, the male resident — who said he was a recovering alcoholic — insisted that: “No private or public entity shall interfere, restrict or deny any person with a disability any social services, including group homes and halfway houses.”
    Addicts living together while maintaining sobriety are protected by federal anti-discrimination laws.
    But Mayor Steven Grant said the moratorium was aimed at sober home owners and operators, not addicts. “You can’t just take [out] one clause, because it’s a big act,” Grant said about the federal law.
    Boynton Beach City Commissioner Joe Casello asked the city attorney, “Are we within our legal rights to do something like this?”
    City Attorney Jim Cherof said, “Yes, sir. It wouldn’t be in front of you if I did not think so.”
    Boynton Beach commissioners unanimously passed the moratorium.
    But Delray Beach’s consultant thinks Boynton Beach has put itself in a tough legal position.
    The moratorium is “almost certainly illegal,” Lauber said.  “If someone challenged it in court, I doubt it could survive.”
    Lauber said Frankel’s office staff referred Delray Beach to him. He is past president of the American Planning Association and the American Institute of Certified Planners. He is widely published on topics of group homes and federal anti-discrimination laws.
    Based in Illinois, Lauber has primarily worked with cities and group homes in the Midwest, although he has consulted for cities and community residences nationwide.  
    The Delray Beach work will be his second foray into Florida. In 2002, he was a legal consultant for the city of Daytona Beach when it was sued over Fair Housing Act violations, according to Lauber’s résumé. The city settled the case the next year, allowing Hearthstone Fellowship to continue operating the Peabody House treatment center.
    Lauber said he will examine the situation in Delray Beach, where sober homes are said to cluster in certain neighborhoods. He said more than one group home per block could lead to a de facto social services district and prevent residents of the home from becoming part of the community.
    “Each group home has to be looked at on an individual basis to determine its impact on surrounding home values,” Lauber said.
Delray Beach is compiling a listing of group home locations. The estimated 200 sober homes in Delray Beach are too many for a city of its size, he said.
    Lauber agreed to be paid $15,000 for 50 hours of work. If the city decides it wants him to help write a sober homes licensing plan, it would cost extra, he said.
    Lauber fancies himself more of a planner than a lawyer. That’s why he prefers the LULU acronym that he used in his John Marshall Law Review article: “A Real LULU: Zoning for Group Homes and Halfway Houses Under the Fair Housing Act Amendments.”
    LULU, he wrote, was coined by a Rutgers University professor in the 1980s. The acronym stands for “locally unwanted land use.”
    Lawyers, he said, prefer to use NIMBY, which stands for “not in my backyard.”

By Dan Moffett

    South Palm Beach Vice Mayor Joe Flagello is promising residents “an action-packed, fun-filled agenda” for their Feb. 28 town meeting.
    After being sidetracked for months with other business, the Town Council is planning to tackle several potentially prickly assignments — the evaluations of the town attorney and town manager, and final approval to an ordinance that would raise council members’ monthly salaries.
    Last year, Town Attorney Brad Biggs asked the council for a new contract and a pay raise, from $170 an hour to $180. Some council members objected, saying they had problems communicating with Biggs and getting him to respond to their questions. Several members, including Stella Gaddy Jordan, considered putting the position out to bid.
    “Brad didn’t support the council enough,” Jordan said. She also complained about too much cross-talk during meetings that Biggs should have stopped.
    After the council had several false starts at negotiating with the attorney, the issue is back on the agenda for February. Biggs has held his position for a decade and is board certified as a municipal specialist. He wants the council to act on his request.
    “I haven’t raised your rates for years,” Biggs said at the Jan. 24 meeting. “And I didn’t raise them during any of the time we had poor income coming in. I’ve requested it, it’s in the budget, I’m requesting that something be set that either I’m going to get it or I’m not going to get it.”
    Flagello, who calls Biggs’ work on the town’s behalf “terrific,” says the attorney deserves an answer this month.
    “I don’t think it’s fair to him. He’s offered us many options. We’ve even talked about a flat rate,” Flagello said. “We’ve had these options and we’ve done nothing. I think it’s sort of disrespectful.”
    The town charter requires that the council evaluate the manager annually, so Bob Vitas will get his first formal review at the next meeting.
    Vitas inherited a mildly chaotic situation when he took the $103,000-a-year position in November 2015. Five months earlier, the Town Council forced his predecessor, Jim Pascale, to resign after only six months on the job.
    Vitas has received glowing reviews from all council members for his efforts to reboot the town’s administration and advance the council’s issues. Mayor Bonnie Fischer has praised Vitas for working tirelessly to collect easements for the town’s beach restoration project and helping officials develop long-term goals.
    “Bob has done a wonderful job and really helped us get back on track after going without a town manager,” Fischer has said.
    Council members were to have given their final approval in January to an ordinance that raises their monthly pay from $250 to $300 — and the mayor’s from $250 to $500 — but postponed the vote until public notice requirements had been met.
 A first reading of the change narrowly passed, 3-2, in December.

