By John Pacenti

A newly transformed Delray Beach City Commission decided March 31 to settle litigation with the ousted nonprofit that previously ran Old School Square, ending a contentious 18 months that split the city’s power structure.

The decision came just weeks after the city, in an email obtained by The Coastal Star, added to the controversy by alleging that the nonprofit — “with felonious intent” — took three glass sculptures by famed artist Dale Chihuly worth about $18,000 belonging to the cultural arts center, a claim the nonprofit disputed. The email demanded the artwork be returned or the city be compensated triple its value, or $54,000.

Attorney Marko Cerenko, the attorney for the nonprofit Old School Square Center for the Arts, Inc., said that under the proposed settlement, both sides will surrender their legal claims.

“My client felt that with the breath of fresh air with the new commission, that their resources were far better served in serving the community,” Cerenko said.

The old commission, in one of its final acts in power March 28, tried to insulate the Downtown Development Authority, which was just given control in February over managing the downtown cultural center. The commission removed from the DDA contract a 180-day “without cause” cancellation clause that the new commission could have used to change the management back to the nonprofit.

After the March 14 elections, only Mayor Shelly Petrolia remains on the dais from the 3-2 majority that removed the nonprofit in August 2021, saying it failed to disclose its financial records and mishandled renovation of the Crest Theatre.

Discussions about the settlement were not public because of attorney-client confidentiality, but when commissioners emerged from their special, closed-door session March 31, they opened the door to reestablishing a relationship with the nonprofit. All of this was done without Petrolia, who had a prior commitment.

The nonprofit sent the proposed settlement to the city the day before, after the prior commission’s final meeting, leaving the city’s decision on the proposal to the new board.

The commission voted 4-0 to have the city attorney negotiate a final agreement and execute a settlement. Then Commissioner Adam Frankel — long an ally of the nonprofit — said commissioners should meet in a workshop with Old School Square Center for the Arts representatives to make amends and find ways to work together.

When City Attorney Lynn Gelin suggested that the DDA be present at a workshop, Vice Mayor Ryan Boylston shot that idea down and it was agreed that the commission would meet only with the nonprofit.

“I clearly recognize that Old School Square did make some mistakes here but I don’t think they were fatal mistakes,” Frankel said.

He said that he wanted to sit down with the nonprofit to “try to reestablish some kind of partnership, not only with the DDA, who we asked to do things at the campus, but also with the city.”

The workshop with the commission and the former operators will be held at 6 p.m. May 9 at the Arts Warehouse, 313 NE Third St.

Boylston said the DDA would be brought in after that meeting takes place.

“We’ll bring in our established partner that we’ve already made a decision on, which is the DDA, and they are out there and doing their thing and we have a partnership with that,” he said.

“But I think first we’ve got to mend fences more than we did today and have a conversation about what does the future of our relationship look like between these two entities.”

When contacted following the meeting, DDA Executive Director Laura Simon said that she had not heard about the commission bringing the former managers back into the fold.

How it got to this point

The turnaround was remarkable but not surprising.

Petrolia and Commissioners Juli Casale and Shirley Johnson voted to throw out the nonprofit. But in the city’s March elections, Casale lost to Rob Long, and Angela Burns won the seat that Johnson had to vacate because of term limits.

Both won their seats by fewer than 400 votes and both campaigned on wanting to return the management of Old School Square to the nonprofit.

Five former mayors backed Long’s candidacy, as did board members of the nonprofit.

In the wake of the settlement, Casale said that “handing the keys back over to a group that mismanaged Old School Square to fulfill campaign promises seems like collusive government at its worst.”

An internal auditor found that the nonprofit had missing records, including an annual budget report, an annual audit report and two IRS forms that pertain to nonprofits.

The Coastal Star discovered the nonprofit reported more than $746,000 in net income for the fiscal year 2018-2019.

The auditor also found the nonprofit might have inadvertently “double-dipped” by using a federal Paycheck Protection Program loan to pay for the same payroll expenses already covered by Community Redevelopment Agency money.

The CRA demanded a return of $187,500 and stopped the flow of taxpayer money to the nonprofit.

The decision to oust the nonprofit enraged not only the entity but its well-monied supporters. The nonprofit filed suit in November 2021 against the city, Petrolia and others for allegedly breaching the lease, violating the state’s Government in the Sunshine open meetings law and civil conspiracy.

The city countersued, claiming breach of contract for, among other things, leaving the interior of the Crest Theatre in a demolished state.

Where it goes from here

Regarding the missing Chihuly artwork, Cerenko said the art always belonged to the nonprofit, not the city, and the letter was just attempted leverage by “certain commissioners” in the litigation.

He said the nonprofit is “hoping that the new commission is going to be significantly more supportive of what they have done and what they continue to do, as opposed to the old commission.”

Boylston, in a text message to The Coastal Star following the meeting, said it was time to mend fences.

“Ending these lawsuits is the right thing to do for the taxpayers and for our community; paying endless lawyer bills to prove a point is just wrong,” Boylston wrote. “It’s time for a long overdue public workshop with the board of Old School Square Inc. to address whatever issues are outstanding, because only then can we move forward with any decisions on the future management model of the Old School Square campus.”

Correction: An earlier version of this story had an incorrect location of the commission's May 9 workshop with Old School Square's former operators. The workshop is being held at the Arts Warehouse, 313 NE Third St.

By Larry Barszewski

On-street parking rates are about to double along the beach and on Atlantic Avenue in downtown Delray Beach, and almost triple on Atlantic Avenue east of the Intracoastal Waterway.

The good news for beachgoers is that the City Commission backed off charging an even higher rate for the beach parking spots on State Road A1A.

Beginning May 15, Delray Beach is increasing parking charges to $4 an hour on Atlantic Avenue from Swinton Avenue to the ocean, and to $3 an hour on State Road A1A. The rates have been $1.50 an hour on A1A and on Atlantic east of the Intracoastal Waterway, and $2 an hour on Atlantic from Swinton to the Intracoastal.

City-owned beach parking lots will see their rates increase from $1.50 an hour to $2 an hour, a 33% jump, as will parking off Atlantic on Gleason and Venetian drives. The $2 an hour rate will not change for street parking a block north and south of Atlantic Avenue on streets between Swinton and southbound Federal Highway.

The city’s decision to increase the rates came at the commission’s April 18 meeting, at Deputy Vice Mayor Rob Long’s request, an action he said had previously been recommended by a city advisory board.

“It could yield up to $2 million in revenue for the city,” Long said. “A great portion of that would come from nonresidents.”

The estimated parking revenues would actually increase $3.2 million with the higher rates, City Manager Terrence Moore told commissioners at their May 2 meeting, before commissioners decided to scale back the increase on A1A.

The A1A rate authorized April 18 was $4 an hour, but commissioners on May 2 decided that might be too much of a shock for beach-goers, including residents. Vice Mayor Ryan

Boylston said he couldn’t support that higher rate if there wasn’t some discount for residents. Moore said the city’s current parking app doesn’t provide for residential discounts.

“For $4 to park on Atlantic, I can be comfortable with, it’s Atlantic Avenue and it’s only so many spots, but I think the beach should be $3,” Boylston said of the hourly rates. “If I can’t make it $3 just for residents, then I think it should be $3 across the board.”

Boylston said the goal of the increased rates isn’t for the city to make more money, but to better manage parking downtown and on the beach.

“I know that’s going to negatively affect revenue, but that’s not the main reason we’re doing this,” he said. “We’re doing it to manage parking, to move people to the other lots, to move people to the garages.”

That was Long’s original point. He said the city’s Parking Management Advisory Board previously determined that “public parking downtown is underpriced and fine-tuning turnover and improving circulation were identified as overall strategies to optimize existing parking.”

But Mavis Benson, a member of the Downtown Development Authority’s governing board, said her board met with the parking management board in January 2022 and the two groups jointly supported an increase to $2.50 an hour along Atlantic Avenue and A1A because of the potential harm higher rates might cause to businesses.

“Difficult decisions don’t happen overnight and three years of research should not be dismissed in just one night,” Benson said. “If we could push it off to the fall; let the merchants get through season and then look at doing whatever we need to do.”

The parking rates apply from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. seven days a week on the barrier island. On Atlantic Avenue between Swinton and the Intracoastal, motorists have to pay to park from noon to 9 p.m. Sunday through Thursday, and from noon to 2 a.m. Friday and Saturday.

Mayor Shelly Petrolia said she was concerned the new rates may still be too high and will negatively affect businesses. She said she preferred to charge $3 an hour on Atlantic and $2 an hour on the beach.

Commissioners also directed Moore to remove the parking time limits on residential parking permits, available for $12 a year. The permits can be used at a number of downtown garages and city parking lots, but aren’t valid on Atlantic Avenue or the beach.

Moore plans to have the city’s parking policies scheduled for a June 6 commission workshop so they can be discussed in more detail.

CRA board to change

The City Commission is also looking to change the makeup of the Community Redevelopment Agency’s governing board, but not in the way two newly elected commissioners had been proposing. Long and Commissioner Angela Burns campaigned on making the board an independent board again made up of seven commission appointees.

That’s what existed prior to April 2018, when the five-member City Commission voted to put itself in place of the independent board, then decided to add two appointed positions to the governing board a week later.

City Attorney Lynn Gelin told current commissioners that there’s no going back now to a completely independent board. The city would risk losing its CRA if it did such a change because of rules in place for redevelopment agencies, she said.

Instead, commissioners plan to create a separate citizens advisory board that would make recommendations to the commission acting as the CRA governing board. The commission would also eliminate the two appointed positions on the current governing board — positions that Gelin said may be legally questionable.

Long and Burns said given Gelin’s comments, they support the proposals so that the city conforms to state statutes.

“I think the next-best thing would be this structure,” Long said.

The commission would then make up the entire CRA governing board. A similar two-board system is in place in Boynton Beach.

City resident Joy Howell wasn’t convinced.

“You’re discussing taking away two seats at the table with full voting rights held by Black representatives,” Howell said. “Will this not be a step backward for the Black community, to lose two minority seats with full voting rights in exchange for perhaps non-voting advisory board positions? I just don’t understand it.”

But Chuck Ridley, who lives in the CRA district and served on the previous independent CRA board — and did not support the switch to the commission in 2018 — said he understood the city’s predicament.

“I would like to suggest that this commission moves from a five-member board with two alternates to a five-member board, and that you set up an advisory committee,” Ridley said.

