By Rich Pollack

DELRAY BEACH — During their 75 years together, Bill and Nancy Lorne were almost never apart.
Knowing how much their parents loved each other and how inseparable they were, family members predicted that there would be little time between their deaths.
“We always said that when Dad goes, Mom would be right behind him,” their son Michael said.
That came true on June 8, when Wilbur “Bill” Lorne died at the age of 96, and on June 9, when Nancy Lorne died at the age of 92 within 24 hours of her husband’s death.
“This was the truest love story,” says Michael Lorne, who along with his brother Patrick runs the family’s Delray Beach funeral home, Lorne and Sons, that his parents founded in 1957. “There is no way those two could be separate.”
Nancy and Bill worked together at the funeral home for many years, with Bill serving as the funeral director and Nancy working as the secretary and handling books, while also helping with the hair and makeup of those who had died.
Even after Bill retired at 55, wanting more time to spend on the golf course and with family, Nancy continued to work at the funeral home, meeting with family members of those who died and helping in other ways where needed.
“They were very well-known in the community,” Michael Lorne said, adding that his parents met with many Delray Beach families — and others from nearby communities — over the years.
Both his parents were active in St. Vincent Ferrer Catholic Church in Delray Beach, with Nancy taking a leading role in planning an annual fashion show fundraiser for more than 20 years.
Bill Lorne was also an active member of the Delray Beach Lions Club and the Civitan Club.
“They were always very proud of Delray Beach,” Michael Lorne said.
A native of Lake Worth, Bill Lorne met Nancy while she was shopping at the grocery store where he worked in Connecticut.
They returned to South Florida when Bill decided he no longer wanted to deal with the cold, and raised their family in Delray Beach.
If they ever argued, Michael Lorne says, their children never heard it.
“These two absolutely adored each other,” he said.
Although Bill was still active and still driving at 96, Nancy had become ill and was bedridden in her home and was in hospice care. Her husband, who had been with her most of the day, was stepping out to get something to eat when he had a massive heart attack and was rushed to the hospital, where he died.
Nancy, who hadn’t talked in three days, asked family members how her husband was doing and learned what had happened. A short time later, her family said, she died as well.
The funeral home’s obituary for the Lornes was kept short on purpose because that’s what they would have wanted, family members say.
“They were very humble,” Michael Lorne said. “They would never talk about their accomplishments.”
The Lornes were predeceased by daughter Deborah in 1956 and son William in 2017. They are survived by two sons, Michael (Mary K.) and Patrick (Joan) Lorne, and daughter Cathy (Mark) Snow; seven grandchildren: Katy (Hammer) Lee, Kelley (Jeffrey) Potrekus, Jackie (Joe) Kingston, Kevin (Jamie) Lorne, Amy (Tim) Lubinsky, Jessica (Jon) Peck and Colin Lorne; six great-grandchildren: Morgan, Taylor and Madison Peck, Mateo Lorne Lee, William Potrekus and Dylan Lubinsky; daughter-in-law Michele Lorne and sister-in-law Pudgie Delohery; and their beloved dog, Dolly.

By Steve Plunkett

Often-litigious Gulf Stream resident Martin O’Boyle has another legal feather in his cap: The 4th District Court of Appeal affirmed a lower-court decision that acquitted him of misdemeanor resisting a police officer.
A three-judge panel of the appeals court in West Palm Beach heard oral arguments on July 19 and delivered a “per curiam affirmed” decision two days later. A per curiam is issued without a written opinion, ending the possibility of a further appeal to the Florida Supreme Court.
The case centered on an incident at Gulf Stream Town Hall after a budget hearing on Sept. 22, 2015. In a probable cause affidavit, Sgt. John Passeggiata said O’Boyle “attempted to deface public property by writing with a marker on a poster displayed in Town Hall.”
The sergeant said he tried to get O’Boyle to stop but O’Boyle answered with a loud obscenity. Then-Police Chief Garrett Ward intervened and also was met with obscenities. After puffing up his chest and shoulders in “a combat stance,” O’Boyle knelt in a doorway to keep police from escorting him outside, Passeggiata said.
“Meeting attendees were passing through the lobby and subject to Mr. O’Boyle’s tirade of obscenities and his disruptive and disorderly behavior,” the sergeant wrote.
A jury last August decided O’Boyle was guilty of resisting a police officer without violence but not guilty of disorderly conduct. After County Judge Ashley Zuckerman sent the jurors home, she agreed with a defense motion to acquit O’Boyle of resisting. She did not elaborate on her decision.
O’Boyle’s attorney in the County Court trial, Michael Salnick, had argued that the disorderly charge, on which jurors found his client not guilty, was a “precursor” to the resisting charge.
“I don’t know how legally the resisting can survive,” Salnick said. But prosecutor Nicole Bloom said the case was about resisting a lawful order to leave Town Hall, not about resisting an arrest. “If this was resisting the arrest for disorderly conduct then perhaps we would be in a different situation, but that’s not where we are,” Bloom said.
Fort Lauderdale attorney Fred Haddad, who represented O’Boyle at the 4th DCA, and Assistant Attorney General Sorraya Solages-Jones, representing the prosecutor, took similar positions during the oral arguments.
At the 2015 meeting, town commissioners raised taxes 38% and earmarked $1 million for legal fees to fight lawsuits from O’Boyle and then-resident Chris O’Hare over public records requests. O’Boyle and O’Hare at that point had made about 1,700 requests for records over three years and filed dozens of lawsuits.
Many of the lawsuits were settled, won by Gulf Stream or withdrawn. O’Boyle was the winner in a federal case accusing him of racketeering and in a public records case involving police radio communications. The amount of legal fees the town will pay O’Boyle’s attorneys in the police radio case is also being appealed.

By Joe Capozzi

South Palm Beach officials are getting a head start exploring options for drinking water after the town’s franchise agreement with West Palm Beach expires in 2030.
One alternative, outlined in a recent water supply evaluation, is to get water from Lake Worth Beach, the town’s neighbor across the Intracoastal Waterway. 
That plan would entail the construction of a water main beneath the waterway from a spot near Bryant Park in Lake Worth Beach to the Lake Worth Beach casino, according to a study prepared for Lake Worth Beach by the engineering firm Mock Roos.
From the casino, one of two options would get water south to South Palm Beach: a new connection along A1A through 12-inch or 16-inch pipes, or leasing pipes owned by West Palm Beach that currently take water into the town.
The project’s cost could range from $3.95 million to $6.05 million, depending on which of four alternatives the town chooses.
The 15-page engineering report, finished in May, was mentioned briefly by Town Manager Robert Kellogg at the July 26 Town Council meeting but was not discussed by council members.
“It’s interesting reading,’’ Kellogg told the council. “Our franchise doesn’t expire until 2030. So we have plenty of time to digest that and consider options if that’s what the council wishes to do.’’
West Palm Beach has provided water to South Palm Beach since 2000.
But water quality has been a touchy topic in town since at least May 2021, when the city of West Palm Beach was criticized for a lack of prompt notice to its water customers after plant officials discovered an unacceptably high level of the blue-algae contaminant cylindrospermopsin.
Mayor Bonnie Fischer said the study is “a preliminary start” to the town’s proactive approach to considering drinking water options beyond 2030.
“Water quality is a very important issue and has always been my concern,’’ she said. “I am very amenable to finding more potable water sources when feasible.’’ 
In May, some council members individually toured the West Palm Beach water treatment plant and came away impressed that the city was doing a good job. Still, town officials said, it’s always smart to at least consider other options. 
“It’s way down the road, but I guess it’s a good idea to look into it because we don’t want what happened last year happening again,’’ Vice Mayor Bill LeRoy said after the July 26 meeting. 
“I think we need to look at it. It might be good for Lake Worth Beach. It might be good for us. I don’t think West Palm Beach is going to cry if they lose us.” 
West Palm Beach bills the town’s condominiums directly. Town Hall’s water bill is currently $800 a month.
In other action, the council:
• Set a tentative tax rate of $3.50 per $1,000 of assessed value, the same as the current rate. If the rate is finalized in September, residents will see higher tax bills because taxable property values in town rose nearly 13% to $516,863,500, the highest in town history. A detailed budget will be discussed at a workshop Aug. 9. 
• Agreed to discuss on Aug. 9 the scheduling of future public meetings about plans for a new Town Hall.
• Agreed to pay the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office $1.081 million for law enforcement services next year, a 3% increase. 
• Held a moment of silence for former Vice Mayor Pat Schulmayr, who died June 19. 
• Heard a concerned resident ask if the town can do anything to control an infestation of iguanas around some condos. Because of liability issues, the town attorney said it probably would be up to individual condos to hire trappers.