Ocean Ridge Garden Club marks 50 years

of creating beauty, relationships

About 30 members of the Ocean Ridge Garden Club were on hand at the club’s January meeting.

The organization is celebrating 50 years of serving the community and developing friendships.

Photos by Jerry Lower/The Coastal Star

Mary Ann Cody and former club president Joan Beck recite

the Pledge of Allegiance at the beginning of a garden club meeting.

By Ron Hayes

    The Ocean Ridge Garden Club plants sea oats and sea grapes, bougainvillea and milkweed.

    From those plantings, friendships grow. From those friendships, a community spirit blooms.

    From that spirit, the town is beautified.

    And club members have been doing it since 1966. Beginning March 20, the club will initiate three days of festivities to celebrate its half-century of horticulture.     
    “We’ll have a kickoff reception in Town Hall, which will be beautifully and exquisitely decorated with award-winning arrangements,” promises Lynn Allison, chair of the club’s 50th anniversary committee.     
    A floral decoration will adorn the hall’s exterior. A colorful slide show will play within, and signs will rise along Ocean Avenue.

    A commemorative pamphlet, A Gardening Guide for Living on the Barrier Island, is being prepared, and guest speakers such as landscape architect Pamela Crawford and John Lopez, past president of the Tropical Orchid Society, will appear throughout the week.
    “And we’ve scanned 50 years of scrapbooks to create a memorabilia book of highlights that will be on display,” Allison adds.

Garden Club members Blanch Matthews, Catherine Mangione, Mary Artsman and Dorothy Guzzo (left photo)

at a 1984 Christmas party at Crown Colony Yacht Club.

Grace Browner, Mary Westaphal, Catherine Mangione, Pat Piche, Jenny Rollyson

and Mayor Eric Mangione during a 1986 beach planting.

In 1992, Pat Piche and then-President Wanda Phillips.

An Ocean Ridge Garden Club program from 1970-71.

  
    But the Ocean Ridge Garden Club that’s pressed between the pages of those early scrapbooks is not the same club that thrives today. Like its gardens, the club also has grown.     
    When it was formed in 1966, about 24 members paid annual dues of $5 to join. Two years later, the club had grown to 29 members and the annual dues to $10.     
    Today, the club boasts 45 members and $50 dues. But as the wider culture has changed, the club has reflected those changes.     
Glance at a list of past presidents.     
    The first was Mrs. Cyril Schley (1966-67), and then Mrs. Alfred Rush (1967-68). There was Mrs. John Ware (1973-74) and Mrs. Donald Lambert (1981-82).     
    Then, without warning: Joan Beck (1994-96). Women were no longer identified by their husband’s name.      
    The morning meetings were moved to evenings as more women went to work outside the home, and men were welcomed as members. Currently there are only two, but they are welcome.

The Garden Club and some neighbors came together for a planting

at Beachway Drive and Old Ocean Boulevard.

A dune restoration project underway at the south end of Old Ocean is one of the club’s most recent efforts.