“My rationale is that, by doing it that way, you allow yourself to have more voices that can talk about a variety of different and important issues in our community.”
Boylston said he doesn’t want the advisory board to just comment on agenda items that will be coming before the governing board, but “for them to be tasked with the big picture” and “really empowering them.”

Petrolia was the lone dissenter, not persuaded by Gelin’s contention that the city might be on shaky legal ground having the two alternates on the governing board.

In other news:

• Commissioners approved moving their 4 p.m. twice-a-month meetings to 5 p.m. beginning in October.

• Internal Auditor Julia Davidyan submitted a 30-day notice of her intent to resign on April 4, saying she was leaving for personal reasons. Her work was in a consultant role through her firm, JMD Premier Group Inc.

• The commission will hold its annual goal-setting workshop at 8 a.m. May 12 at the Delray Beach Golf Club, 2200 Highland Ave.

• Commissioners requested the city manager develop suggestions on how to handle all the extra seaweed, called sargassum, expected to wash ashore this summer. Scientists are anticipating a record year based on the amount of sargassum now floating in the Atlantic Ocean. Moore said he will present some recommendations at the commission’s May 16 meeting.

• Petrolia announced the city’s public beach has officially received the Blue Flag designation, an international honor that officials hope will attract more eco-tourism from Europe, where the designation is well known. Delray Beach is one of the first two beaches to receive the Blue Flag in the continental United States.

By Mary Thurwachter

Lantana officials got a slap on the wrist from the Palm Beach County inspector general for violating its own and state laws and procurement policies by hiring an unlicensed contractor to renovate the town library.

In a review released March 30, Inspector General John Carey wrote that his staff also found the town did not promptly notify his office when it learned of possible mismanagement of the contract.

“We identified $411,731 in questioned costs and made three recommendations to enhance internal controls,” Carey wrote. The costs were payments made by the town to the uninsured contractor for work the company completed on the library.

Town Manager Brian Raducci said the recommendations — which have to do with staff training, updating procurement and contract policies and having a checklist to ensure bidders have proper licensing and are insured — have been implemented.

The town signed a contract with Sierra Construction, the lowest responsive bidder, to renovate the library on July 26, 2021. The following December, council member Mark Zeitler, an air-conditioning contractor, suspected Sierra did not have a license. He notified Raducci, who confirmed Zeitler’s suspicion and terminated Sierra’s contract.

Zeitler discovered the problem when he questioned a change order for additional air-conditioning work at the library. He noticed the absence of a license number for Sierra on the company’s sign in front of the construction site. 

The town paid Sierra $411,731 for services rendered through Nov. 5, 2021, and assigned the contract to one of Sierra’s subcontractors, Multitech Corp., but terminated that contract when the company failed to provide required documents. The town then hired West Construction on May 9, 2022, to complete the work.

Ruben Sierra, president of Sierra Construction, was charged in April 2022 with uttering a forgery regarding the insurance information he provided Lantana and with filing a fraudulent workers compensation statement. The forgery charge was dropped and Sierra pleaded guilty in Palm Beach County Circuit Court to the second. Adjudication was withheld and he was sentenced on Dec. 6 to 18 months’ probation and ordered to pay $618 in court fees.

Sierra Construction’s difficulties weren’t limited to Lantana. Sierra, whose first name is sometimes spelled Reuben, was also arrested in April 2022 regarding a Fort Lauderdale construction job incident, later pleading no contest in a Broward County courtroom to a third-degree felony, presenting a false statement of insurance coverage. Adjudication was withheld in this case, too, and Sierra was sentenced on Dec. 15 to 18 months’ probation, to be served concurrently with his Palm Beach County sentence, and fined $517.

As to the inspector general’s findings, Mayor Karen Lythgoe, in an email to The Coastal Star, wrote: “They were no surprise, as once it was realized that Sierra Construction did not have the proper licenses and insurance we expected this result. The process obviously had some holes in it, but that was corrected.”

Lythgoe wrote that “while audits are important as flaws can be identified and addressed, improvement is the reason for audits, not ‘gotcha.’ The $400,000 was spent on work delivered so it was not wasted as some are saying on social media.”

Lythgoe doesn’t blame staff for missteps.

“I have faith in our town staff to always try to do the right thing,” she wrote.  “They are constantly working to improve existing processes.”

Resident Cathy Burns wasn’t so forgiving in her remarks to the Town Council at its April 10 meeting. She chastised officials for paying Sierra over $400,000.

“It’s a gut punch how they were paid and were an unlicensed contractor,” Burns said. “That’s pretty disturbing. I’m glad the town was able to catch it, but it really leaves me not feeling like I can trust you guys with money.”

After delays and cost overruns, the library opened on Feb. 22 with a final price tag of $1,505,000, more than twice the budgeted amount of $748,636.

Zeitler, reached by phone, said the IG report was “a wake-up call and will have people on their toes in the future. It’s definitely improved the vetting process. They really didn’t have checks and balances in place, and now they’re looking at it more carefully, making sure everybody has what they are supposed to have so it doesn’t happen again.

“In the end,” Zeitler said, “the library turned out really nice and they did a really nice job with it.”

Pedro Luna leads a recent sunrise yoga class near Atlantic Avenue. He said city code enforcers sent him a notice April 10 ordering him to stop holding the sessions. Photo provided by Kelly Rodriguez

By Larry Barszewski

Groups doing yoga on the beach may find serenity and a sense of community in the surroundings and a relief of stress from the exercise, but Delray Beach officials say the sessions aren’t allowed on the city’s public beaches.

Yoga instructor Pedro Luna, contacted by The Coastal Star, said he received a letter April 10 from city code enforcers ordering him to cease the meet-up classes — both full moon and weekend sunrise sessions — he has held on the beach near Atlantic Avenue since June 2019.

“We’re just here to try to help bring people together,” he said. “Community is everything.”

City officials are concerned about the size of such gatherings, instructors collecting donations similar to what buskers do, the use of amplifiers for some classes, the safety of sea turtles and other issues.

At an April 18 City Commission workshop about special events, Assistant City Manager Jeffrey Oris said city staff plans to address beach event issues, but it first wants to finish updating event policies for other areas, especially the downtown, which were last revised in 2018.

“We started to go there and then we realized, there’s people doing yoga on the beach after hours. How do we police that? How do we make sure that they’re not disturbing turtles?” Oris said. “How do we make sure that anybody that’s on the beach isn’t doing an event that they go into the water when we don’t have lifeguards on duty?”

Oris said staff needs more time to consider what to propose.

“We want to make sure this is thoughtful considering the things we’re now finding out are happening on the beach,” Oris said. “There are some things that we didn’t know were happening out there that we’re finding out about now.”
Vice Mayor Ryan Boylston suggested that smaller groups, say fewer than 15 people and operating at off-hours for the beach, be given some leeway.

“I mean, if we could put some guidelines together like that, that says, ‘Hey, you know, we do want organizations to come out and enjoy our beach in group sessions, but we don’t want it to turn into mini-events and we obviously don’t want businesses running on our very small, limited footprint.’ I would be open to something like that,” Boylston said.

Mayor Shelly Petrolia expressed caution about how active the beach should be.

“One of the most important parts of our city is our beach. And one of the reasons it’s so loved is because it isn’t active,” Petrolia said.

“When my colleague was talking about yoga, I get it, if it’s smaller groups and before hours, I tend to agree with you. I’m open to that as long as it doesn’t open the door to everything else that could possibly come in. And if it does, I say we do nothing. It’s better I think to err on the side of caution.”

Beach yoga class participants complained at the regular commission meeting immediately following the workshop that they’ve been stopped from having their gatherings while the beach policy is in limbo.

“There’s no permit that they can apply for, because it doesn’t fit any of the criteria,” said Heidi Dietrich, who had been a regular at Luna’s classes. “If there’s any way you could allow our classes to continue until you work out these issues, it would be greatly appreciated.”

Brittany Lynch said there’s a reason the city may not have been aware of the yoga programs earlier: “because we haven’t harmed anyone.”

Cindy Smernoff Voloshin told commissioners she moved to Florida from Connecticut, where she was also able to do yoga on the beach. She sees the classes as good publicity for the city.

“When I moved to Delray Beach and found it, I was so excited, because that was something that helped my wellness,” Voloshin said. “I would just hope you would make sure the policies work for us to continue to have yoga on the beach.”

Luna, who publicized his classes through social media as meet-up events, told The Coastal Star he had been holding sunrise classes on Saturdays and Sundays that attracted between 30 and 50 people, and a monthly full-moon class that had anywhere from 150 to 320 people participating.

He said he accepted donations from participants for the classes, but told city officials he would be willing to have the classes for free if that’s what it takes to continue.

“We’re willing to do it for no compensation. We just want to continue gathering,” Luna said. “It makes yoga accessible by making it donation-based or free.”

By Mary Thurwachter

The Lantana Town Council unanimously approved revisions April 10 to the town’s traffic calming policy.

Changes include one that allows residents who are renting their homes to participate in petitions for traffic calming, with the caveat that at least two-thirds of the signatures must be from property owners in order to allow the town to verify.

Another change allows a resident to request speed limit signs without requiring the resident to go through the official traffic calming process.

Separate processes have been added for neighborhoods desiring speed humps and other more permanent traffic calming measures.

“The policy’s purpose is to provide a methodology and a means to address concerns associated with speeding and cut-through traffic and safety concerns on residential streets,” said Nicole Dritz, development services director. “This is a resident-initiated program. Residents do come forward with concerns that they have on their local roads, and this provides a process for them to go through and work hand-in-hand with staff to make updates.”

Dritz provided some background for council members. She said the traffic calming policy and guidelines were adopted in 2019. Last June, the town hired engineering firm Kimley-Horn and Associates to review the policy against what other municipalities are doing and any national standards.

In August and September, two public meetings were held for feedback, which Kimley-Horn reviewed. The firm prepared a preliminary draft of the new traffic calming policy.

Between November and March, town staff and Kimley-Horn collaborated to further refine and revise the policy.

In another change, residents will be able to submit a digital petition, rather than collecting physical signatures. The need for this revision became evident during the pandemic, when securing physical signatures became problematic.

In other news, as part of the Lantana’s ongoing effort to address flooding on Hypoluxo Island, Town Council members on April 24 authorized spending $169,440 for engineering services to construct drainage improvements.