The eight-story complex will include 236 apartments and a 450-car parking garage. Rendering provided

Related story: The Pierce honors Boynton’s ‘barefoot mailman’

By Tao Woolfe

The city’s final approval of The Pierce — a $73 million downtown complex of apartments, restaurants, retail stores and green space at 115 N. Federal Highway — has been greeted with enthusiasm from all quarters.
Elected officials, the project’s developers, Community Redevelopment Agency staff and residents have expressed joy and relief in the weeks following the unanimous vote of the City Commission on July 5.
But perhaps no one is more enthusiastic about The Pierce’s imminent arrival than Kim Kelly, whose landmark bar and restaurant, Hurricane Alley, will be a crown jewel in the new complex.
“Affiliated is going to build us a stand-alone building with two stories and intends to make our move as reasonable as possible,” Kelly said in a phone interview. “The development group has been very attentive to our wants and needs. We are excited.”
The preservation of Hurricane Alley, which has been at 529 E. Ocean Ave. for 26 years, helped sway the city to choose Affiliated Development over four other developers hoping to build on the 2.3-acre site.
As Mayor Ty Penserga put it at a recent commission meeting, “Everyone loves Hurricane Alley.”
The new bar and restaurant, which will be relocated to a nearby building on Boynton Beach Boulevard, will be familiar but fresh, Kelly said.
She plans to repurpose the wooden floors and furniture and hopes to add some brick accents, but the restaurant will have more open space — including a mezzanine on the second floor from which diners can look out the many windows, or watch the downstairs activities.
“It will have an old-school feel, and we’ll keep it as authentic as possible, but it will be newer and better,” Kelly said.
Besides the 3,000 square feet of indoor seating, the new site will have an outdoor dining area, according to the plan.
Kelly said the restaurant will add a massive projection TV that can livestream broadcasts onto one wall of the parking garage next door.
Cold beers and cold oysters, fresh-caught seafood and hamburgers will still be offered to customers inside and outside. Kids and dogs will still be welcome.
Kelly said she will continue to lease the Ocean Avenue space, currently owned by the CRA, until the new Hurricane Alley building is completed in about two years.  

Other businesses in mix
Affiliated Development CEO Jeff Burns has said there could be at least one other restaurant, as well as other retail businesses, in the complex’s 16,800 square feet of commercial space.
The lion’s share of the property, however, will be occupied by a 236-unit apartment tower and an eight-story, 450-car garage that will include public parking.
Ace Hardware and other retail stores in the area would not be affected by the development, city officials have said.
“The Pierce’s eight-story apartment building will offer luxury finishes, features and amenities including a resort-style pool with private cabanas, state-of-the art fitness facility, co-work collective and keyless Bluetooth door entry,” Affiliated said in a recent press release. “The Pierce will be built and certified to national green building standards.”
The Boynton Beach CRA and the Fort Lauderdale-based developer spent more than seven months hammering out compromises on the $5.5 million, below-market price. Affiliated will ultimately pay for the land; the number of public spaces in the parking garage; and the number of affordable apartments.
Under the final agreement, the parking garage will provide 150 spaces — above the number outlined in city code — for public use. If Affiliated needs more spaces (up to a maximum of 10), it must lease them from the CRA.
The developer also agreed to provide affordable rental apartment units with this breakdown: 50% (118 units) of the total 236 apartments will remain affordable for 15 years; 30% (about 70 units) will remain affordable for 30 years; and 5% (11 units) will remain affordable in perpetuity.
The project timetable will depend on how long it takes to secure the necessary permits, Burns has said.
Among the approvals needed: a master site plan from planning and zoning; a land development permit from the city’s engineering department; site and building permits from the building department, and the completion of several inspections, according to a building department spokesperson.
“We could complete the construction, start-to-finish, in 20 months,” Burns told the City Commission in early July. “It’s not unreasonable to expect to have a shovel in the ground by next year.”

Charles W. Pierce, Boynton’s ‘barefoot mailman,’ was the inspiration for this Works Progress Administration mural in the 1930s-’40s. In artworks for the West Palm Beach post office, Stevan Dohanos told the story of James Edward Hamilton, who walked a route along the beach between Lake Worth and Miami. Photo provided by Boynton Beach Historical Society

Related Story: Joy, relief greet final approval for construction of The Pierce

By Tao Woolfe

The soon-to-be constructed Pierce apartment and retail complex at 115 N. Federal Highway in Boynton Beach is named for the city’s early resident and former Hypoluxo postmaster Charles W. Pierce.
Although he was a prominent businessman, Pierce is best known for serving a short stint in 1888 as one of South Florida’s legendary “barefoot mailmen.”
Also known as “beach walkers,” the mailmen braved more than rain, heat and gloom of night. They regularly walked a 60-mile route from Hypoluxo to Miami, swam across rivers, and hiked through jungle vegetation to deliver the mail, according to historical accounts.
They made $600 a year.
Pierce later delivered mail by boat to the Lake Worth region, owned and operated a dry goods store in Boynton Beach, and became president of the Bank of Boynton Beach.
Charles Pierce was the son of Hannibal Dillingham Pierce, who came from Chicago to Florida when it was still wilderness, according to Boynton Beach Historical Society records.
Hannibal Pierce, whose pioneer homestead encompassed 50 acres on Hypoluxo Island, served as both assistant keeper at the Jupiter Lighthouse and at the Orange Grove House of Refuge in Delray Beach — a federal government-sponsored lifesaving station for shipwreck victims.
Much of Charles Pierce’s unpublished manuscript describing early South Florida life was edited by Florida Atlantic University Professor Donald W. Curl and incorporated into the 1981 book Pioneer Life in Southeast Florida.
Pierce was also the inspiration for a children’s book series, The Adventures of Charlie Pierce.
The series was written by Harvey E. Oyer III, whose family sold the Hurricane Alley portion of the new project to the Community Redevelopment Agency and who is a direct descendent of Charles Pierce.
Charles Pierce — also known for leading expeditions through the Everglades — died in
1939.

The geodesic-dome complex in Manalapan was designed by Buckminster Fuller. No word on whether the new owners will keep it as is. Coastal Star file photo

A Coastal Star story last month provided details about the record-breaking $173 million sale of the 16-acre estate at 2000 S. Ocean, Manalapan. Tech billionaire Jim Clark, who paid the Ziff family $94 million for it in March 2021, sold it to billionaire Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison 15 months later.
Now another interesting property in Manalapan has sold. In the January issue, The Coastal Star reported that the ocean-to-lake 1960s-era geodesic-dome compound at 1860 S. Ocean Blvd. had gone under contract with a closing date scheduled for no later than July 8. And sure enough, that is the date on the deed that was recorded July 13.
Stephen and Jeanette Cohen, who bought the property for $620,000 in January 1978, sold it as trustees of the Cohen Family Irrevocable Trust for a recorded price of $26.775 million.
Shelly Newman, an agent with William Raveis South Florida, had listed the 2.5 acres with approximately 200 feet on the ocean and the Intracoastal Waterway for sale in May 2021 for $29.9 million, but later dropped the price to reflect its land value, $27.5 million. The buyer, who was represented by Lawrence Moens, of Lawrence A. Moens Associates, is listed as 1860 South Ocean Boulevard Trust, with Ronald Kochman as the trustee.
The Cohens’ son, New Yorker Sean Cohen, shares his recollections of living on the property. He spent his teenage years there, he said.
“When I was 15 in 1978, my parents bought our home here. The police station was a trailer in the middle of a mangrove forest, where Plaza del Mar is now,” he recalls. “My parents had recently moved to the United States from South Africa, and they came to Florida because someone had sent them a prospectus for condos.
“But we are an outdoor family. My mother saw the geodesic domes listing and said to the Realtor, ‘Take us to this house.’ The Realtor said, ‘Well, it’s a little unusual.’ But my parents walked onto the property and they knew it was right, not just because of the architecture, but because of the whole feel of it.”
Coincidentally, the home’s multifaceted architecture offers a hint to his family’s business, Rand Diamonds, a diamond polishing company in Botswana that his grandfather started in 1947 and which Sean Cohen heads today.
His parents, who were permanent residents of the domed property, are now in their 80s and in June moved to an oceanfront condo in Palm Beach, Sean said.
So, what will become of the three domes? Sean Cohen didn’t know, and the town has not been approached regarding demolition or development, Manalapan Clerk Erika Petersen said last month. For either of those to occur, the new owners would have to approach the town’s Architectural Commission to get a permit.