 
    Most significant, the club’s priorities expanded from floral table settings and Christmas wreaths to a community spirit that has championed beach cleanups, dune restoration and beautification projects.     
    “When I started, it was the Christmas bake sale and arts and crafts at the Town Hall,” Joan Beck remembers. “Now the shift is toward more hands-on projects.”     
    As early as 1974, club members were fighting a plan to desecrate the town’s hammock dunes in favor of 47 parking spaces.  
Zoanne Hennigan became a member in 2006.     
    “To be honest, I joined to meet my neighbors,” she admits. “I knew little about gardening.”     
    Six months later, Hennigan was elected the club’s 31st president. She served for the next five years, during which members participated in eight beach cleanups, volunteered at dune restoration and established the Town Hall native garden, koi pond and library.     
    They raised more than $11,000 from annual rummage sales and used the money to award $1,500 in scholarships and send 21 children to Wekiva horticulture youth camp at Apopka.
    “We’re not afraid to get our hands dirty,” says Kristine de Haseth, a member since 2008.
    For the club members, nurturing friends and neighbors is no less important than nurturing flora and fauna, and they make no apologies for being both a gardening and social club.     
    Some, like Tami Tabshey and Ann Alexander, are seriously avid gardeners, growing peppers and lettuce, kale and broccoli at the Cason United Methodist Church’s community garden, to be donated to the Caring Kitchen for homeless people.     
    “But I joined because of Carol Burrows, my dear friend next door,” Tabshey adds. “It was a good excuse to be with her.”     
Kimberlee Duke Marshall, the club’s current president, had lived in Ocean Ridge for 12 years before joining the club.     
    “I was busy raising kids and building a business, but since joining, I’ve met a lot of neighbors and gained a real sense of living in the community,” she says. “We have a variety of economic classes here. Seasonal residents, some more accomplished, some young families. But the common bond is that we all really care about this 1.3-mile barrier island we live on.”
    From October to April, the gardening and socializing come together at the club’s monthly meetings, held at 6 p.m. in members’ homes.

    “The Boynton Beach Garden Club meets at noon and they  have tea and coffee,” Hennigan says with a smile. “We have wine.”

    At the January meeting, hosted by Tabshey, about 30 members feasted on chicken sandwich wraps and fresh fruit, cheese and crackers, nuts and hummus. And wine.     
    Lisa Ritota had lived in town 22 years before joining.

    “I joined so I could be with a friend,” Ritota said. “And then she quit. I didn’t know 80 percent of the women in the group, and now they’re my friends. And I have a butterfly garden.”     
    She whipped out her smartphone, spun through some family photos and found a new photo. “My first caterpillar,” she announced proudly.     
    Eventually, the group settled down to hear the month’s featured speaker. Yavonne Tudisco is an expert on vermiculture — the breeding of earthworms to aerate soil and convert organic matter into compost.
    “There are 6,000 different species of worms,” Tudisco told club members. And then she produced a visual aid, a small plastic bin housing red wigglers. The bin was passed around the living room from club member to club member.

    Some studied the worms with interest. Some took a polite look and passed the bin. Some looked away and passed the bin.

    Chances are, worms were not passed around when the ladies of the Ocean Ridge Garden Club first met in 1966. But that was 50 years ago.     
    “The club today,” says Stella Kolb, who joined in 1996, “it’s a lot more than clipping flowers and putting them in a vase.”

If you go

Feb. 18:  Rummage sale from 8 a.m. to noon at Ocean Ridge Town Hall, 6450 N. Ocean Blvd.

50th Anniversary Lecture Series and various exhibitions from 2-5 p.m. each day at Town Hall.
March 20: Opening ­reception for club members and invitees.
March 21: Patricia Crawford, landscape architect,  plus vendors.
March 22: John Lopez, former president of Tropical Orchid Society; discussion and sale of orchids; and vendors.

The old Mercy Center is demolished next to the new one (right).