The island has long been plagued with swamping during intense rainfall and king tides. Last year, the town spent $33,314 for an engineering study to come up with possible solutions. This is the next step.

The work, which will be done by Baxter & Woodman, Inc., will cover design, permitting and bidding assistance, and will address flooding issues on North Atlantic Drive and Beach Curve Road.

After the work is complete, the construction will come next, Utilities Director Jerry Darr said.

Some of the money for the project may come from the American Rescue Plan Act.

By Mary Thurwachter

Lantana officials have been talking about possibly closing the Pine Street railroad crossing since November and hosted a standing-room-only workshop on the subject on April 6.

The closing would happen only if the town is successful in winning a Federal Railroad Administration grant, Town Manager Brian Raducci said. The grant would pay 80% of the costs for safety improvements and enhancements along the Florida East Coast Railway’s two-mile corridor in town that runs on the west side of Dixie Highway and now includes five railroad crossings.

“Our railway partners would help us secure a grant,” Raducci said. He invited representatives from the FRA, FEC, Brightline and Tri-Rail to discuss crossing safety improvements, the FRA grant opportunity and what he calls “a corridor approach” to mitigate accident risks at the crossing.

Grant money would enable the town to make infrastructure improvements along the entire railroad corridor that Raducci said might be “challenging without the level of financial support and cooperation from those partners.”

Possible upgrades could include premium fencing on the east and west sides of the railroad tracks, crossing safety upgrades, additional landscaping (including a Third Street streetscape), a pocket park at West Pine Street and reconfiguration of the Ocean Avenue crossing to better handle increased traffic.

The workshop was designed to help gauge community support for the Pine Street crossing proposal — and reaction was mixed.

Some said it was a good idea. Others said the closing would impact the town in a dramatic way that they don’t fully support.

Owners of some of the businesses on Third Street expressed concerns about losing accessibility and visibility from Dixie Highway.

Raducci said he and others from the town had made personal visits to business owners in that area to hear their concerns.

As they had done at a previous workshop on Feb. 27, the railroad spokesmen who are working with town staff outlined what was being considered.

Daniel Fetahovic, public project engineer with FEC, provided historical background on his previous discussions with town staff regarding safety issues at the town’s railroad crossings. He also presented initiatives and conceptual drawings for improvements.

Tom Roadcap, project engineer for Brightline, gave an overview of funding opportunities through the Railroad Crossing Elimination Grant Program, which focuses on improving safety and mobility.

And Rory Newton, safety inspector with the FRA, discussed safety concerns.

“All of these discussions are in the very preliminary stages,” Raducci emphasized, and “no hard decisions or commitments have been made.”

He said the town would have to consider if it were getting enough money from grants to make up for the inconvenience of closing the Pine Street crossing. He also said a temporary closing would likely be planned to see how traffic flow in the area is affected.

Some residents warned that doing a temporary closure during the summer would not yield the same results as one done during the busier winter season.

Least-used crossing

According to a March 2023 traffic count, the Pine Street crossing is the least used in Lantana.

The crossing is adjacent to a curve in the tracks, Raducci says. “Due to the design of the track to accommodate the curvature, the crossing itself is not as flat as some of our other crossings.”

The town’s five railroad crossings are those on Lantana Road and on Hypoluxo Road, both maintained by Palm Beach County; and those on Ocean Avenue, Pine Street and Central Boulevard, all maintained by Lantana. The town signed an agreement with FEC on March 17, 1976, to assume the cost of the maintenance of the crossings.

Raducci said the maintenance cost for each crossing varies depending on FEC inspections and repair requirements. During the past 10 years, there has been approximately $99,000 worth of town-funded maintenance costs for the Ocean Avenue crossing. The town is planning to spend $214,000 on improvements for Central Boulevard’s crossing this year.

Raducci said it doesn’t appear that the Pine Street crossing has had any town-funded maintenance in the past decade. “The current condition appears to meet FEC’s standards, since they have not scheduled any work on the crossing that we are aware of at this time,” he said.

Linda Silpe’s home studio in Manalapan shows some of her artwork. But her primary passion is education. As a Norton Museum docent she helped start an education program for aspiring docents. Tim Stepien/The Coastal Star

Education has always played a significant role in Linda Silpe’s life and she’s learned over time the importance of culture in society.

Silpe and her husband, Don, who live in Manalapan, have long been benefactors of local cultural institutions such as Dramaworks and the Armory Art Center in West Palm Beach, and their philanthropy stretches back decades to the first days of the Wadsworth Atheneum in their native Hartford, Connecticut.

Armed with an undergraduate degree from Boston University and master’s degrees in both education and art education from the University of Hartford, Silpe got excited when a regional theater opened in a Hartford department store a year after she and Don married in the 1970s.

“It was a bit of a lark when it began, but Don and I were so hungry for theater we signed up immediately,” said Silpe, 82. “It started with local actors, and it grew and grew and now it is a major regional theater, which has produced original Tony Award-winning plays, attracted international directors, and is a major force in the theater world. And it started in the basement of the department store.”

She joined the board of directors 45 years ago and has become a lifetime member, even though she and Don left the frigid New England winters behind for the Palm Beaches long ago.

They wasted little time jumping into the local arts scene: Don became a board member at Dramaworks for nearly two decades, while Linda became a docent at the Norton Museum of Art, where she helped start an education program for aspiring docents.

“After we did that, I said to my husband, ‘They’re young, and after three or four years they get married and they leave.’ He said, ‘Where do they go?’ And I said, ‘They go to other museums. So? They then take that knowledge further, so that’s what we want.’”

Linda remains involved in the community as a member of the Armory Art Center executive committee, as a Norton docent and as a member of the Gallery Committee for the Ann Norton Sculpture Gardens, while Don is a member of the Dreyfoos School Board of Directors.

Linda Silpe said it’s important that the various cultural organizations across Palm Beach County work together.

“We enhance each other,” she said. “People who love ballet don’t necessarily care for opera, but you can cross-current a lot of the arts. That’s valuable; you learn much more that way. My serious cause is education. Whether it be art, music, physics, English, sex or history. I support education for all. Not the same education for all, but the availability of education for all, to build happier, healthier, safer individuals and communities.”

When the Silpes travel they often wind up in Manhattan, where they own a co-op and typically spend much of their time catching the latest shows in the theater district.

“We found that three in one day is too much, though we do occasionally do two,” she said. “My husband has been retired since 1989, when he was 49. We have spent our time going to theater, going to museums, having a good time. We fill it with the things we love.”

The Silpes have three children: a daughter Jennifer, who lives outside Burlington, Vermont, and is finance officer for the town of Underhill; son Greg, who is retired and lives in Palm Beach, and son Jay, an international trader who also lives in Palm Beach with the couple’s two grandchildren.

— Brian Biggane

Q: Where did you grow up and go to school? How do you think that has influenced you?
A: I grew up in West Hartford, Connecticut, where family and community were the center of lives. I ended up going to three high schools. I was in the first graduating class from Conrad High School. I did my undergraduate work at Boston University School for the Arts, then got a BSA [bachelor of science and arts degree] and a master’s in education and a master’s in art education from the University of Hartford.
Being engaged, whether through the PTA, politics or community centers, was a way of life for my family. It created a sense of personal importance, a responsibility to our hometown community.

Q: What professions have you worked in? What professional accomplishments are you most proud of?
A: My life-long profession has been education. As a public school art teacher for four years, I was paid to do what I loved, my only paying job. While raising my three children, I volunteered to teach art on a looser schedule in the town where I had been employed. And then I continued my devotion to education by volunteer teaching at a home for the aged, as well as teaching children with learning disabilities. I just loved the challenge of seeing eyes light up when students successfully met a challenge.
Later, I continued my educator role as vice chair of the Hartford Art School, as a regent at the University of Hartford, docent at the Norton Museum for more than 30 years, and board member and chair of the Armory Art Center in West Palm Beach. 
I am most proud of working with three other Norton docents 30 years ago to develop a curriculum to train future docents. We had all been art majors in college and felt new docents needed an art education background. We designed the program and then taught what we had designed because there was no staff to do it.
That grassroots project has morphed into a world-class docent training program at the Norton with a talented staff as part of a strong education department. I am thrilled with the outcome.

Q: What advice do you have for a young person seeking a career today?
A: Starting a career is just the opening of a door. Start with something you love. Where that opening will lead as you experience new challenges and opportunities unfold is what makes life exciting. So, once you go through that opening, keep looking around for new ideas, new pathways, new adventures.

Q: How did you choose to make your home in Manalapan?
A: We chose Manalapan because there was enough property for our teenagers to pursue all of the sports activities they loved without disturbing our neighbors. The ocean is at our back door for scuba diving, a tennis court, a dock for the boat and watercraft. Actually, the size of the property was the biggest draw.

Q: What is your favorite part about living in Manalapan?
A: The best part of living in Manalapan has been the small-town feel. We all know the town officials, and our Police Department know all of us, so when the town needs something residents always respond generously. Now we even have a supermarket. What could be better?

Q: What book are you reading now?
A: I am rereading Camus’ The Plague. I was compelled to read it during the early part of the COVID shutdown, and the similarities (to then and now) were breathtaking. But in the end, it sort of faded away. I am rereading it to see if it is the same book I read, or if time has changed it. Absurdism, which I hadn’t thought about since college, had pushed its way into everyday life. So, does it still seem relevant? That’s why I’m rereading it.

Q: What music do you listen to when you want to relax? When you want to be inspired?
A: I listen to Elvis, whose talent I didn’t appreciate as a teen, and ’50s and ’60s rock ’n’ roll. Surrounded by so many serious world challenges I revert to my innocent teenage years — sh-boom, sh-boom! Nothing serious, nothing sad, just moving to the beat.

Q: Have you had mentors in your life? Individuals who have inspired your life decisions?
A: When, as an elementary school student, I asked my mother about the Ten Commandments, she told me she only needed one: “Do unto others as you will have done unto you.” She explained that to her it covered all of them in one phrase. And I live by that as a goal, but of course sometimes fall short. 

Q: If your life story were to be made into a movie, who would play you?
A: Well, since it’s hypothetical, how about Audrey Hepburn? Beautiful (why not?), a woman who cared about people of the world, whose image of grace matches her life’s work outside of Hollywood.

Q: Is there something people don’t know about you but should?
A: When I am driving alone, I sing to my ’50s and Elvis stations, as loud as I can in my terrible off-key voice and love every second! (Well, I think my husband suspects this quirk.)