***

James and Kimberly Caccavo sold their oceanfront Gulf Stream estate at 3565 N. Ocean Blvd., to James and Estee Sausville for $27.5 million. The deal, recorded in public records June 6, is for nearly twice the previous sale price of $14.9 million in May 2021.
“It definitely set a record for Gulf Stream at $4,495 per square foot,” said Michelle Noga of William Raveis Real Estate. Noga co-listed the property with Paula Wittmann of William Raveis.
The 7,717-total-square-foot estate and guest house sit on a lot measuring .8 of an acre with 110 feet of ocean frontage. “It was a spec house designed by architect Randall Stofft and bought pre-construction,” Noga said, adding that she and Wittmann had represented the clients in that deal, too.
Mitch Frank, with Echo Fine Properties, represented the buyers in the current deal.
James Caccavo is the founder and managing general partner of the California-based Steelpoint Capital Partners, a private equity firm. Kimberly Caccavo is founder of Face Your Grace, a motivational e-learning platform. James Sausville is president and CEO of the New Jersey-based J&K Ingredients, a company that supplies bakery ingredients.

***

Carl DeSantis’s CDS International Holdings purchased the properties at 551 SE Eighth St. and 551 SE Fifth Ave. in Delray Beach from an affiliate of Dallas-based Spirit Realty, for $25 million. Keith O’Donnell of Avison Young and Mark Rubin of Colliers represented CDS International. The sale was recorded on July 7. Leslie Maister and Chris Bosworth of CBRE represented the seller.
The buildings, totaling 54,765 square feet, were constructed in 1975 on almost 4 acres, and the property is fully occupied by the Bank of America. Spirit Realty, led by CEO Jackson Hsieh, paid $15 million for the property in 2008.
“We are thrilled to make this exciting acquisition and appreciate the leadership of Keith and Mark, who were instrumental in making this purchase happen,” said Jeff Perlman, executive vice president of CDS International Holdings. “We have been longtime investors in Delray Beach and have a strong belief in the market and its prospects. We are already creating a vision for the property.”

***

Lang Realty is spearheading a school supply drive in August to benefit Plumosa School of the Arts in Delray Beach and Lincoln Elementary School in Riviera Beach. New supplies will be collected at each Lang Realty sales office from East Boca Raton to Jupiter. For a complete list of supplies needed and a list of Lang sales office locations, visit langcares.com.

***

Following the departure of Executive Director Karen Ronald, who was with the Delray Beach Public Library for five years, the library’s board of directors announced three new appointments.
Mykal Banta is now the library’s executive director. Loanis Menendez-Cuesta is assistant director, and Alyson Walzer-Grammatico is head of reference.
Banta was hired by the library in September 1994 as the head of reference, and was promoted in 1998 to serve as the assistant director, a post he held for 24 years.
Banta is vice president of the board of directors of Family Promise and serves on the Interfaith Committee of Palm Beach County. He is a member of the Delray Initiative to End Homelessness.
The library’s community outreach includes assistance with the Interfaith Committee’s shower truck, and the library’s bimonthly “Wash and Read” program at the Laundry Stop, both of which serve homeless people. Banta holds a BA with a concentration in journalism from Wayne State University and a master’s in library science from State University of New York at Albany.
Menendez-Cuesta, formerly the reference and young adult librarian, has been with the library since 2009 and became head of reference in 2015.
She moved to Florida from Cuba in 1989. In 2011, she was elected president of the Florida chapter of Reforma, the national association to promote library services to Latinos and other Spanish speakers. She served a two-year term and then served two terms on the board of directors of Reforma National.
Since 2021, Menendez-Cuesta has been a member of the board of Family Promise. She is a graduate of the Sunshine State Library Leadership Institute and holds a master’s in library science from Florida State University.
Walzer-Grammatico has been with the library since 2016. Her online technology classes, “Appy Hours,” were published in On the Go with Senior Services: Library Programs for Any Time and Any Place. She is also a graduate of the Sunshine State Library Leadership Institute. She holds a master’s in library and information services from Wayne State University.

***

Delray Beach residents Jennifer Jones and Angela Burns have relaunched Blackmer’s Market, where Black-owned businesses set up booths for commerce at the Spady Museum, 170 NW Fifth Avenue. It is held on the third Sunday of every month from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., with the next date Aug. 21.
Jones and Burns founded their company, JJABA LLC, in 2020 with a goal to support Black entrepreneurs and build a pathway toward launching more Black-owned businesses.
Toward those ends, they also have reinvigorated the Peach Umbrella Network, an initiative of the Set Neighborhood Alliance that offers information, socials, seminars and workshops focused on strengthening, educating and empowering businesses to thrive.
The name, Peach Umbrella, came from an earlier era when the peach-colored Clay Wideman Building in the 400 block of West Atlantic was home to the Peach Umbrella Plaza Association, a group of Black-owned businesses that supported each other.
“The Set Neighborhood Alliance started to get it going again in 2020, and we took it over January 2021,” Burns said.
At that time, it had 17 members, and under Jones and Burns, it now has 175 members.
“While running for City Commission, Jennifer and I had the opportunity to talk to people and find out what their concerns were. In certain communities, there was a lack of information. I am retired as an educator and Jennifer is a tax preparer with her own business. We thought we were resource-rich and could be a resource for people.
“We are proponents of small businesses, and we were thrilled that the alliance trusted us to manage and operate the Peach Umbrella.”
For more information, visit thesetdelray.org/peach-umbrella-network.

***

Rick Christie, executive editor of The Palm Beach Post, received the Presidents Award during the Gold Coast PR Council’s 17th annual Bernays Award luncheon July 20 at the Delray Beach Golf Club.
Melissa Perlman, the council president, also announced the winner of the PR Star Award as Claudia Kirk Barto, executive director of Junior Achievement of the Palm Beaches & Treasure Coast.
The Founders Award was given to Anne Dichele, executive director of the Gold Coast Down Syndrome Organization. The new Tim Byrd Award went to T.A. Walker, Today at 5 reporter at WPTV, who emceed the Bernays luncheon.
Other awards presented: Best Campaign by a Large Company or Firm — Palm Tran; Best Campaign by a Small Company or Firm — Karen Galanaugh, Galanaugh & Company Marketing Public Relations, LLC; Best Project/Nonprofit/Large — The Schmidt Boca Raton History Museum; Best Project/Nonprofit/Small — The Buzz Agency; Best Crisis Management — Food For The Poor; Best Social Media Campaign/For Profit — Boardroom Communications; Best Social Media Campaign/ Nonprofit — Anne M. Gannon, constitutional tax collector of Palm Beach County; Best Special Event ­— Kaye Communications; Best Marketing Material/Print — Palm Tran; Best Marketing Material/Video or Digital — City of Boynton Beach.

***

A special fundraiser for Gary Schweikhart, known as the “Godfather” of South Florida’s PR community, will be held at 7 p.m. Aug. 28 at the Arts Garage in Delray Beach.
Performers for the “He DID Survive: A Benefit Concert for Gary Schweikhart” are Anthony Nunziata, Avery Sommers, Rich and Jill Switzer, and Deborah Berman Silver with accompaniment from Phil Hinton and a special pre-recorded message from Rob Russell.
Schweikhart is recovering from a July 11 accident. He was working at his desk when a speeding car slammed into his home office, leaving him with life-threatening injuries. After being extricated from underneath the car, he was rushed to Delray Medical Center for surgery, spent several days in intensive care and two weeks at Pinecrest Rehabilitation Hospital.
Besides the injuries, Schweikhart — a co-founder of the Gold Coast PR Council whose company is called PR-BS — is without a home for the next eight months.
The Arts Garage, at 94 NE Second Ave., is partnering with The Buzz Agency and Pollack Communications to put on the event. Tickets are $50 and proceeds will go toward Schweikhart’s recovery. For tickets, visit artsgarage.org.

***

Check out Boca Chamber Festival Days, a series of food, drink and entertainment events taking place through Sept. 2. The Boca Chamber started Festival Days in 1977, aiming to create commerce for its business members and help its nonprofit members as well. For a list of events, go to web.bocaratonchamber.com/Advocacy/boca_chamber_festival_days.aspx.

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

By Jane Smith

George Bush Boulevard, between North Andrews Avenue and State Road A1A, is closed for drainage installation through Aug. 8.

The installation comes as the continuing construction work on George Bush Boulevard moves east of the Intracoastal Waterway bridge in Delray Beach.

City contractors will make utility repairs and improve the drainage.

Eastbound traffic will have to turn south onto Andrews Avenue, then go east on Crestwood Drive to reach A1A. Southbound vehicles on A1A can turn onto Pelican Lane and drive west until Andrews Avenue is reached and then follow that street south to George Bush Boulevard.

Construction work will take place Monday through Friday, from 7 a.m. until 6 p.m. and on Saturdays from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Emergency vehicle, local driveway and pedestrian access will be always provided.