Tim Stepien/The Coastal Star

By Janis Fontaine

    It’s a new era at St. Joan of Arc Catholic Church and School in Boca Raton, where the old Mercy Center, built in 1989, has been replaced with a new one. A formal blessing and dedication is being planned for mid-March.
    The church’s timeline began in December 1956, when the first Mass was held in Domina C. Jalbert’s Aerological Laboratories off 20th Street in Boca Raton.
    In 1960, the founding members funded and built a provisional church and the school’s first classrooms just a few blocks off Dixie Highway in central Boca Raton. The new, permanent church was completed in December 1988. A few months later, the construction began that renovated the provisional church into a parish social center — what became the Mercy Center.
    But the church, with more than 3,600 member families, outgrew the Mercy Center. The development committee first considered expanding the old Mercy Center by adding a second floor, but the building couldn’t support it. To make way for a center that would meet the needs of the church, the old center had to be torn down.
    In December, the Mercy Center was demolished with St. Joan’s new, modern Mercy Center ready. For health and safety reasons, the heavy machinery and demolition crews cleared the land while the 500-plus children who attend St. Joan of Arc School were on Christmas break.
    But seeing the building hauled away as rubble was bittersweet for some parishioners who had seen the church grow over the last 60 years. To help with the transition, the original stained glass windows, a prominent exterior cross, and an Art Deco figure of St. Joan of Arc all became important parts of the new center.  
    Msgr. Michael McGraw offered encouragement to the parish in the church bulletin in November: “Looking past the stained glass windows at the new Mercy Center you can imagine the bright future that we have in front of us, and the wonderful growth that will follow for our parish, ministries and community.”
    Development and Stewardship Ministry Director Wendy Horton says the stained glass windows are better displayed in the new building. The church hired stained glass experts to remove, preserve and reframe the windows for their new home flanking the doorway into the auditorium at the new Mercy Center. Light pours into the new building and through the windows’ red and yellow panes to light the room with warmth and energy.    
    The $5.5 million, 20,200-square-foot building has clean lines and modern design. There’s a catering kitchen, a huge auditorium with a stage, plenty of room for socializing, classrooms and meeting rooms for Bible study and rehearsal space for the drama, dance and music programs.
    Double-bookings of meeting rooms will be a thing of the past, Horton laughs.
    The new building has the same footprint as the old, Horton said. The land that is left vacant by the old Mercy Center will become a playground and sports fields for both children and adults.  
    Horton hasn’t had time to consider what her next project will be, “but there’s always something to be done.”
    “We’re very excited after all this time that (the new Mercy Center) is finally complete,” Horton said. “Everyone will benefit.”
    St. Joan of Arc Catholic Church & School is at 370 SW Third St., Boca Raton. For more information, call 392-0007 or 952-2838; www.stjoan.org.

    Interfaith Dialogues — On Feb. 7 and March 14, the Episcopal Church of Bethesda-by-the-Sea, 141 S. County Road, Palm Beach, will be the site of interfaith panel discussions. Panelists include C.B. Hanif, a Muslim and former editorial writer for The Palm Beach Post; Tom O’Brien, from the Episcopal Church of Bethesda-by-the-Sea, and Rabbi Howard Shapiro, rabbi emeritus of Temple Israel. The discussions are hosted by the Palm Beach Fellowship of Christians and Jews. Topics: “Different Ways Jews, Muslims and Christians Read Their Sacred Scriptures” (Feb. 7); and “The Meaning of Israel to Jews, Christians and Muslims” (March 14).
    Admission is free for fellowship members; $10 for nonmembers. Get a series pass for $20 in advance. 833-6150; www.palmbeachfellowship.net.
                                
    Music at St. Paul’s takes place at 3 p.m. Feb. 5, St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, 188 S. Swinton Ave., Delray Beach. It features Gareth Johnson on violin and Tao Lin, piano, performing music of Beethoven, Ysaye and others. $15 adults, $5 students. $20 for preferred seating available. Call 276-4541.
                                
    The Club Singers perform at 3 p.m. Feb. 19 at First Presbyterian Church of Delray Beach, 33 Gleason St. This all-volunteer, nonprofit organization of talented singers gives back to the community by providing scholarships and donations to worthy students. Free will offering benefits the scholarship fund. For information, call 276-6338.
                                
    St. Vincent Ferrer Catholic Church Parish Festival will be Feb. 24-26 at the church, 840 George Bush Blvd., Delray Beach. Carnival rides and games, raffles, live entertainment on two stages, a fish fry on Friday and flea market. Admission is free but for $10 you can get in early at 3 p.m. Feb. 24. For info, call 276-6892 or visit www.stvincentferrer.com.