Howard Parker owns two adjacent half-acre lots on Lands End Road. Manalapan commissioners rejected his request for a variance to resize them, to create a larger, .7-acre parcel for his home and a reduced, .33-acre parcel that would be developable. Rendering provided /Town of Manalapan

By Larry Barszewski

A Manalapan resident says property he owns next to his house on Lands End Road could fetch $10 million on the open market, but he couldn’t persuade town commissioners to approve the variance he needs to make the land developable.

Commissioners unanimously rejected Howard Parker’s request at their April 11 meeting, saying any hardship Parker is experiencing is of his own making and not eligible for any relief from the town.

Parker built his home on a half-acre lot at 1275 Lands End Road in 1992. He purchased another half-acre lot next door at 1285 Lands End Road in 1999 and used a portion of it for a house addition that he said he completed in 2004. His property is along the Intracoastal Waterway on the west side of Lands End Road, between Little Pond Road and Churchill Way.

Parker wanted to turn the undeveloped portion of the 1285 parcel into a one-third-acre lot, telling commissioners that similarly sized properties are nearby and the lot has enough land for a new home — a two-story with as much as 8,600 square feet — that still meets the town’s setback requirements.

“When I built the addition, I was very mindful that this day would come,” Parker said of his desire to either develop or sell the parcel. “The vacant lot would sell for $10 million today with 95 feet of frontage.”

But commissioners didn’t see it that way. Parker’s property is zoned for half-acre lots, not something smaller.

“I understand Mr. Parker’s ambitions and what he’d like to do,” Mayor Stewart Satter said. “But it certainly seems very unreasonable to me and I would hope to other commissioners up here. He’s in a half-acre zone and he doesn’t meet the half-acre and as such he can’t build another house on that lot.”

John Randolph, an attorney representing Parker, disagreed.

“We don’t feel he created his own hardship,” Randolph said. “We felt that when he went to the town and got a permit to build over the property line, that he thought he was given permission to do that and he did not know at the time that he was creating a nonconformity.”
Bradley Miller, a land planner at Urban Design Studio, also hired by Parker, told commissioners there are some properties in the same zoning district that are also smaller than a half-acre.

Parker said he thought the only reason for the half-acre zone went back decades to Palm Beach County lot size requirements for homes on septic systems. Parker said new septic systems no longer need drainage fields as large.

Commissioners couldn’t get past what they said was Parker’s own responsibility for his predicament.

“We have two half-acre lots. The owner did something to those lots that created this hardship,” Commissioner Richard Granara said. “To me, as a body, we can’t approve it. It’s black and white.”

In other news, commissioners were told construction of a new landscaped circle in the Lands End Road cul de sac will take longer than anticipated and the cost will be higher.

Town Manager Linda Stumpf reported that she had requested bids from three companies for the work, and received one response that was “absolutely unacceptable” and an “unbelievable bid.”

Stumpf said the bid was for $80,000 for the work and “it excluded more than it included.”

She said she would now put out a formal bid request, hoping to have a bid for the work on the agenda at the commission’s June meeting. Stumpf would like to see the work done in the summer when fewer residents are in town.

OCEAN RIDGE — Dorothy Jean (Copenhaver) Taylor of Ocean Ridge died at home Feb. 26, surrounded by family. She was 100.

Dorothy was born Dec. 6, 1922, to Mary Helen and Lloyd Copenhaver in Joliet, Illinois. She was an only child who loved sports and outdoor activities. After graduating high school,

Dorothy followed her dream to become a nurse at Copley Nursing School in Aurora, Illinois.

Soon after graduating as an RN, she married her high school sweetheart, William John Munch. They resided in Joliet and vacationed in Florida, eventually purchasing a mobile home in Briny Breezes for winter vacations.

Because they loved the area so much, they purchased land in neighboring Ocean Ridge.

In 1964, as a recently divorced single mother, Dorothy procured the first pre-construction loan obtained by a single female in Palm Beach County. Her last single-family home, once a duplex, was completed within 18 months of her endeavors.

Mrs. Taylor continued her nursing career and education throughout her life. Her last nursing position was with Hospice by the Sea in Boca Raton, where she worked until in her mid-70s.

Mrs. Taylor loved life. She enjoyed boating, motor home trips, golf, travel, but more than anything else, her love for her family was enduring.

Mrs. Taylor was predeceased by William Munch and Harold Taylor, along with grandson Jonathan Watson.

Among those surviving her, Mrs. Taylor leaves her daughter, Sarah Ann Steies (Roland), granddaughter Kourtney Watson (Ken Christian), grandsons Christopher Watson and Eric Steies, along with great-grandchildren Dominic Giangarra, Tristan Penaluna, Alexander Penaluna, Logan Christian, Lara Christian, Skyler Watson,
and Rowan Watson.

Memorial donations in her name can be made to Trustbridge.com Foundation.

Funeral arrangements are with Boynton Memorial Chapel of Boynton Beach and St. Vincent Ferrer Catholic Church in Delray Beach.

 — Obituary submitted by the family

By Rich Pollack

Questions from Highland Beach residents about the traffic impacts of an impending State Road A1A resurfacing project — as well as the need for bike lanes and the effectiveness of simultaneous drainage work — were fielded by a state engineer who assured residents their concerns were being heard.

During a meeting May 2, about two dozen residents listened as Florida Department of Transportation project engineer Brad Salisbury offered details about the $8.8 million resurfacing, restoration and rehabilitation, or 3R, project along 3.3 miles of A1A that runs through Highland Beach and includes a small slice of Delray Beach.

The project, which is scheduled to begin a year from now, is expected to last 18 months and will include the resurfacing of the highway as well as installation of 5-foot bike lanes to replace a not-always well-kept shoulder on either side of the highway.

Another key part of the project is drainage, consisting largely of swale improvement on both sides of the major thoroughfare through town.

The meeting, which came at the request of residents, marked the third time Salisbury had come to Highland Beach to offer a public presentation and field questions from residents worried about the unavoidable disruption that will come from the once-every-20-years project.

Salisbury explained that many of the concerns voiced by residents at previous meetings were addressed — including reducing the number of trees that need to be removed to just seven.

Town commissioners, who hosted the meeting, praised Salisbury and town staff for working together to address concerns.

“We’re never going to satisfy everyone’s issues and complaints, but I think you made a valiant effort to try and deal with everything,” Commissioner Evalyn David told Salisbury.

Throughout his presentation and discussion, the engineer assured residents that many of their concerns and suggestions would be investigated.

Once the project begins, people using A1A will encounter single-lane road closures, which will mean traffic delays. Salisbury said that the closures would be limited to 1,000 feet during the day and 2,500 feet at night.

One resident, who pointed out that traffic on A1A can be a nightmare during the season — even without construction — wondered if the road could be open to local traffic only.

Salisbury explained that closing the road to nonresidents wasn’t workable, largely because it is a state road and must be open to all. He did say that the state would put up signs on the west side of both the Linton Boulevard and Spanish River Boulevard bridges and at the town’s north and south ends, designed to shift traffic away from A1A by letting motorists know to expect construction-related delays.

He also said he would meet with FDOT construction managers to look at other ways to minimize traffic disruption. He pointed out that while frequent lane closures will occur, at other times work on the swales will not require stopping motorists.

“It won’t be all day, every day,” Salisbury said.

The addition of bike lanes was also a major topic of discussion, with some questioning why the project needed to include bike lanes and some wondering if they could be made safer by including a barrier between the lanes of traffic and bicyclists.

Salisbury said that bike lanes are required by state law on major road improvement projects except when they impede the flow of traffic. He said bike lanes will be included in upcoming 3R projects in Delray Beach and Boca Raton as well.

Because Highland Beach has a large number of driveways on A1A and because they could provide hazards for bicyclists, the idea of barriers including flexible poles was rejected.

Salisbury said, however, that he would bring up this issue for discussion with others from the FDOT to see whether acceptable alternatives exist.

The drainage portion of the project also drew a lot of questions, with Committee to Save Highland Beach leader Jack Halpern wondering if ponding issues on the road could be managed by requiring homeowners on the east side of the highway to control runoff from their properties.

Halpern, who writes a blog for the political action committee, has previously questioned whether the drainage portions of the project and the bike lanes were needed, saying that without them the timeline could be shortened and disruptions reduced.

Salisbury said that many of the suggestions he heard this month will be discussed and that FDOT officials will be back for another public meeting with contractors prior to the start of construction.

By Tao Woolfe

Two nonprofit organizations — one that builds athletes and one that saves sea turtles — announced in April that they were moving to Boynton Beach.

Athletic Angels Foundation, an organization run by professional sports trainer Mike Barwis, will be coming to Boynton Beach in the coming months to help build and operate a training facility at the East Boynton Little League Park on Woolbright Road.

Barwis, now located in Deerfield Beach, will be partnering with Phil Terrano to build the 28,000-square-foot training facility on the grounds of the park.

Although there will be a special emphasis on youth baseball, training at the facility will be for all major sports and could be a draw for professional athletes, Terrano has told the city.

Services offered by Barwis will include speed, agility, conditioning, weight training, nutrition programs, batting cages, pro clay bullpen mounds, data assessment, physical therapy, chiropractic services, youth camps and scholarship programs.

Terrano, a major league baseball player agent, has also said he and his investors envision adding turf fields, and making the park accessible for people with disabilities.

Although Terrano and Barwis will build the facility, the city will own the building and lease it to Barwis and Terrano.

The city, which will also be involved in the renovation and maintenance of the park, plans to spruce up the existing grass fields, add T-ball and artificial turf fields, and upgrade the bathrooms and concession stands, Recreation and Parks Director Kacy Young has said.

Terrano had hoped to have the work completed by summer, but Young said a year would be a more realistic timetable.

Barwis, at a special City Commission meeting on April 11, contracted with the city to renovate Field 1, which has fallen into disrepair. He plans to repair or replace all surface areas, replace all fencing and netting, add new lighting and a high fence to keep fly balls within the park.

“This will be a destination ballpark that everyone can come to,” Terrano has said. “I want Boynton Beach to have the best — a field of dreams.”

Turtles too
ICARE — Sea Turtle Adventures, which helps monitor and rescue sea turtles on Palm Beach County beaches, has moved its operation from West Palm Beach to Boynton’s First Presbyterian Church on Southwest Sixth Avenue.