George Bush Boulevard is undergoing $2 million of improvements from Northeast Second Avenue to A1A. The project started in July 2021 and is estimated to end in Summer 2023. The Palm Beach Transportation Planning Agency is paying for the work, which includes milling and resurfacing the road with utilities and drainage improvements and adding 5-foot sidewalks and bike lanes.

Florida Department of Transportation contractors are doing the roadwork. The main contractor is Hardrives of Delray Inc.

By Jane Smith

A former Delray Beach water quality inspector, who was reorganized out of her job in January, filed a federal lawsuit July 25 against the city, the city manager and the Utilities Department director.

Christine Ferrigan, who had received Florida whistleblower protection from Palm Beach County’s inspector general over problems she reported in the city’s reclaimed water program, said she was let go in January – five days after she filed a written retaliation complaint against two of her Utilities Department supervisors.

The suit is Ferrigan’s second legal action against the city and the first one against the city manager and utilities director. In her federal complaint, she alleges her U.S. and Florida Constitutional rights were violated.

She is seeking back pay, a similar management-level job to the ones she had applied for but was not selected, and compensatory damages against the three defendants. She is also seeking punitive damages against City Manager Terrence Moore and Utilities Director Hassan Hadjimiry “for her pain, emotional and mental suffering, stress, humiliation and reputational harm.”

Her first legal action, a complaint filed in April with the Occupational Safety & Health Administration, named only the city.  

Since December, Delray Beach has been operating under a consent order, a legal agreement, with the state Department of Health over the city’s reclaimed water problems. The consent order included a $1 million civil fine against the city, which the city paid on Dec. 7.

The Health Department began its investigation in January 2020 when a South Ocean Boulevard resident called to say she was not properly informed of a cross connection found on her street in December 2018. A cross connection occurs when reclaimed water pipes carrying highly treated wastewater used for lawn irrigation are wrongly connected to the drinking water lines.

The city has spent more than $1 million to inspect each of its reclaimed water locations and add backflow preventers when needed.

Ferrigan previously claimed whistleblower status in Boca Raton in 2008 after she was fired from that city’s water department. After suing the city, she and her attorneys received a $537,500 settlement in 2014 from the city’s insurance company, published reports said. The city did not admit any wrongdoing.

Boca Raton police detectives are investigating an armed robbery that occurred on the barrier island early Sunday morning, July 24.

The two victims arrived home on Banyan Road at 4:28 a.m. after spending the evening at the Seminole Hard Rock Casino in Hollywood, police said in a news release. Both victims stated that when they parked and got out of the car, they were approached by a masked Black man who pointed a gun at them and demanded their belongings.

Both victims complied and gave the man their wallets, phones and cash. Both stated he began to flee and before jumping over a concrete wall turned and fired one shot in their direction. The man then got into a dark SUV parked on Banyan Road and fled north. Neither victim was injured.

The incident happened in the 2700 block of Banyan Road. Banyan is a block west of State Road A1A and runs parallel to it from East Camino Real to Southeast 31^st Street.

The suspect is described as being about 5-feet-8-inches to 5-feet-10-inches tall wearing dark pants and a long-sleeve hoodie.

Anyone with information is asked to contact Detective Scott Hanley at 561-338-1344.

— Steve Plunkett

Work to repave Spanish River Boulevard began July 25 at Military Trail, the project’s western end, and will continue eastward to State Road A1A until at least Aug. 12.

“Hopefully the weather is good to us and job will be completed on schedule,” All County Paving project manager Brad Jones said in an email.

“We will do our best to keep traffic moving but some delays should be expected, especially during rush hours,” Jones said.

Workers will grind 1 inch of the existing asphalt on the first day of each section, then repave the road surface on the second day. A tack coat is sprayed first and cannot be driven on until hot asphalt is laid and compacted and the crew reopens the road.

Jones said his company will control the dust caused by the grinding as much as possible. Vehicle access to homes and businesses will be affected during the project’s work hours, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.

— Steve Plunkett

Graduation day: Sarah Dagher hugs her mother, Joumana, as her father, Salam, looks on following Gulf Stream School’s graduation ceremony on June 10. Sarah recorded a 99.5% average during her final year at the school, one of the best scores ever recorded there. The Daghers live in Ocean Ridge. Jerry Lower/The Coastal Star

Some families do their homework: Get kids into school first, worry about buying a house later

By Rich Pollack

Beth and Jake Hollinger don’t know exactly where they’ll be living when they leave their Philadelphia home in a few months in order to enjoy the tropical Florida lifestyle.
They do, however, know exactly where their two grade-school-age children will be getting an education.
“The priority was to get into Gulf Stream School,” says Beth Hollinger, explaining that finding a home in coastal Palm Beach County took a back seat to getting the kids into one of the area’s prestigious independent schools. “We’ll just deal with finding a home later.”
As a significant number of affluent families have undertaken a pandemic-driven migration to Florida, they are discovering that only so many slots are available for the high-end private-school educations they want for their children.
Area private schools that once struggled to fill classrooms are now hitting record enrollments and creating waiting lists that can stretch into the hundreds.
Gulf Stream School, for example, is at capacity and has a waiting list with the names of about 70 children on it. Enrollment is at the highest it has been in the last several years and is up about 30% from 2019, prior to the pandemic, according to school leadership. About half of all new applicants come from out of state.
“Next school year we’ll have more students than we had this school year and this year we had more students than we had the year before,” said Michael Mahady, Gulf Stream’s director of admission.
The demand for slots in South Florida private schools stretches far beyond Gulf Stream School, with more and more schools forced to turn students away — at least for now.
A recent story from Bloomberg.com reported that enrollments at 15 private schools in coastal South Florida are up 14% on average over the past two years, compared with a 1.7% increase across the country. Those numbers come from the National Association of Independent Schools.
At Saint Andrew’s School in Boca Raton, with an enrollment topping 1,300, the Bloomberg report said applications have increased 20% in the last year-and-a-half and the waiting list for the pre-kindergarten through 12th grade school has swelled to more than 200 students.

After the graduation ceremony in June, Estella Postma rings the school bell as classmates (l-r) Barbara Gamboa, Gracie Robinson and Lily Thomas wait their turns. Ringing the bell at the beginning and end of the school year is a tradition for eighth-graders. Jerry Lower/The Coastal Star

One of the main factors limiting the number of students enrolled in these private schools is a commitment to small class sizes. At Gulf Stream School, for example, classroom sizes are usually limited to about 15 or 16 students.
The graduation in June of the entire eighth grade included just 28 students.
While annual tuition at many of these exclusive schools can be pricey, it doesn’t seem to be affecting applications.
At Gulf Stream School, tuition ranges from $18,735 a year for a half-day of pre-K for 3-year-olds to $29,995 for students in the fifth through eighth grades. At Saint Andrew’s School, tuition for students in kindergarten through eighth grade can top $32,000 a year, according to the school’s website.
Gulf Stream School also has a cap of 250 students as a result of a 1994 agreement with the town, and Gulf Stream town records show that agreement remains in place.
For the school, maintaining a strong relationship with town officials as well as with the wider community is a priority even as enrollment hits maximum levels, says Head of School Gray Smith.
“Our discovery is that we can continue to provide — in fact augment — the sense of community and family, and the abiding traditions that make up the Gulf Stream School student, and family experience when the school’s classrooms are at capacity,” he said. “However, we acknowledge that there is a tipping point between school size and achieving our mission, and we have no intention of crossing that line. Our number one intention is to be the best neighbor we can be.”
The cap has meant that in rare instances families have delayed their moves south, more evidence that they are prioritizing the children’s education over the purchase of a home more than ever before.
Pascal Liguori of Premier Estate Properties recalls the recent case where a sale he was handling on a $6-million-plus barrier island home fell through because the deal was contingent on the family’s two children getting into Gulf Stream School.
When that didn’t happen, the deal fell through.
“They postponed the move until they could get them in there,” Liguori said. “For them, it was Gulf Stream School or nothing.”
Steven Presson, luxury Realtor of the Corcoran Group, says that situation is rare. Instead, he says, many of the parents he’s dealt with come with a list of three or four schools that they will tour.
“The nice thing about South Florida is there’s not just one great private school, there are a whole bunch of them,” he said. “In the Palm Beaches, we’re really lucky.”
In Delray Beach, St. Vincent Ferrer Catholic School is seeing increased enrollment and waiting lists in certain grades. For next year, the school’s enrollment is about 415 students.
The school has waiting lists for its pre-K 3 grade as well as its third, sixth and seventh grades. Other classes had availability of only one to three spaces as of mid-June.