Janis Fontaine writes about people of faith, their congregations, causes and community events. Contact her at janisfontaine@outlook.com.

Pat Boden lives in Highland Beach and trained on the A1A path.

Tim Stepien/The Coastal Star

By Lona O'Connor

   As he drank his coffee every morning in October, John Boden could track his wife, Pat, as she made steady progress across the back roads of northern Spain. She was wearing a GPS device that posted her whereabouts on a computer tracking map.
    She was roughly 2,000 miles east of their Highland Beach condominium on the Atlantic Ocean, heading to a place on the northwestern coast of Spain: “Finisterre,” the end of the Earth.
    Pat Boden, 73, and five companions walked 490 miles in 34 days on the Camino de Santiago, the Way of St. James.
    “I still can’t believe I did it,” she says, looking through a pile of guidebooks and maps and a photo of her in her floppy blue hat. If John Boden had been able to zoom in close enough, he might have seen that spot of blue bobbing along the Camino.
    Pat Boden became fascinated with the Camino after watching The Way, a movie starring Martin Sheen as a grieving father who walks the Camino after the death of his son. She watched it again, and then a third time. She got busy researching the trip.
    The Bodens have been all over the world, to Egypt and Turkey, to China and even Spain on a previous trip. But John Boden decided that walking 490 miles was not to his taste.
    Through a travel service, Patricia Boden joined a group of five strangers with the same fascination and started her training. To allay her husband’s worries, she wore the GPS device. She also texted him daily.
    After Jesus’ resurrection, believers say, he instructed his disciples to preach the gospel to the ends of the Earth. That’s where St. James (Santiago in Spanish) ended up, at Finisterre, the end of the known world at that time.
    Remains thought to be those of St. James were discovered there in the 11th century and the church of Santiago de Compostela was built, 30 miles inland from the Atlantic. Trodden by peregrinos (pilgrims) for a thousand years, the Way of St. James, like the roads to Rome and Jerusalem, became one of the most holy pilgrimages for Roman Catholics.
    Pat Boden had no way to prepare for walking in mountains as high as 5,000 feet, sometimes steeply up, other times down. The highest local elevation she had was the Linton Avenue bridge over the Intracoastal Waterway near her home.
    “I trained during the summer in the wicked heat, walking the sidewalks of Highland Beach, Boca and Delray Beach,” she said.
    “My husband didn’t take me seriously until I bought the plane ticket.”
    The Camino trip was broken down into daily sections of 10 to 15 miles a day, ending in a private room in an inn each night. The pilgrims’ luggage preceded them in a van, so they carried only what they needed for the day. Some days they ate meals or snacks on the road, some days the tour company cooked hot lunches for them on propane stoves.
    “To me, at this stage of life, it was perfect,” said Boden. “In the old days, the pilgrims had to walk home, so it was double the distance. A lot of them died.”
 