The organization also operates an educational program for young adults,

“This organization creates wonderful programs that are vocational, educational and recreational,” Mayor Ty Penserga said in announcing the move of Sea Turtle Adventures. “This is a very unique and special opportunity.”

A crowd of more than 500 honored the Florida Atlantic University men’s basketball team after the best season in school history. It ended in a last-second loss to San Diego State in a semifinal of the NCAA tournament. The Owls finished 35-4, the most victories in the nation, and coach Dusty May told reporters that ‘these guys have created memories and a legacy that will last a lifetime.’ Eight of the top nine Owls are eligible to return next season.
ABOVE AND BELOW: Fans take photos of the team as May accepts the key to the city from Mayor Scott Singer. RIGHT: FAU alumnus Jorge Charbonier and his son Jorge Jr. pose with FAU mascot Owlsley. Photos by Tim Stepien/ The Coastal Star

By Joe Capozzi

Jamie Titcomb has been hired as South Palm Beach’s new town manager under an unusual arrangement that will make him a part-time town employee. 

Titcomb will start June 5, replacing retiring manager Robert Kellogg, who since 2019 has held the position as a full-time employee, as had previous town managers in recent memory. 

“This is new and different. We’ve never done this before,’’ Town Attorney Glen Torcivia said April 28 before the Town Council unanimously hired Titcomb.

Titcomb, who was town manager in Loxahatchee Groves until he retired last year, wanted to serve as South Palm Beach’s town manager as an independent contractor so he can spend more time with family. Torcivia said he should work as a town employee. 

As a compromise, Titcomb agreed to a two-year arrangement in which he will work as a town employee for at least 20 hours a week, but no more than 25 hours per week, at $82 per hour.

He will receive no health insurance or pension benefits and he will not receive any paid holidays. He can be terminated without cause and without severance pay. 

His weekly work hours are capped at 25 to avoid triggering the town’s health insurance plan, which is automatically given to employees who work at least 26 hours a week, Torcivia said. 

“I appreciate the attorney’s attempt to create a hybrid agreement that meets the needs of a fiduciary full-time town manager at the same time trying to constrain your total costs,’’ said Titcomb, who served as Ocean Ridge town manager from October 2015 to March 2019.

“Think of this as an a la carte menu rather than a full-course menu in order to get there.’’ 

If Titcomb works 20 hours a week, he’d get about $85,000 a year. If he works 25 hours a week, he’d get $106,000 a year. 

Kellogg gets about $170,000 a year in salary ($110,250) and benefits, a total that equates to $82 an hour over a 40-hour work week. 

Some Town Council members said they preferred to have the town manager at Town Hall five days a week, with Titcomb deciding how to divide his 25 hours over the full work week. 

“I don’t care if you have me here for four days or five days. Most of you who know me long enough know I will be available as needed,’’ said Titcomb, who lives in Atlantis. 

Torcivia said the arrangement “is a new concept. I’m hoping there won’t be bumps on the road. Don’t be surprised if there are a few little bumps, but I don’t think there’s going to be a lot of bumps.’’

Kellogg announced his retirement in November, a day after council member Ray McMillan made an unsuccessful motion to fire him. Kellogg wanted to retire at the end of March but has agreed to stay on until May 25.

“I want to thank Bob for all he has done. He will be missed,’’ Mayor Bonnie Fischer said. “Thank you, Jamie, for coming. We look forward to you being on board, a new chapter in government in South Palm Beach.’’  

Kellogg’s departure triggered the resignation of the town’s financial consultant, Beatrice Good. 

“I firmly believe that the foundation of every successful administration is based on the mutual respect and trust of its staff,’’ Good, who did not attend the April council meeting, wrote in a resignation letter to Kellogg in March after the council started negotiating with Titcomb.

“Unfortunately with your pending departure, it seems this will all be lost. Having previously experienced a long period of instability and chaos with the town, I choose not to do so again,’’ she wrote.

In other business, the Florida Department of Transportation has rejected a request by the Town Council to eliminate plans for a bicycle lane along a 1.7-mile stretch of South Ocean Boulevard north of South Palm Beach.

The council sent the letter to Gov. Ron DeSantis to support the town of Palm Beach, which thinks the bike lane would disrupt ingress and egress of condos along the road and would be counterproductive for bicyclists since there are no bike lanes at Sloan’s Curve just north of Ibis Way.

“The department is required to provide safe bicycle facilities where feasible when planning projects,’’ District Four DOT Secretary Gerry O’Reilly said in a letter to Fischer.

By Steve Plunkett

St. Joseph’s Episcopal School, locked in litigation with St. Joseph’s Episcopal Church — its neighbor and landlord — will shutter its campus at the end of the school year.

The school’s board of trustees announced March 31 that it made the “agonizing decision to close” in a meeting the day before, Board Chairman Bill Swaney and Vice Chairman Peter Philip said in a letter to the school community.

St. Joseph’s Episcopal Church, which owns the property on which the school has sat for 60 years, told the school in April 2022 that it would not renew its lease. The school sought accommodations with the church and looked for a new location, “only to learn that extensive permitting and remodeling would prohibit the completion of any move for at least two years,” the trustees’ letter said.

“Despite all these good efforts, it is clear now that the church has forced the school to close,” the trustees said. “We’re devastated for our students, parents and teachers.”

In a Facebook post, parent Kayla Chomko of Boynton Beach shared her sadness: “We can’t even believe this news. Our children spent their most precious years being loved on, supported, educated and cared for by the amazing faculty and staff. Our hearts are in a million pieces.”

The school on Feb. 20 lost its bid for an injunction to let it continue operating on the church’s grounds until a lawsuit between them was resolved. Circuit Judge Bradley Harper ruled the school did not have “a substantial likelihood of success … given the absence of any writing which establishes the existence of a 99-year lease agreement.”

The school claims it has an oral, 99-year lease to stay where it is, at 3300B S. Seacrest Blvd., until the year 2093.

The church said the school signed a five-year written lease in 2012 and was given a five-year extension that expired in November. Both sides last year agreed to extend the lease until June 30 while the dispute headed to court.

The church has not given its reasons for not wanting to renew the $5-a-year lease.

“We remain perplexed about why the church chose to ignore the interests of our constituents,” the trustees said in their letter. “We are extremely disappointed and angry that the church has behaved so callously.

“Perhaps above all, we are crushed that the school will no longer exist in service to the community of which it has been so integral a part.”

The school urged people who paid for inscribed bricks in its Swaney Courtyard to retrieve them. “We feel it is important for us to hold onto these memories as we embark on a new chapter. If you would like to have your brick, we invite you to email communications@sjsonline.org to schedule a time to pick up yours,” it said.

Tami Pleasanton, who retired as head of school in 2016, said the school employees represented the best of what it meant to be educators and mentors.

“While the future of St. Joe’s is no more, the legacy and memories will live on — there are so many good, kind, and wonderful things to recall and to feel good about,” she wrote on the school’s Facebook page. “We did a good job ... and then some.”

The school had 175 students enrolled in pre-K through eighth grade. While the two entities share the St. Joseph’s name and the same location on Seacrest Boulevard, the school split off from the church in 1995.

That was a year after Swaney gave the church approximately $2.5 million worth of stock in his company, Perrigo, “for the express purpose of the church constructing buildings and facilities for use by the school,” said the school’s lawsuit, which has not officially been withdrawn.

Swaney, the suit claimed, made it clear to the church’s vestry that he was making the gift in exchange for a promise, made orally several times, that the school would never be displaced from the property. The church sold the stock and built a gymnasium, library, classrooms and administrative offices.

The trustees' letter said the school’s Early Childhood Academy, at 2515 N. Swinton Ave. in Delray Beach, will remain open next school year.

Once it is built, Ocean One will dominate a long-empty corner of Ocean Avenue and Federal Highway where a Bank of America once stood. Rendering provided

By Tao Woolfe

After listening to numerous residents’ fears that the Ocean One mixed-use complex would further snarl downtown traffic, the City Commission voted 4-1 to grant site plan modifications — and an extension — to the project’s new developer.

But on April 11, during the first of two meetings on the topic, the commissioners, acting as the Community Redevelopment Agency board, warned Hyperion Development Group that the company must perform as promised or face legal consequences.

Hyperion is proposing a 371-unit apartment complex with 25,600 feet of commercial space. There would be 238 one-bedroom apartments; 91 two-bedroom apartments; and 42 studio apartments.

The original proposal, approved in 2017, called for 358 apartments, 12,075 square feet of retail and a 120-room hotel.

Amenities would include a pickleball court, a swimming pool and “beautiful, well-programmed public plazas and open spaces on Ocean Avenue and Federal Highway and resort-style private recreational amenities for the future residents,” according to Bonnie Miskel, attorney for Hyperion.

The previous owner, Davis Camalier, asked for several extensions and failed to start construction. As a result, the 3.7-acre site — bounded on the north by Boynton Beach Boulevard, on the south by Ocean Avenue, and east and west by Northeast Sixth Court and Federal Highway, respectively — has been vacant for years.
Miami-based Hyperion Group purchased the property in December 2021 for $12 million, but the Boynton Beach commissioners and residents said they are still nursing hard feelings about the project.

Miskel repeatedly asked the commissioners at the April meeting not to hold Hyperion responsible for the previous owner’s failures.

Miskel assured the commissioners that the only reason her client was seeking an extension was to secure the necessary permits to begin construction.

During almost three hours of public comment, residents expressed wariness of the new development as well as concerns about the density and traffic it would cause.

“We keep extending and extending, and should ask for penalties,” said Boynton Beach resident Yvonne Skovron, summing up the prevailing sentiment. “The property keeps getting transferred from developer to developer. Do they have financing in place?”

Many people in the audience mentioned that the city had “given away” a piece of property to facilitate the original Ocean One project.

They were referring to the fact that in 2016, the CRA sold a half-acre parcel of adjacent land to the previous developer for $10. That land, valued now at more than $500,000, allowed the project to extend north to Boynton Beach Boulevard.

The city had hoped the developer would, in turn, build a small park on the site, but neither it, nor the apartment complex, ever materialized.

Several residents of the nearby Marina Village complex said parking in the area is already in short supply.

“Parking is a huge issue,” said Linda Cross, a Marina Village resident. “When the bridge goes up, there’s a tremendous parking jam. We’re lucky nobody’s been hit in the marina parking garage.”