Jake and Beth Hollinger enrolled children Kaje and Elason at Gulf Stream even before they found a house in Florida. Photo provided

The Hollingers — the Philadelphia couple who will be sending their son Kaje, 6, and daughter Elason, 9, to Gulf Stream School next year — brought their children with them as they looked at a handful of private schools.
The last stop was at Gulf Stream School and it was a hit with everyone in the family. Even the children were smitten by the openness of the campus and large sports fields.
“It just felt magical,” Beth Hollinger said. “We didn’t know we were ready to move until right then and there.”
Falling in love with the school was one thing; getting in was another. Fortunately for the Hollingers, it had openings in the first and fourth grades when they applied earlier this year.

Some students in lower grades gather on the first day of the school year at Gulf Stream School. Rachel O'Hara/The Coastal Star

At Gulf Stream, as well as other prestigious independent schools, finding an open spot in some grades is easier than in others. Getting your child into pre-K or kindergarten classes at a South Florida school is tougher because of demand from parents who want to start their children at that particular school.
“We feel lucky,” Beth Hollinger said. “We felt lucky that we were even able to secure a tour.”
The Hollingers had the advantage of being familiar with the area, since they vacationed here regularly for the past decade.
“We always wanted to head this way, but the pandemic pushed up the timeline,” Beth Hollinger said, adding that virus-related shutdowns were especially difficult for her children, who felt cooped up at home as a result of COVID-related restrictions. “The pandemic put a real damper on their school experience.”
In addition to Gulf Stream’s physical layout, the Hollingers felt comfortable with the school’s small size and family focus, which they say is similar to the school their children were in previously.
Those factors gave Gulf Stream an advantage during the height of the COVID restrictions, making it possible for the school to remain open for in-person classes when many others had shifted to online learning.
Just a month or two after everything was shutting down in 2020, Gulf Stream opened its summer camp. A couple of months later, school was back in session with real classes.
“We’ve had families who started this year and it was the first time in two years that the children had actually been in a classroom,” Smith said.
The layout of the school, with plenty of open space, made it possible for classes to be held outdoors and for classrooms to be reconfigured to keep kids safe.
Gulf Stream also brought a pediatric nurse practitioner on board and offered voluntary COVID tests, thanks to a gift from a parent. The school then opened up the testing to other family members.
The fact that Gulf Stream School could offer children a chance to play outside at a time when playgrounds up north were closed was attractive to many parents and remains attractive to the Hollingers — and their children.
Beth Hollinger says her 6-year-old didn’t want to go back to the Northeast after their last vacation, which included the visit to Gulf Stream School.
“He loves being in Florida,” she said.

By Steve Plunkett

Gulf Stream is hoping Highland Beach will take over the processing of its building permits after Delray Beach called an abrupt halt to the arrangement it’s had with the town since 2009.
Delray Beach says its interlocal agreement with Gulf Stream does not cover engineering, floodplain and landscaping review of Gulf Stream building plans and it stopped providing those services in the middle of May.
“This has stalled Cary Glickstein’s (Bluewater Cove) project along with some other projects in town as Delray has done a full stop now that they’re aware that their staff lacks the authority to do this review,” Assistant Town Attorney Trey Nazzaro said.
Nazzaro told town commissioners on June 10 that in about 2011, a Delray Beach official signed off on an internal staff document that extended the scope of the agreement to include the engineering and related items for Gulf Stream applications.
“But that official did not have the authority to do that. It needed to be brought to the City Commission for approval, which was never done,” Nazzaro said.
When Delray Beach stopped doing the reviews, Gulf Stream asked its consulting engineering firm Baxter & Woodman to pinch-hit on the engineering and floodplain reviews. Landscape architect Dave Bodker of Delray Beach has been recruited to review landscaping plans.
Gulf Stream and Delray Beach officials met to discuss the situation on May 20. Since then, Gulf Stream issued a request and received three bids from third-party organizations, which Town Manager Greg Dunham was still evaluating, and asked Highland Beach if it could do the work.
Overseeing a building department is nothing new for Highland Beach Town Manager Marshall Labadie, Nazzaro said. Starting one “was the first thing he did when he came” to the town in 2018.
“His commission wanted him to bring the building department in-house, and they apparently have been doing a very good job,” Nazzaro said. “Highland Beach has a certain level of expectation of that, sort of a concierge-level of service that you would be getting.”
Highland Beach commissioners were receptive at their June 21 meeting to drafting an agreement with Gulf Stream after their building official, Jeff Remas, said he was “kind of excited” about getting the extra work.
“I see this as an opportunity for us to actually improve our services because we’ll be bringing on some more people with more hours to have the capability to work in-house with us here, and actually help our plan review process,” Remas said.
In their May 20 meeting, Delray Beach officials gave their Gulf Stream counterparts little reason to think that the interlocal agreement could be extended.
Delray Beach City Manager Terrence Moore said his city would add new costs for the permitting review, plus travel time for building inspectors, plus staff time to teach Gulf Stream how to use its new digital permitting system. Gulf Stream residents previously were paying the same permit fees as Delray residents.
“I think they’re trying to recoup some of their expenses,” Nazzaro said.
Plus, the Delray Beach delegation warned that the political environment may come to bear.
“It seems that the constituents are very upset with the amount of time it is taking to process their permits, so why are they also processing Gulf Stream’s permits,” Nazzaro said.
Gulf Stream generates 250 to 300 building permits a year, Dunham said. But Highland Beach’s Remas said that did not include sub-permits such as electrical and plumbing and said the total was really 800 to 900 a year.
Highland Beach currently processes 2,000 to 2,100 permits a year, so adding the Gulf Stream work would be a 40% increase, Remas said.
Dunham was not optimistic about negotiating a new agreement with Delray Beach based on his discussions with their officials.
“They really couldn’t guarantee the City Commission would be OK moving forward with continuing the relationship,” he said.
He and Nazzaro will weigh the three bids the town received and keep talking with Highland Beach to find a solution.

Attorney Bryan Boysaw and Kenya Madison, senior director of Healthier Delray Beach, comfort each other after digging soil from near where Samuel Nelson was lynched in 1926 west of Delray Beach. Photos by Jerry Lower/The Coastal Star

Samuel Nelson was abducted from Delray Beach jail and lynched in 1926

By Ron Hayes

On June 19, 1865, Union Army Gen. Gordon Granger landed in Galveston, Texas, to inform about 250,000 Black men, women and children enslaved in the state that they were free, and had been for more than two years.
Slavery was dead in these recently reunited United States, and Juneteenth was born.
In 2021, Juneteenth became a federal holiday, so a week before this year’s celebration, nine members of the Palm Beach County Community Remembrance Project met beside the C-3 canal west of Delray Beach to remind us that while slavery ended after the Civil War, lynchings did not.
Four shovels poured soil from the canal bank into four gray buckets that Saturday morning, and then the nine men and women, Black and white, held hands in a circle over the buckets and bowed their heads in prayer.

On June 11, the participants in the preservation of soil to remember the lynching of Samuel Nelson took time to pray and reflect. BELOW RIGHT: Jars will eventually join those of other victims in a memorial display in Alabama.

When Delray Beach celebrated Juneteenth the following Saturday, June 18, those buckets of soil would be there in the gym at Pompey Park, their first stop on a long journey of remembrance.
“We scouted the area around the waterway and chose a spot where the soil looked rich,” explains Charlene Farrington, director of the S.D. Spady Cultural Heritage Museum in Delray.
No one will ever know exactly where Samuel Nelson’s body was found on the morning of Sept. 27, 1926, but this canal bank near the southeast corner of West Atlantic Avenue and Sims Road seems most likely.
We don’t how old Samuel Nelson was, if he was a husband or father, or if he had really committed any crime. We don’t even know if Samuel Nelson was his name. But we do know where he was last seen alive.
“In 1923, Delray Beach built a new city hall, fire department and jail at 14 SE Fifth Ave.,” says Mark Schneider, president of the county’s American Civil Liberties Union and a member of the Community Remembrance Project. “But that address no longer exists. The numbers jump from 12 to 20.”
On the afternoon of Sunday, Sept. 26, Nelson was locked in the new jail, accused of attempted criminal assault on a white woman in Miami. The next morning, the jail door was found battered open. Nelson was gone and a short time after, his body, riddled with bullets, was found beside a canal 4 miles west of town.
Three weeks later, on Oct. 17, The Palm Beach Post noted the murder.
“NEGRO IS TAKEN FROM DELRAY JAIL AND LYNCHED
“Samuel Nelson, alias Joseph Johnson, negro, was taken from the jail at Delray and lynched. …”
The brief report had been written by The Associated Press in Miami. The story was on Page 6.
Both the Pensacola Journal and Tampa Tribune published the same AP story that day.
“NEGRO TAKEN FROM JAIL AND LYNCHED BY MOB AT DELRAY,” the Tribune headline read, but the story never mentions a mob, only “unidentified persons.”
The local newspaper took three weeks to report the lynching, but the Delray Beach Town Council needed less than 12 hours to address it.
At its regular meeting that Monday evening, the council discussed appropriating money for the local Chamber of Commerce. It talked about registering real estate brokers. It granted Mr. W.P. Brown a one-week extension on his septic tank.
The lynching of Samuel Nelson was the last item on the agenda.
Police Chief W.M. Croft told the council that he had refused to turn Nelson over to a stranger who claimed to be from Miami, and as far as he knew, Nelson was still in the jail at midnight.
The council then voted unanimously that the Police Department “should be exonerated and be declared free of any blame or neglect in regard to the above mentioned jail delivery.”