Making friends of strangers
    One man in Boden’s group walked so fast — 3.72 miles an hour —that he was already showered and waiting to greet the rest when they arrived at their inn each day.
    “We just bonded so well, we laughed so much,” Boden said. “The people really made it for me.”
    Though she had not embarked on the Camino for religious reasons, she had her share of transcendent experiences.
    “We came to that great big hill with the big tall cross on it. It’s the highest place on the trip,” she recalled. “You bring a rock with you from home and you are supposed to leave your problems and cares, and pray for anyone who’s sick.
    “I didn’t think I was doing the walk for any [spiritual] reason, but a lot of friends had said, don’t forget me when you’re there. And I was giving thanks for my friend Brenda, who had a cancer on her spine that just went away two years ago. The doctors couldn’t see it anymore. I put down my rock and I just started crying.”
    As the pilgrims came within 62 miles of Santiago de Compostela, streams of others were converging on the same road. There are several routes, including walks from Portugal and France, and some pilgrims walk only the last 62 miles, so the small trickle of walkers became a steady stream as they closed in on their destination.
    “When the five of us got to Santiago, we all started crying,” said Boden. “Part of it was just, we made it. Part of it was seeing all those peregrinos together.”
    Boden avoided foot blisters by wearing toe socks under regular socks. One companion had blisters covering the soles of both feet, which had to be drained and bandaged. She never complained.
    “You’d ask her how she was doing and she would say, oh, fine. I said to myself, I’m through complaining.”
    By the time they reached the outskirts of Santiago, Boden had developed painful shin splints.
    “I was near tears. The others said, you don’t have to walk the rest of the way. But I said, I don’t care if I have to crawl on my knees.”
    And she didn’t complain.
    She also decided to go back to church. As it happens, she lives within walking distance of St. Lucy Catholic Church in Highland Beach.
    “Every Sunday, I could make up a reason not to go,” she said. “But for some reason, God put me across from that church, so now I go every Sunday.”
    Boden is already planning to walk the Way again, this time north from Lisbon, Portugal. Her sister, as well as the woman with the blisters, are planning to join her.
    “When you’re there, you don’t have any worries in the world,” said Boden. “We didn’t have to worry about anything. It’s just you yourself, nature and your friends.”

Lona O’Connor has a lifelong interest in health and healthy living. Send column ideas to Lona13@bellsouth.net.

By Christine Davis

    Bill Russell, chief executive officer and a founder of The Treatment Center of the Palm Beaches, retired in December. Anthony “Tony” Foster, the center’s chief operating officer since 2015, was named interim CEO.
    Also in December, the center made a $25,000 donation to Palm Beach County Fire Rescue for the purchase of naxolone, an emergency-use medication that can block the effects of opioids and rapidly reverse an overdose. The donation covers the cost of more than 700 doses of naxolone, which is approximately a three- to four-month supply.
    In Palm Beach County, more than 375 people overdosed and died from opioids between January and September 2016, already surpassing the previous year’s total drug overdose deaths.
    “With this donation, The Treatment Center is taking our efforts to help individuals and our community overcome the battle of addiction a step further. We recognize the scope and magnitude of this public health epidemic, especially now in this time of crisis, and we will continue to do more to restore hope for the still suffering families and those affected by the disease of addiction,” said The Treatment Center shareholder and recovery advocate Laura Laramee, a Delray Beach resident.
                                
    Lifespace Communities, a not-for-profit operator of continuing care retirement communities, named Kevin Knopf as its new regional director of operations. He will be responsible for leadership, strategic planning and day-to-day operations for the five Lifespace communities in Florida: Abbey Delray, Abbey Delray South and Harbour’s Edge in Delray Beach; The Waterford in Juno Beach; and Village on the Green in Longwood.
                                
    Under the leadership of Bethesda Health’s interventional cardiologist Dr. George Daniel,  doctors at Bethesda Heart Hospital and Bethesda’s Research Center, in conjunction with the Research Physicians Alliance, are studying a treatment to end chronic heart failure through a national clinical trial called DREAM-HF-1.
    The treatment involves harvesting stem cells from healthy matching donors, and later injecting them into the heart muscles of study participants via a catheterization procedure, followed by periodic evaluations with the study team. Post-procedure visits last approximately 24 months and are conducted via office visits and phone interviews.
    For potential study participants to find out more, they should check with their doctors to see if they may be eligible, and call the Bethesda Health Research Center at 374-5020.
                                
    Amanda Murphy was promoted to dean of the Bethesda College of Health Sciences and director of the Education Resource Center. With Bethesda for the past seven years, she previously served as a clinical nursing instructor.

— Send health news to Christine Davis at cdavis9797@gmail.com

A father and son take in the peacefulness of the Cypress Swamp.

Photos by Jerry Lower/The Coastal Star

Baton Rouge, a lichen, grows where the air quality is good.

Spider lilies are among the varied flora in the national refuge.

Purple beautyberry offers a spot of color to boardwalk visitors.

A pileated woodpecker drills on one of the swamp’s tree trunks.