Her neighbor Terrence Cahill asked the commissioners to be sensitive to the community’s concerns about downtown crowding and traffic. “We need you to protect us, not the developers,” Cahill said.

Commissioners said they, too, are concerned about parking and density, and asked Miskel whether the developer could provide more parking.

The attorney replied that her client did not cause the problem, but that they will see what remedies are possible.

Hyperion is proposing to provide 652 parking spaces, with 532 of those spaces in the parking garage and the rest on the street level.

Mayor Ty Penserga said the city has already lost money on the project but wants to see something built on the site.

“I don’t want that land vacant,” Penserga said. “If this makes it to the City Commission meeting we can ask more questions.”

The project was brought up again at the April 18 City Commission meeting, and so many more residents talked about the downtown parking problems that the mayor suggested the commission discuss the possibility of building a big, downtown parking garage.

“You have all brought to the forefront that in order for us to grow this city we need more parking in the area,” Penserga said. “The city should start thinking about a public parking garage.”

Thomas Turkin, the sole dissenting vote, said he wanted to table the matter until parking and other issues had been worked out.

“I’m not trying to kill the project, but I want to mitigate a problem we’ve been hearing about for years and years and years,” Turkin said.

Ultimately, the commission agreed to allow Hyperion to add 13 more apartments to the complex and granted an extension. The commercial space has also been increased.

The commissioners, after conferring with city staff, imposed several conditions, including:

• That the extension be for only six months, rather than the requested year, to obtain permits.

• That another six to seven months would be granted to begin construction.

• That the developer meet with the city and CRA staff to discuss parking solutions.

• And that the developer hold two public workshops within 30 days of April 18 to discuss parking.

The Lady Delray (left) and the Lady Atlantic were moored about like this when the Lady Delray fire occurred April 12, owner Joseph Reardon said. A strong easterly wind helped keep the fire from spreading to the Lady Atlantic, which is still in operation, he said. Photo provided by Trip Advisor

By Larry Barszewski

The ability to keep her beer kegs cool may have doomed the Lady Delray, which its owner said won’t be restored following an early morning fire April 12.

Joseph Reardon, who owns Delray Yacht Cruises with his wife, Kerry, said the fire was started by the tour boat’s beer cooler motor while the Lady Delray sat docked in the Intracoastal Waterway at Delray Beach’s Veterans Park on the north side of Atlantic Avenue. He put the loss value at more than $1 million and said it occurred “over a $3,000 beer cooler that never ever should have caught fire like that.”

There wasn’t even any beer in it at the time, just a case of water, and the motor was only 4 years old, he said.
Delray Beach Fire Rescue responded to the fire shortly after midnight, and the State Fire Marshal is handling the investigation. The fire marshal has ruled the fire accidental.

“When the windows were broken out, we noted significant fire to the front/mid area of the main passenger area of the vessel,” the Delray Beach incident report said. “We quickly knocked the fire down and contained it to that area.”

The fire that damaged the Lady Delray started in a beer cooler. Photo provided by Delray Beach Fire Rescue

The Delray Beach report says the fire started in the “dining room, cafeteria, bar area, beverage service.” It estimated the property and contents value at $1.1 million and the property and contents loss at $300,000. The fire marshal’s office said a very early rough estimate was $100,000.

Reardon said his company has operated the 90-foot Lady Delray out of Veterans Park since 2003 and added the 105-foot Lady Atlantic in 2008 because of a pent-up demand for tours and charters on the Intracoastal Waterway.

The fire spared the larger Lady Atlantic, which was also at dock, tied up to the east side of the Lady Delray. The Lady Atlantic received some minor cosmetic damage, Reardon said, but was protected from any smoke or fire damage by a strong easterly wind blowing that night.

“I still haven’t wrapped my brain around it. I just can’t believe this happened,” Reardon said. “If this fire happened six hours later, it would have been put out in 30 seconds. It happened in the middle of the night, with no one on the boat.”

Delray Yacht Cruises is continuing to operate with just the Lady Atlantic, working to reschedule as many of the Lady Delray’s private charters as possible onto the Lady Atlantic. The Lady Atlantic also continues to provide regular cruises open to the public.

Reardon said he may have to shut down for a couple of weeks in September — the slowest time of year for the tour company — to have regular maintenance work completed on the Lady Atlantic.

The Lady Delray had just come back from a six-month marina stay, where it had over $500,000 in work completed, Reardon said.

“We were ready to get it back in service, probably a week away from using it,” he said. “The boat was probably in the best shape it’s been in since I’ve owned it.”

Manalapan commissioners have approved a new exterior color scheme (above) at the Eau Palm Beach Resort & Spa (below, right). The resort’s general manager says the fresh paint job will give the hotel a ‘more modern look.’ Photo and rendering provided by the Eau Palm Beach Resort & Spa

By Christine Davis

The Eau Palm Beach Resort & Spa, a Manalapan landmark, is getting a facial of its own.
Call it a paint job, if you must. For the resort, the colorful new look is a statement about its future.
After completing a $25 million interior renovation last year and with additional renovations planned for 2025, the Eau will spend the summer addressing the first impressions visitors get of the resort.
“In keeping with the new renovations, we’d like to modernize the exterior of the building, get away from the 1980s look of the two-tone orange that was typically a Ritz-Carlton color,” Tim Nardi, the Eau’s general manager, told Manalapan commissioners at their April 11 meeting.
He said the change in color from the hotel’s Ritz-Carlton past will give the building “some new life with that more modern look that we do believe is in keeping with the character of the neighborhood.”
The new colors, made by Sherwin-Williams, bear the names “lantern light,” “repose gray” and “swimming.” Those translate into a pale shade of yellow, a gray/beige trim with violet undertones, and a tealish cornice trim of saturated blue with green undertones.
Nardi said the painting is part of needed exterior work at the hotel, 100 S. Ocean Blvd.
“We are requesting the site plan review so that we can fix the façade,” Nardi said. “The building hasn’t been painted since 2007, and being directly on the ocean, we need to fix the cracks and repaint the building.”
Commissioners approved the site plan changes and spoke approvingly of the color scheme.
The work is expected to begin in July and take about three months to complete, Nardi said. The work will start on the ocean-facing east side, including the hotel room balconies, so that the painting of all guest areas will be completed before the season starts. The project will finish with painting the exterior along State Road A1A.
“Painting in the front in October won’t harm business, won’t be an eyesore,” Nardi said. “Once the guests get in, all the painting they will see will be done.”

***

The Seagate Hotel & Spa in Delray Beach is offering its Golden Getaway/Stay Golden perks and discounts through Nov. 20. The offerings include up to a 30% discount on the nightly room rate plus two poolside cocktails, and a 20% discount on dinner at the resort’s restaurants. The resort is at 1000 E. Atlantic Ave. For more information, call 561-665-4800 or visit seagatedelray.com.  

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Bridge Senior Living has added the Carlisle Palm Beach, 450 E. Ocean Ave., Lantana, to its portfolio. An affiliate of Bridge Senior Living has owned the Carlisle Palm Beach since 2017, and this change transitions the residences to Bridge Senior Living’s owner/operator management model.
The facility will continue to provide senior living and care options. Its independent living section, consisting of 144 apartments, will be rebranded as the Residences at the Carlisle Palm Beach, and the assisted living and memory care section, with 135 apartments, will be rebranded the Carlisle Assisted Living and Memory Care.
New enhancements include a reimagined wellness hub offering residents private fitness instruction and group classes.

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This estate at 2499 E. Maya Palm Drive along the Intracoastal Waterway is on the market for $52 million, which would set a record price for a Boca Raton home sale. Photo provided

The family of Constant Contact founder Randy Parker has listed a compound at 2499 E. Maya Palm Drive, Boca Raton, for $52 million with Jill Hertzberg and Jon Mann, agents with Coldwell Banker Realty’s Jills Zeder Group.
The now-deceased Glen K. Parker, formerly chairman of the Institute for Econometric Research, purchased the property with his wife, Sandy, in the mid-1990s. On 1.7 acres with 437 feet on the Intracoastal, it features a 10,000-square-foot curvilinear main house and guest house, two swimming pools, and a covered patio inspired by the dining pavilion at Little Dix Bay Resort in the British Virgin Islands.
The architecture was by Mitch Kunik, with interiors by Alene Workman and landscaping by horticulturalist Craig Morell. The estate was featured in Florida Architecture magazine in 1998. 
“If this waterfront compound sells for $52 million, it will break the record for the most expensive home ever sold in Boca Raton,” Mann said. “According to public records, the current Boca Raton record is held by a $29.79 million land sale at 372 NE Fifth Ave. in April 2022.”

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The ocean-to-Intracoastal, 7,540-square-foot estate on 1.62 acres at 860 S. Ocean Blvd., Manalapan, sold for $37.05 million in March. The seller was 860 S. Ocean LLC, managed by West Palm Beach-based attorney Maura Ziska. The buyer was 860 South Ocean Manalapan LLC, managed by Clearwater-based attorney Alan S. Gassman. Douglas Elliman agent Gary Pohrer represented both sides in the deal.
In December 2021, the estate sold for $32.25 million and three months later, it was listed for $45 million. It was listed for $39.5 million at the time of its sale in March.

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The 7,076-square-foot waterfront spec home at 5053 Blue Heron Way, Boca Raton, sold in March for $11,165,275. Stanley and Lisa Moss were the buyers, with the seller listed as Sanctuary 5053 LLC, a Delaware entity with Group P6’s co-owner, Ignacio Diaz, as signatory. At the time of its sale, it was listed for $12.95 million, down from its $14.75 million listing price in March 2022. Carmen D’Angelo, Gerard Liguori and Joseph Liguori, brokers/owners of Premier Estate Properties, held the listing, with Jennifer Kilpatrick of the Corcoran Group representing the buyers.

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Bill and Cindy Self purchased a 5,480-square-foot townhouse at Ocean Place Villas, 4215 S. Ocean Blvd., Highland Beach, for $7.55 million in February. The sellers, Anthony and Cathleen DiGioia, were represented by Douglas Elliman agent Emily Roberts. Anna Kuzminova, an agent with Coldwell Banker Realty, represented the Selfs.
Bill Self, coach of the Kansas Jayhawks, led the team to NCAA basketball championships in 2008 and 2022. He was named Associated Press coach of the year in 2009 and 2016.