***

There is one further curiosity, though.
On Sept. 18, a little more than a week before Nelson’s death, the historic 1926 hurricane had made landfall as a Category 4 storm just south of Miami, bringing storm surges up to 14 feet in Coconut Grove and tearing the roofs off buildings as far north as Lake Park. Could the stranger Chief Croft claimed to have met really have journeyed from Miami to Delray Beach after that destruction?
All we know of Samuel Nelson’s lynching ends there, but those four buckets of soil collected in his memory have only begun their journey.
Sometime in 2023, the Remembrance Project hopes to see the soil displayed in jars at the Equal Justice Initiative’s Peace & Justice Memorial in Montgomery, Alabama. The jars will be etched with the words “Sam Nelson, Delray Beach, Florida, September 27, 1926.”
They will not be alone.
Founded in 1989 by civil rights attorney Bryan Stevenson, the nonprofit Equal Justice Initiative works to free wrongly convicted prisoners and operates Montgomery’s Legacy Museum and National Memorial for Peace and Justice.
In 2015, the EJI published Lynching In America, now in its third edition, which has documented more than 4,000 lynchings in the Southern states between 1870 and 1950, including 319 in Florida, the most per 100,000 of all the Southern states.

***

Samuel Nelson is one of two known lynchings in Palm Beach County, and not the first.
On June 7, 1923, Henry Simmons was taken from a rooming house in West Palm Beach and hanged from a tree south of The Breakers hotel in Palm Beach for allegedly being involved in the killing of police officer J.N. Smith, who had stopped three Black men for stealing turtle eggs.
The Remembrance Project is working to confirm the site of Simmons’ hanging before arranging to collect soil there.
In addition to the soil collection, a high school essay contest in the coming school year will satisfy the second of three requirements communities must complete to be represented at the EJI memorial.
The placing of memorial markers at Palm Beach County’s two lynching sites is the third.
Until then, the soil that became a memorial made its first public appearance in the Pompey Park gymnasium on June 18, a centerpiece of the Juneteenth weekend in Delray Beach.
The Boynton Beach Community High School band played and politicians spoke.
“This day will be recorded in our nation’s history and tell the story of who we are as a people,” the Spady Museum’s Farrington told the crowd of about 200 filling the bleachers. “It will make Palm Beach County eligible to receive a monument from the Equal Justice Initiative bearing the names of two men who were lynched here in the 1920s.”
County Commissioners Mack Bernard and Gregg Weiss read a resolution recognizing the importance of both the soil ceremony and the federal Emmett Till Anti-Lynching Act, signed into law March 29.
A video of the soil collection was shown, and Yvette Norwood-Tiger sang a moving, mournful rendition of the Billie Holiday classic Strange Fruit.
“Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze,
“Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.”
The four buckets of soil from the place where Samuel Nelson’s body was found almost a century ago waited on a table until finally the men, women and children, young and old, Black and white, came down from the bleachers and formed two long lines.
Each was handed a small mesh drawstring bag containing a plastic envelope and a wooden ice cream spoon.
One by one they dipped a bit of soil from a bucket and put it in the plastic bag. That was theirs to keep. And then they added another spoonful to the glass jars bound for Montgomery.
Nearby, city Commissioner Shirley Johnson watched.

On June 18, the soil was part of a Juneteenth celebration at the Pompey Park gym. Delray Beach Commissioner Shirley Johnson watched as people spooned soil into bags as keepsakes.

“I’m 76 years old and I grew up here in the northwest section, and I never knew about Samuel Nelson,” she said. “Why didn’t I know about this? There was no mention in school. Nobody ever said his name. I didn’t hear about it until 2017 when Bryan Stevenson came to the Spady Museum and he told me, ‘You know, there were two lynchings here.’”
Johnson assembled the little bags of spoons for the ceremony, all 200, so she watched intently as the slowly moving lines made use of them.
“This should be listed as an unsolved murder in our police files,” she said. “I’m going to ask the police if they can reopen this case. Don’t investigate, just keep it open.
“I know we’re never going to know who killed him, but that way Sam Nelson will be remembered.”
She sighed.
“And he was just one of thousands.”

For more information about the Palm Beach County Community Remembrance Project and the Equal Justice Initiative, visit www.pbcremembrance.org and www.eji.org.

Old Ziff property sold to Oracle co-founder for $173 million

By Larry Barszewski

Manalapan is no longer playing second fiddle to the town of Palm Beach — or any other Florida location, for that matter — when it comes to pricey residential properties.
The town became home to Florida’s most expensive estate in June when Netscape co-founder James Clark sold his ocean-to-Intracoastal Waterway property to a fellow billionaire (one who has many, many more billions), Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, for $173 million.
Clark ended up being a short-term resident. He owned the property at 2000 S. Ocean Blvd. for just 15 months, but he got his money’s worth when the final sale came through.
Clark turned a $79 million profit — an increase of 84% — on the estate that cost him $94 million, the priciest sale in town until he decided to sell it in an off-market transaction. The sale was handled by Lawrence Moens of Lawrence A. Moens Associates, who brokered both sides of the deal. Moens had also handled Clark’s earlier purchase.
The buyer was listed as Florida Realty LLC, a Delaware corporation with a California address that is the same as the one for the Larry Ellison Foundation. Besides the 15.65-acre main property, Ellison took ownership of an approximately 7-acre wildlife sanctuary space on Bird Island.

Forbes ranks Ellison as No. 8 on this year’s list of the world’s wealthiest people. His reported net worth was hovering around $93 billion at the end of June, while Clark, ranked by Forbes around No. 950, was worth about $2.9 billion.
Last year, Ellison paid $80 million for an oceanfront North Palm Beach estate. He also owns almost all of the Hawaiian island of Lanai, plunking down $300 million for it back in 2012. Other people still live on Lanai, and Ellison’s deal included a couple of Four Seasons resorts that attract the rich and famous to stay there.
His foray into Manalapan — a small town known for its expensive homes and quietly wealthy residents — had eyes popping over the purchase price.
“It’s an amazing number,” said Manalapan Vice Mayor Stewart Satter, a developer who recorded a $40 million sale of his own in March for a vacant ocean-to-Intracoastal lot. “It’s kind of hard for me to believe someone is spending that kind of money.”
Some residents may be concerned about what plans Ellison has for the town’s premier property, but Satter doesn’t think Ellison is looking to develop what he calls a “very, very, special property.”

The main house is two stories and faces the ocean. Photos provided by Realtor.com

It includes a 33-bedroom, 38-bathroom main house that sits on both sides of State Road A1A, with the larger portion on the ocean side.
“He’s decided he wants some super-unique property,” Satter said. “No one is spending $200 million to develop it.”
While Satter himself was interested in the property before Clark bought it last year, he said the value in redeveloping it is overstated. The town can allow construction east of A1A in the area, which is what developers want, but Satter said the “final say” goes to the Florida Department of Environmental Protection.
“They made the requirements so strict, you effectively can’t build on the east side of the road,” Satter said of state regulators. “The requirements are so strict, you can only build a small house.”
In 2020, the town gave the previous owners, heirs of media pioneer William B. Ziff Jr., the ability to subdivide the property that they had been trying to sell since 2016, but those rights went away when Clark bought it in 2021. Clark’s purchase price was far below the $195 million the Ziffs originally sought.

A seating area with cut-coral walls, pecky cypress ceilings and a wall of live orchids.