By Deborah S. Hartz-Seeley

    The Cypress Swamp in Boynton Beach may be one of our area’s best kept secrets.
    “People don’t seem to know we are out here,” says Bruce Rosenberg, a volunteer at the Arthur R. Marshall Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge, where the swamp is located.
    And that’s too bad, because as you walk through the swamp on a 0.4-mile boardwalk, you discover what’s special about this unique ecosystem that used to stretch from Fort Lauderdale north past Lake Okeechobee.
    “Today there are only about 500 acres of swamp left, but what’s here is an environmental jewel,” says Rosenberg, who is an encyclopedia of information about the flora and fauna.
    He points out the trees that tower overhead and filter the light. These pond cypress and bald cypress are at home with their feet and knees in the water. But this time of year they look like they are on dry land.
    Don’t be fooled, says our guide as he explains that October to May is the dry season when the water is stored in layers of peat and muck lying atop an underground base of limestone.
    Notice one large specimen bordering the walkway has striations in its trunk. These are markings of a resident bobcat that uses the tree for honing his claws so he can hunt for raccoons and possums. Take a look on the railing lining the walk and you may find some of his scat.
    Overhead, hanging Spanish moss adds a bit of intrigue to the trees. The Seminoles used the moss as blankets when nights got chilly, Rosenberg tells us.
    On other trees you’ll notice small ferns that may be brown or green depending upon when you visit. This is the resurrection fern that can live for 100 years without water. When it’s dry, the plant looks desiccated and gray but when it detects moisture, it turns bright green.
    There are 11 species of ferns in the swamp, including the giant leather fern that can grow to 12 feet, plus the strap fern, the Hottentot fern, the royal fern and the sword fern.
    Also look on the tree trunks for lichens. The swamp is home to five varieties, ranging from red velvety splashes of Baton Rouge to the greenish tangles that are old-man’s-beard.
    “You only get lichens growing where there’s good air quality,” says Rosenberg.
 Take a deep breath and the air does seem pure.
    But as you near the center of the swamp, you’ll notice there’s very little breeze. Rosenberg explains that the ferns and other plants block the wind and keep the air still.
    Look closely and you’ll even see flowers growing here. Blue mist flower has colorful fuzzy blooms. There also are the purple blooms of the climbing aster. And if you look up you may even see a stiff flower star orchid with its pale green flowers growing in a tree.
    When you tire of looking at what’s growing in the swamp, consider what else lives here. Dragon flies dart from plant to plant. Pileated woodpeckers find the perfect spot to drill into the saw palmettos. Eastern screech owls and great horned owls with their 5-foot wingspans have been spotted. And the air is filled with the chirping of insects and frogs.
    In fact, Cuban tree frogs are the reason you’ll see about 100 numbered lengths of white plastic pipe stuck into the muck. They trap these invasive frogs, which are being counted for a census of their population.
    Although this boardwalk is relatively short, it’s a good place to get away from civilization, and a visit may change preconceived notions you have about swamps.  
    “This is a very peaceful place,” says Rosenberg.

Deborah S. Hartz-Seeley is a certified master gardener who can be reached at debhartz@att.net.

If You Go
    The Cypress Swamp is part of the Arthur R. Marshall Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge, 10216 Lee Road, Boynton Beach.
    The Visitor Center is open 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. daily. It’s closed Thanksgiving and Christmas.
    The swamp boardwalk that you enter behind the center is open daily 5 a.m. to 10 p.m.
    Entrance fee is $5 per private vehicle. If it’s not being collected at the gate, please pay in the Visitor Center. Several types of passes are available.
    For information, call 734-8303 or visit www.fws.gov/refuge/arm_loxahatchee/ or loxahatcheefriends.com.
    Volunteer Bruce Rosenberg, a self-taught ethnobotanist, offers a free swamp tour from 1:30 to 3 p.m.  Mondays and Thursdays. To find out about this and other tours, call or visit the websites. Always call before attending any event or tour to be sure it will take place as scheduled.

Gardening Tip     
“You should treat plants that you find growing in South Florida like you would mushrooms up North. Avoid eating them unless you know they are safe. Many of the plants you’ll see here are very poisonous.”
— Bruce Rosenberg, volunteer guide at the Cypress Swamp, Boynton Beach