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Lang Realty agents washed windows, refreshed the playground and cleaned community buildings at Place of Hope’s Leighan and David Rinker Campus in March in Boca Raton for the firm’s first Lang Cares Community Outreach Day.
“Lang Cares and this first annual initiative reflect the commitment and compassion Lang Realty and its team has for our communities,” said Amy Snook, chair of Lang Cares. 

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A new shop in Lantana is attracting quite a following. The Cheese Shoppe & Artisan Market at 204 E. Ocean Ave. sells a variety of artisan sheep, cow, goat and mixed milk cheeses brought in as whole wheels and hand cut and wrapped. Besides cheese, the store sells wine, charcuterie and chocolates from all over the world, as well as local honey, jams and spices.
“I enjoy the world of artisan cheeses and chocolates as well as pairing them with fine wines and other foods,” says owner Frank Verner, also known as the Cheese Guy. “I hope to share my knowledge with as many of you as I can.”
Verner may be familiar to cheese aficionados. Previously, he had a 22-year career with Whole Foods and other markets, where he developed their cheese and wine departments.
He opened five Cheese Shoppes in green markets across Palm Beach and Martin counties. Post-pandemic, he has been able to reopen shops at three green markets, along with opening the brick-and-mortar store in Lantana.
Verner was born in Pittsburgh but lived mostly in the Philadelphia suburbs. His career in the produce business goes back to when he was 14 and sold from a small truck on the side of the road. Later, he ran a small retail produce and fish store outside Philadelphia.
He spent three months after high school backpacking across Europe, where he discovered that people in different countries shared a healthy appetite for the quality and freshness of artisan foods, especially small craft cheese makers.
That inspired him to share his passion for cheese with others.
At the Lantana store, he has a quaint bar in his courtyard where he hosts twilight wine tastings on Thursdays.
For more information, visit www.the-cheese-shoppe.com/locations.

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TV host, celebrity chef and Florida resident Robert Irvine is partnering with Grubbrr, which was acquired by Boca Raton-based tech company TouchSuite in 2018. The new partnership, which combines Grubbrr’s self-ordering solutions with Irvine’s expertise in restaurant operations, aims to help restaurants tackle labor shortages and rising food costs.
“Robert’s expertise and his commitment to the industry and innovation makes him the perfect partner for Grubbrr as we continue to raise awareness of the benefits of self-ordering technology for restaurant owners and customers,” said Grubbrr CEO Sam Zietz.

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Pur-Form, led by orthopedic surgeon Joseph Purita, opened a 12,289-square-foot office at Florida Atlantic University’s Research Park, 3600 FAU Blvd., Suite 101, in December. Affiliated with the FAU Health Network, Pur-Form offers services in the areas of regenerative orthopedics, functional medicine, medical aesthetics, wellness and performance. 

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Lilly Davenport was appointed chief financial officer of the Hanley Foundation, which works to prevent and treat addictions. She had served as chief financial officer of MAP Health Management in Austin, Texas. Prior to that, she was finance director for Hanley Center and Hanley Center Foundation.

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The Executive Women of the Palm Beaches Foundation recently launched the 40th Society in celebration of its 40th anniversary.
“Our 40th Society members will be the sounding board that helps move our organization’s strategic planning for the next 40 years,” said the foundation’s immediate past president, Amy Brand, who spearheaded the creation of the new initiative. 
Since its inception, the foundation has raised more than $900,000 in scholarships and community grant dollars. The new initiative aims to raise $100,000 from the foundation’s 150 members and 2,000-plus supporters, with the goal of exceeding the $1 million mark for its 40th anniversary. 

The Florida Prepaid College Foundation and Florida Power & Light Co. have formed a partnership to award $4.2 million in two-year college scholarships to 1,000 students living in underserved Florida ZIP codes over the next four years. 
“Through this partnership, we are proud to open doors to a more hopeful future for students who have so much promise and potential — and perhaps welcome them one day to the FPL team. I encourage other Florida corporations and organizations to join us in this effort to nurture talent and skill among our future workforce,” said Pam Rauch, FPL vice president of external affairs and economic development.

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The Delray Beach police volunteer patrol includes (l-r) Sgt. George Jonson, Major Barry Tantleff, Don Livsky and Daniela Mouta and is looking for more candidates. Photo provided

The Delray Beach Police Department is seeking candidates for its volunteer patrol. Members serve as the eyes and ears of the department as they interact with residents and tourists in a friendly, non-confrontational manner.
Taking three-hour shifts twice a week, they patrol the beach and areas north and south of Atlantic Avenue in golf carts with police radios.
If they encounter any problems, they call in to report them.
Barry Tantleff, who has volunteered for the patrol for 11 years and serves as its major, explained that the Police Department had halted the volunteer program because of the coronavirus pandemic.
“We had over 300 volunteers in police cars patrolling seven Delray gated communities. That was put on hiatus. As of last October, we instituted this new East Sector Patrol,” he said, adding that when the Police Department gets new car leases, it plans to bring back the neighborhood community patrols. There are currently 15 volunteers on this new patrol.
To participate, come into the Police Department, 300 W. Atlantic Ave., and fill out an application.

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In an event spearheaded by the Delray Beach Downtown Development Authority and local merchants in honor of Mother’s Day on May 14, shoppers have an opportunity to obtain free gifts for their moms — one Phalaenopsis orchid for every $200 they spend at downtown stores.
To participate, shop from May 8 to 13, then turn in your receipts from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. May 11-13 to receive your orchids at the Cornell Museum of Art, 51 N. Swinton Ave., and the Seagate Hotel & Spa terrace, 1000 E. Atlantic Ave.
 For more information, call the DDA office at 561-243-1077 or visit www.downtowndelraybeach.com/mothersday or facebook.com/downtowndelray. 

Larry Barszewski and Mary Thurwachter contributed to this column.

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

Cindy and Jeremy Bearman serve up fresh and local American food at Oceano Kitchen. Photo provided

By Jan Norris

The James Beard Awards are to the culinary industry what the Oscars are to film folks.
Palm Beach County had four restaurants on the list of chef semifinalists this year — a record number for the county. Oceano Kitchen, owned by Jeremy and Cindy Bearman in Lantana, was one of them.
Jeremy told of finding out about the nomination for Best Chef South regional award through a text.
“I was on the phone with someone, and got a text from Rick Mace of Tropical Smokehouse. He wrote ‘Congratulations!’” Bearman said. Mace, who runs the West Palm Beach barbecue eatery, is a friend who also was nominated. “I sent him a text back that said ‘On?’ He said, ‘Your James Beard nomination.’
“It’s super nice to be recognized from an organization like that which is at the top of our industry,” Bearman said. “Especially for doing what we do every day.”
None of the Palm Beach County restaurants nominated won the awards, which will be presented June 5 in Chicago.
But prestige aside, Bearman said the Oceano staff strives to give diners the best experience possible. “We do what we do for many other reasons. We’ve been doing this for more than 20 years,” he said.
“If you’d asked me 10 or 15 years ago, I’d have a different perspective. When I ran my restaurant in New York, we got a Michelin star the first year. We pushed super hard, to keep it and to try and get a second one. If I lost it, it would be detrimental to the restaurant.”
With decades of success under their belt, the Ocean Ridge residents see awards now as something to acknowledge if they happen, but they’re not a focus, and the couple is no longer chasing them. “That takes a different personality,” Jeremy said.
“I won’t take away from the fact that it’s nice to be recognized and we would have loved to make it further and join everybody in Chicago. I’d like to have gone, but it doesn’t change what we do every day. It’s not something on our minds all the time.”
The publicity from the nomination did help the restaurant, he said. “We already had an established group of locals, but the news brought in some people who say they’ve lived here six or more years who never heard of us before. They love us.”
Bearman also talked about his venture in West Palm Beach, High Dive, that opened to great success briefly before the coronavirus shutdown. It failed soon after reopening.
“It makes it a little bit easier to endure knowing it wasn’t because we didn’t do things right,” he said. “Emotionally it makes it easier.”
Financially was another story, he said. “It’s tough to put so much time and effort into something and not have it come to fruition.”
But he looks on the positive side, he said. “It brought us back to sort of concentrate on Oceano, and it was like the tale of two restaurants during COVID, at least.”
High Dive was languishing without customers, but Oceano was “beyond” busy, selling pizzas and filling orders from its curated fresh menu that features specials daily. When they’re sold out, they’re out.
“We were doing almost as much as we had done previously, before COVID, with takeout,” Bearman said. “We were done with service by 8:30 and going home. It was really challenging to do it because our kitchen wasn’t set up for all this business as takeout.
“But we were a small restaurant and because of that, could pivot. We can be nimble.”
Success has continued at Oceano, located at 201 E. Ocean Ave.
“This past year has been the busiest year ever,” Bearman said. “We are at capacity — we keep saying that. But we’re on a two-hour wait at 5:30. It’s a tough spot to be in. It’s not optimal for a lot of our guests. It’s a double-edged sword. Great for us, but not our guests.”
There’s no chance to expand, at least not on Ocean Avenue, he said. For now, the couple will keep the same formula.
Bearman acknowledged all the other chefs and restaurateurs nominated.
“It just goes to show that there are a lot of dedicated chefs doing great things. Recognition can only make things better.”

Harvest Seasonal Grill closes, looks to west
Harvest Seasonal Grill and Wine Bar, a popular restaurant in a plaza off U.S. 1 in Delray Beach, has closed rather than try to extend its lease, but diners likely will not see the end of it in the county, owner Dave Magrogan said.
“We feel it would perform very well out west,” he said. “We’re looking at several locations — Wellington, west Boca, west Boynton. We feel it’s better as a community restaurant rather than a restaurant that competes with Atlantic Avenue, Mizner Park and things like that.”
Magrogan has no time frame for a move, but said, “There are some developments that are happening in Wellington and some other locations that we’re talking to the landlords on, right now. We enjoyed our time there in Delray, and we have some other businesses in South Florida. We’re looking forward to moving west.”
The restaurant was an upscale American grill that featured a seasonal menu.
“We were coming to the end of our lease and our landlord had a few other interested parties,” Magrogan said. “And rather than go through another slow season, the off-season, it was best just to shut the doors now while our landlord had a few other tenants that wanted the space.
“It was a good location, but the shopping center had gotten a little empty over the years so that made it slow. The empty stores didn’t help.”
The coronavirus played a role as well. Magrogan said that although Harvest did well recently, it never achieved pre-pandemic numbers.