The Shutts & Bowen law firm, representing Ellison’s corporation, has requested town records of zoning and development approvals granted for 2000 S. Ocean Blvd., as well as any approvals for items such as variances, site plans or permits. The request is also for 3040 S. Ocean Blvd., which is part of the property.
How unusual is the property? Descriptions mention three tunnels that go under A1A to connect the east and west portions of the property.
One of those tunnels — “if you want to call it a tunnel,” Mayor Keith Waters says — connects the two portions of the house and includes works of art and other extravagant furnishings. “To say it’s magnificent would be an understatement,” Waters said of the underground connector.
Previously known as the Ziff estate and before that as Gemini, the property has 1,200 linear feet of ocean frontage and another 1,300 feet along the Intracoastal. Besides the main house, it has a guest house, manager’s house, two ocean cottages, tennis courts, swimming pool, regulation golf practice area, a miniature golf course and a botanic garden with 1,500 species of tropical trees and plants.
For a time decades ago, it was considered the most expensive residence in the country. It now at least holds the state title.
The previous top sale in the state was $129.6 million for a four-parcel purchase on Blossom Way in the town of Palm Beach in 2012 by hedge-fund manager Ken Griffin, said Jonathan Miller, president of Miller Samuel Inc., a real estate appraisal and consultant firm. The most expensive single parcel before last month’s purchase was at 535 N. County Road in Palm Beach, which sold for $122.7 million last year, Miller said.
“If you look at what’s available in the properties, it’s an age-old saying: There’s only so much dirt on the ocean like that,” Waters said. “Palm Beach is a big, shiny object, and Manalapan is a quiet, subtle, and in my opinion, better version.”

And the rocket’s red glare
The bombs bursting in air
Gave proof through the night
That our flag was still there
— “The Star-Spangled Banner,” 1814

July Fourth: A day filled with barbecue, patriotic baby contests, hula-hoop competitions and watermelon consumption followed by sundown and an anticipated explosion of pyrotechnic sound and color in the sky.
Independence Day 2022 is sure again to be one of the most memorable days of summer, with plenty of flag-waving and singing of patriotic songs.
So, a quick history lesson:
Old Glory, the American flag, consists of 13 horizontal stripes, seven red alternating with six white. The stripes represent the original 13 Colonies that joined forces to declare independence from Britain, and the stars — as of July 4, 1960 — represent the 50 states of the Union.
The first time the flag was carried into battle was during this country’s Civil War, where the war dead on both sides number upward of 650,000. At one time there was discussion of removing the stars of the Southern states that seceded from the union, but President Abraham Lincoln refused, believing it would give legitimacy to the Confederate states, so they remain.
The Star-Spangled Banner was written as a poem on Sept. 14, 1814, after Fort McHenry was bombarded by British ships in Baltimore Harbor during the War of 1812 — a conflict arising over territorial expansion in North America and escalating over trade restrictions that crippled the economy of a young America. The battle at Fort McHenry, a month after British troops had burned Washington, resulted in a U.S. victory; the poem’s author was inspired by the sight of the large American flag flying above the successfully defended fort as the sun rose.
The poem was later set to the music of a song popular at the time and became the national anthem by congressional resolution on March 3, 1931.
Any student of American history knows our country’s freedoms have not been easily won; but so far our Constitution, rule of law and unity of purpose have sustained us through the first 246 years of this country’s noble experiment in democracy.
It’s important to reflect on this history as we celebrate this year’s Independence Day. That omnipresent red, white and blue flag represents the historical strength of our union, the fireworks remind us of past battles we’ve endured, and that Star-Spangled song blasting is less of an anthem of individual freedom than an expression of gratitude that our union survives.

— Mary Kate Leming, Editor

Greg Hazle, who used to work in corporate finance and project management, has led Boca Helping Hands’ expansion to other sites amid the demands of the pandemic. Tim Stepien/The Coastal Star

By Tao Woolfe

Greg Hazle, a chemical engineer and longtime corporate executive, never imagined himself heading a charitable organization, but when Boca Helping Hands itself needed a hand, he gave his heart and soul.
It was supposed to be a temporary gig for Hazle, who had served on Boca Helping Hands’ board of directors for about four years. But he found, much to his surprise, that the role was incredibly rewarding.
“After a few years I found I really enjoyed it. I found it to be a great privilege,” Hazle said, the lilt of his native Jamaica trickling through his words. “I was working with people I admired, but hadn’t met a lot in the corporate world — selfless, idealistic people.”
Gary Peters, who has been president of the board for 16 years, said the admiration was mutual. The board members, the staff and the volunteers liked Hazle’s soft-spoken, kind, intelligent management style.
“When our previous executive director retired, I asked Greg to step in as interim director,” Peters said. “He so liked the job, and was such a good fit, we asked him to stay.”
That was five years ago. Since then, Boca Helping Hands — a 24-year-old organization that feeds thousands of hungry people each year and provides job training and emergency assistance — has expanded to offer services to much of Palm Beach County.
“It was a very challenging role. We began expanding our food distribution and then COVID hit,” Peters said. “Greg managed the whole thing through the pandemic, and raised revenues, without missing a beat.”
The feeding program, which began as a humble soup kitchen in a church annex building, is now housed in several buildings off Glades Road. Sit-down hot meals were phased out because of the pandemic, but hot to-go meals are served Monday to Saturday from 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.
Cars now line up for blocks and take turns driving into a canvas-covered distribution site. Volunteers quickly load bags of groceries into the cars Monday through Saturday from 9 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. and Thursdays from 4:30 to 6 p.m.
Besides the main east Boca facility, there are now distribution centers in west Boca, Delray Beach, Boynton Beach and Lake Worth Beach.
Hazle said his background working in corporate finance and project management for both Florida Power & Light and Cemex, the international cement and building materials company, helped him figure out how to expand Helping Hands. “I brought to the job a lot of corporate disciplines — corporate governance and financial management,” he said. “But I kept an open mind about how I could contribute to the community.”
While listening to the donors and community advocates, Hazle found that his assumptions about the community of Boca Raton were completely incorrect.
“My stereotypical thinking was that Boca Raton’s residents were very self-involved,” Hazle said. “It is actually a very generous community that celebrates philanthropy.”
And, by listening to his employees, he learned to “unleash the capacity of people who want to become leaders in the organization.”
Bill Harper, Hazle’s director of food and warehouse operations, said he admires his boss for his business savvy and his people skills.
“He is a breath of fresh air, a pleasure to work with,” Harper said. “He’s my supervisor, but also a mentor in life. He really listens. He hears you and understands you, but he doesn’t try to fix it. He’s good people.”
Hazle, 66, lives in Boca Raton with Tina, his wife of 40 years. The couple has two grown daughters — one in Long Island, New York, and one in Atlanta — and several grandchildren.
He said there is a spiritual component to his life and his work. He is a member of Spanish River Church and a member of the school of ministry at Palm Beach Atlantic University.
Harper, who described the organization’s volunteers as “the best in Palm Beach County,” said they, too, thrive in the warmth of appreciation fostered by Hazle.
“This is the best day of my week,” said volunteer Don Mandelbaum, who has been serving hot meals to Boca Helping Hands clients for seven years. “I feel good about being here — about what I’m doing.”

For more information about Boca Helping Hands, visit www.bocahelpinghands.org.

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I don’t understand why there is such contempt for iguanas. They are not aggressive toward people, they run away as fast as they can if anyone approaches them. They don’t bite, they don’t sting. They don’t attack our pets. They don’t ravage our important, edible crops. What harm are they causing? What crime have they committed, outside of being ugly?
One person complained that “they eat the flowers!” Big deal! Flowers serve no tangible purpose. We don’t eat them. We don’t feed livestock with them. We don’t manufacture anything using flowers. Nor are they medicinal. Who cares if they eat flowers?
Ironically, up in the Midwest, Canadian geese are a much bigger problem, yet we are not allowed to hunt or kill them. But unlike iguanas, geese are aggressive toward people. And their droppings completely saturate sidewalks and lawns.
If there is an invasive species that needed culling, it’s Canadian geese. They are a much bigger nuisance than iguanas.
Moreover, we have the most boring wildlife here. In South America, they have monkeys, llamas, jaguars, piranhas, giant bugs, spiders and all kinds of exotic birds, etc. In Africa they have rhinos, lions, giraffes, etc. In Asia they have tigers, elephants, cobras, etc. In Australia, they have kangaroos, koalas, wombats, etc.
Meanwhile, here in the States we have squirrels and sparrows. Woohoo! How boring! Iguanas are the first exotic creatures we have to break up the boredom of our bland native wildlife. I say let them live!