In brief
Lake Worth Beach’s famed Benny’s on the Beach was at the center of a lease dispute, with the city asking for more rent money for the restaurant from owner Lee Lipton. Lipton said in April that he had negotiated four times with the city manager and attorney for the equivalent of $1.2 million in rent, but the city rejected the contracts. …
Lantern Local Tavern is the newcomer to the old Pearl’s Diner spot at 618 W. Lantana Road. Billing itself as an all-day diner (6 a.m. to midnight), it features “local value” and “elevated” tavern favorites. …
This fall, Boca Raton is set to get Michelin-starred chef and Beard Award winner Fabio Trabocchi, who will open Fiolina Pasta House Boca Raton. The restaurant, going into Town Center, will focus on handmade pasta as crafted by the female pasta makers of Italy.

Jan Norris is a food writer who can be reached at nativefla@gmail.com.

By Tao Woolfe

Spring is a subtle season in South Florida with scant explosions of flowers and green shoots, but in Boynton Beach this month, pops of color and movement are in bloom everywhere.
The 2023 Kinetic Art Biennial is in full swing, with movable sculptures that dance in the wind along Ocean Avenue, inside and around City Hall, and in parks and galleries.
To celebrate Boynton Beach’s ties to fishing and the sea, six brilliantly colored spinning sailfish will be placed this month on 12-foot poles along Ocean Avenue from City Hall to the marina.
Until then, these fiberglass sculptures — done by local artists — grace the lobby of City Hall.
“This is my first time creating art for Boynton Beach and the first time I’ve done work for an external public art space,” said Michelle Drummond, a Delray Beach resident who describes herself as a mixed-media fiber artist.
“I’m very excited to be part of the initiative,” she added. “I think Boynton Beach’s emphasis on art is amazing.”
Drummond’s sailfish sports a bright yellow dorsal fin and tail, an orange bill, and spots of orange made of polyester fabric run along its body.
“I’m from the Caribbean and I wanted my sailfish to be happy and sunny,” Drummond said. “I think the kinetic art exhibit is a perfect tool to bring more foot traffic to the arts district and the businesses along the way.”
Joseph Velasquez of Lantana created a bright blue sailfish with a bright red crest and a pattern of waves along its body.
“I went down to Boynton’s beach a few times to sketch the waves so the fish would look like it’s emerging from the sea,” Velasquez said. “Seeing one of these fish in the water is an amazing experience. They look almost prehistoric.”
Velasquez, who besides being an artist is an art professor at Florida Atlantic University, said this is the first piece of art he has made for Boynton Beach.
“I was very happy for the opportunity to be included,” he said. “It was also a great opportunity for my students to learn about civic involvement.”
Boynton’s commitment to art in public places goes beyond the current exhibit.

The city’s sixth Kinetic Art Biennial displays also include Dr. Alex Rodriguez’s Twirling Blooms, which features bicycle wheels that catch the wind and light. Tao Woolfe/The Coastal Star

Murals have begun appearing on the sides of older buildings, thanks to a grant program begun last year to encourage creative works in the downtown area and in micro-districts such as Brewery, MLK Boulevard and Industrial Way.
A mural by Jacksonville artist Cody Edwards — just down the street from City Hall — looks like a black and white postcard and it, too, brings an ocean theme into play. A sea turtle and a sailfish swim among giant, puffy letters that spell out Boynton Beach.
“Murals enhance the visual appearance of buildings and sites,” says a brochure explaining the purpose and requirements of the mural program. “They reinforce the identity and pride of the whole city; its many micro-districts and neighborhoods; and its many diverse communities. The stories told through murals present the city’s history and contemporary goals and ideas.”
If you’d rather enjoy indoor art, the Boynton Beach Arts & Cultural Center has constantly changing exhibits. A Haitian art exhibit is coming this month.
The city also has older pieces of art on display at unexpected places — at bus stops or in the parking lot of a city building. A 2018 sculpture of carved metal, created by artists David Dahlquist and Matt Niebuhr, houses a water fountain on the lawn of the Utilities Department on Woolbright Road.
“Are you thirsty yet?” The question is inscribed on the roof of the sculpture, titled Water, You and I.
Wave pergolas — blue stained glass and metal shelters — stand along Federal Highway and add whimsy to the Avion Riverwalk development near the intersection with Woolbright Road.
These 2020 sculptures were created by West Palm Beach artist Mark Fuller.
The driving forces behind Boynton’s art-centricity are Glenn Weiss, the city’s public art manager, and the members of the art advisory board.
Weiss, however, declines to take credit for the emphasis on art.
“We have city commissioners and executive staff that are very supportive, and a city manager whose wife is an artist,” Weiss said.
In addition, Boynton’s neighboring cities — such as Boca Raton, Delray Beach, Palm Beach Gardens and West Palm Beach — have flourishing public art programs, Weiss said.
Like those cities, Weiss said, Boynton has established a program whereby developers seeking to build in the city must donate 1% of their construction budgets to public art projects. The artwork can be located on their sites, or a developer can set aside money for a project in another part of the city.
“Only Florida, Arizona and California allow art to be a design criterion for development,” Weiss said. “It’s pretty unusual.”

Sinisa Kukec’s Move Fast and Break Things, currently in the lobby of City Hall, was created by having passersby throw rocks at a shiny piece of metal. Tao Woolfe/The Coastal Star

Weiss said he is excited about sculptures, murals and other work that will be included in the campuses of two big development projects coming to downtown Boynton Beach over the next few years.
The Pierce apartment, retail and office complex at Boynton Beach Boulevard and Federal Highway, for example, will sponsor murals, and a huge, perforated metal corner treatment on its south parking garage will be emblazoned with retro images and lettering that says, “Welcome to Boynton Beach.”
But you don’t have to wait to see art in action. Take a walk around City Hall and Town Square to see the moving sculptures that make up the kinetic art exhibit.
One of the crowd favorites is Twirling Blooms, a multicolored sculpture of bicycle wheels turning atop two-story-tall metal stems. It is located on the lawn of the Schoolhouse Children’s Museum and was created by Dr. Alex Rodriguez, an Atlanta dentist, Weiss said.
“You have to be half artist and half engineer to design kinetic art,” Weiss said. “There are a lot of moving pieces, and I should know — many of these works arrived in pieces and I had to put them together.”
Many of the works will be on permanent display in Town Square. Others, like the sailfish, will be on display along Ocean Avenue for the next two years.

Pastor David Schmidt leads the congregation as members of the youth choir, below, join in song during Cason United Methodist Church’s anniversary celebration. Photos provided

By Janis Fontaine

Twelve decades ago, five Delray Beach men founded the Methodist Episcopal Church South, now Cason United Methodist Church of Delray Beach. The congregation celebrated its 120th anniversary during a March 19 party with food and drink on the shady church grounds. Dozens of people came after the 11 a.m. service to celebrate the church with live music, fellowship and thanks.
Imagine what that first service 120 years ago was like, Pastor David Schmidt said to his congregation. Twelve people came. The church had no doors or windows and a sailcloth roof. Yet its vision hasn’t changed, Schmidt said. The church was and is a place where “all will find the love of God.”
For some people, Cason will always be the “pumpkin church.” Each year thousands of orange orbs, big and small, cover the ground at the busy corner of North Swinton Avenue and Lake Ida Road. Hundreds of visitors return every year, and the tradition continues.
But others have been lost. Like all churches, Cason has faced challenges over the years.
In the mid-2000s, falling membership numbers and cash flow problems plagued the church. In 2008, the Florida Conference of the United Methodist Church, the governing body, planned to close the doors.
But church members stepped up and showed financial support to prove the community wanted and needed Cason. Then Candy Evans and Lori Robbins started the community garden on the wide swath of land beside the church.
For 14 years, the garden helped the church, giving it a new identity. It brought in growers (the recession had made the idea of growing your own vegetables very, ahem, palatable). It spread goodwill by donating 25,000 pounds of fresh produce to the Caring Kitchen food bank. And between 2008 and 2012, church attendance doubled.
Thankfully, church leaders had recognized Cason was worth saving and they brought in the Rev. Linda Mobley, a church health specialist from Lakeland, to take over as pastor and lead the church into better times.
Schmidt says that part of the reason the church had been in free-fall was it had been too “inward-focused.” When there were issues, “we circled the wagons,” Schmidt said. Even when the church continued to struggle, Schmidt and others brought a new energy and optimism to the mix.
Schmidt had been a member of Cason for about five years before he joined officially as its youth minister in December 2012. He rose through the ranks from associate pastor to interim pastor and to senior pastor in May 2022. He will be officially ordained after he earns his master of divinity degree from Southern Methodist University in May.
But Schmidt says his work in the youth ministry forced him to focus outward.
“I had to find ways to bring young people to Christ,” he said. He recognized that some young people came to church to do service and found worship, which was opposite of the “old way,” where kids were brought to Sunday services and found a calling to serve.
Schmidt surmised, correctly, that young people could be attracted to the work the church was doing — feeding the hungry, helping the homeless, enriching the lives of kids — but not necessarily to Sunday services. He thought the group, and the church, needed to be “mission-focused, because that’s what God wants us to do.”
By serving the community, the church has seen an increase in attendance at Sunday worship, in new mission projects and with 26 new members in the past year.
The members embraced the new core message: “inSPIRE,” which zeros in on five tenants of Christianity called the Five Pillars: service, worship, discipleship, hospitality and generosity.
Then the congregation and church leadership began “the hard work of transforming,” Schmidt said, which meant striking down change’s toughest foe: the adage that “this is the way we’ve always done it.”
Progress has been slow but steady and Schmidt’s congregation is grateful for his enthusiasm and hard work. Nancy Reames commented on his blog in October: “Your leadership is gutsy and inspiring, and we are blessed to have you.”
But Schmidt says it isn’t about him.
“The church isn’t the building. The true church is the believers. When we celebrated our anniversary, I wasn’t looking back,” he said. “I was looking forward to what the church can do in the next 120 years. We were celebrating what’s to come.”

Cason United Methodist Church is at 342 N. Swinton Ave., Delray Beach. Services are at 9:15 a.m. (casual, contemporary) and 11 a.m. (traditional). 561-276-5302 or www.casonumc.org.

Janis Fontaine writes about people of faith, their congregations, causes and community events. Contact her at fontaine423@outlook.com.