— Kurt Kelley
Boynton Beach

By Tao Woolfe

Starting next year, Boynton Beach firefighters and paramedics will shift from a schedule of 24 hours on/48 hours off, to one of 24 hours on/72 hours off.
The change is expected to cut down on the city’s overtime costs and result in happier, healthier public safety workers, interim City Manager Jim Stables told the City Commission at a meeting on June 7.
“Forty-eight hours off is not enough time to decompress, especially when people are needed for overtime,” Stables said.
Hugh Bruder, interim Boynton Beach fire chief and director of fire and emergency medical services, further explained in an interview after the meeting how everyone will benefit from the new schedule.
Under the existing system, firefighters work a 48-hour week. Under the new system, the firefighters’ workweek is shortened to 42 hours, but the salary will stay the same.
Overtime has been paid, and will be paid, for any hours worked beyond the normal schedule.
Under the existing system, firefighter/paramedics are given a Kelly Day — a day off for rest and relaxation — every three weeks. The new system eliminates Kelly Days, which will automatically reduce overtime, the chief said.
The other half of the overtime reduction equation, he said, is that the department will hire 21 new full-time personnel. That way, there will be sufficient staff to fill all the department’s time slots.
There may still be the occasional shift that needs to be covered by overtime, but those needs will be drastically reduced, Bruder said. Last year, due to the coronavirus and staff shortages, the city paid $1.8 million in overtime.
More important, the chief said, the firefighters and paramedics will have time to decompress, rest and exercise, so they will have less reason to call in sick and will be better able to serve the community.
The city also will benefit from its ability to recruit and retain up-and-coming professionals who are seeking the 24/72-hour schedule, which is still a rarity in Florida.
Boca Raton’s is one of only a handful of departments in the state to offer the 24/72 schedule and, as a result, it is considered a destination workplace, Bruder said. Boynton is also expected to quickly earn that distinction.
Stables told the City Commission that the conversion will cost the city about $2 million up front, but ultimately will save — estimating conservatively — $1 million a year in overtime costs.
About $823,000 of the conversion cost will be used to hire the 21 new firefighter/paramedics, Stables said. They will be hired and begin training in October.
“We had 40 applicants in the first week of recruiting,” Stables said.
The commission approved the new schedule on June 7, and unanimously ratified a new, three-year contract with the Boynton Beach firefighters, Local 1891 of the International Association of Fire Fighters.
Bruder said the commission’s approval set into motion a plan that signifies a huge, positive change for the city.
“It’s an example of good governance and it’s quite an undertaking,” Bruder said. “Everyone has to work together to make this happen — the City Commission, city management, the department administration, the bargaining unit, and the city staff.”

Twelve small cottages line the north side of Ocean Avenue in downtown Lantana.

By Mary Thurwachter

The cluster of yellow, blue and pink Key West-style cottages on the north side of Ocean Avenue between Oak Street and Lake Drive has been part of downtown Lantana’s landscape for decades.
Today, many of the 12 buildings are in various states of disrepair and only one — a bungalow at 201 E. Ocean Ave. — is inhabited. It is home to Oceano Kitchen, a small but widely acclaimed restaurant with a big following.
Everyone talks about bringing in new businesses downtown, but that’s not likely to happen any time soon because of challenges faced by the town, the property owners and the businesses that would like to locate there, according to Nicole Dritz, Lantana’s development services director.
Dritz brought members of the Town Council together in late May for a workshop to address the downtown issues.
The property owners, the sister-and-brother team of Marsha Stocker and Steven Handelsman, want to rent out the buildings to businesses. Their parents, Burt and Lovey Handelsman, previously owned the cottages, which are on four contiguous property parcels.
Although potential businesses have made inquiries, Dritz said the cottages must be brought up to code — and have site plans approved if they have been vacant for more than six months — before the businesses can receive the business tax receipts needed to operate. Some of the buildings have been unoccupied since 2004.
Dritz said the inquiries include those from a jet-ski rental company, a doggie daycare and an artist village.
“One developer wanted to take all four parcels and do a unity of title so we would treat it as one, and do a very Key West-style boutique resort,” she said.
Jeremy Bearman, owner of Oceano Kitchen, had hoped to rent the former Mario’s Italian restaurant building at 225 E. Ocean Ave. to expand his business, but was unable to reach a lease agreement with the owners. He had planned to spend $500,000 for extensive renovations on the building.
Dritz said the town staff had been working with the property owners and that some improvements have been made, but “they are still not in compliance in terms of what we issued the code violations on.”
She said: “The code fines are getting up there and we have told them, ‘Listen, if you want a break on those code fines, show us what you’re going to do, get an application in, give us something to go on.’”
The owners have been fined $250 a day per parcel and those fines have surpassed $300,000, according to Dritz. None of the fines has been paid to date.
The owners prefer not to sell, Dritz said. “They would like to keep the structures as is and get tenants to rent those. They aren’t completely taking off the table working with a developer, maybe doing some kind of land lease where they lease the land and the developer comes and builds something on it.”
In an email reply to questions from The Coastal Star, Stocker said, “We are trying to work out a resolution so that these units can be rented. If we cannot come to a satisfactory resolution we will need to re-evaluate our options.”

‘Frustrating for everybody’
The empty cottages on Ocean Avenue have been a concern to the Chamber of Commerce for years.
“It’s frustrating for everybody — for us at the Chamber, for the town and for the residents. That little street could be so awesome,” said Dave Arm.
“As president of the Chamber, I’ve said I’d love to see that become a mini–Atlantic Avenue or a mini–Lake Avenue, where you could go have a drink in one place, have dinner in another, have dessert in another and go stop at a little boutique or something.
“Stroll Ocean Avenue. And right now, you’ve got a gap in there. That’s a damn shame. It’s frustrating and there just doesn’t seem to be a solution. Until the owners decide to play ball, I can’t see anything happening.”

Parking issues
Parking also has been problematic for downtown businesses. In 2019, to help the businesses, the town decreased its downtown parking requirement from 25 spaces per 1,000 square feet of gross floor area to 12 spaces. And last September, when Bearman came to the town seeking relief from the requirements that called for 49 spaces for the Mario’s site, he was granted a variance reducing the number to 18.
There are different ways to deal with parking, Town Attorney Max Lohman told the council at the workshop.
“Municipalities that have the constraint parking challenges similar to ours draw a box, they pick a zone, they change the parking requirements in that zone. Many of you have said you’ve never had a problem parking. ... Which would lead me to think that maybe, under the circumstances, the parking requirements are too strict in that area. And then, it would be something we could look at to potentially change,” he said.
“Then again ... if those vacant parcels ever become occupied, there’s a chance you might have a parking problem. But honestly, having a parking problem is a good problem to have. If you don’t have a parking problem, people aren’t coming. So, if you get a parking problem, we will figure it out.”
Lohman said it’s almost better to relax the regulations and then address the problem when it comes.
He said the town could better utilize the parking lot at Sportsman’s Park at night.
“You could potentially monetize that,” Lohman said. “Those large boat trailer parking spots could easily be chopped up into two or three.”
Another idea, he said, would be for the town to hire a valet service to benefit all the Ocean Avenue restaurants. “You could assess them (the businesses) the cost of it so they would be specifically benefiting from it. I’m not saying that’s the right solution, but I’m saying there are other solutions.”
Others suggestions are to add more parking spaces at Lyman Kayak Park or at the tennis courts at the recreation center.

Going forward
Dritz asked the council to weigh in on how to proceed.
“Do you wish for us to continue to capture those site plans like we are, or do you wish to see vacancies filled quickly, keeping those existing buildings with existing spec conditions in play, so that would require a code change to just basically eliminate the need for compliance?”
By consensus, council members agreed to continue enforcing the zoning laws that require site plans, landscape plans and signage. They want to keep the six-month vacancy requirements and will review special exception uses for each zoning district. And they are open to further loosening parking requirements.
“I like what you’re doing,” council member Lynn (Doc) Moorhouse told Dritz. “A lot of those places look like crap to me. I live next door to this. They’re falling down.”
Mayor Robert Hagerty said he wanted to stay the course. “I like the site plans. I like working the way you’re doing it. The problem I’ve got is if we leave those houses ... the same way that they are, they are decrepit. People could be injured.”

By Mary Thurwachter

The Dune Deck Café, a popular open-air restaurant at the public beach for nearly three decades, will see Lantana increase its rent by 38% over the next three years.
The Town Council, at its June 13 meeting, voted unanimously to extend the lease of the concessionaire for three years, but the rent will go up each year until it reaches $65,000 annually in 2025. The breakfast and lunch restaurant currently pays $47,132 plus sales tax annually.
The higher rate is more in line with what the rent should be, according to a market rent analysis report done by Anderson Carr, a local appraisal firm, on March 28. It will take three years to get to the $64,045 rent suggested in that report. The rent, before the inclusion of sales taxes, will rise to $53,000 in 2023, $59,000 in 2024, and $65,000 in the new contract’s final year.
Council members had discussed the lease during a visioning workshop on April 22 after Dune Deck owner John Caruso had inquired about renewing the lease, which expires at the end of the year.
Besides the rent increase, the new agreement calls for the cash-only restaurant to make it more convenient for customers to pay their checks by making “reasonable efforts to begin accepting credit and debit cards as a form of payment prior to Dec. 31, 2024.”
Town Manager Brian Raducci said he thought the agreement was reasonable. “We had a very good negotiation, a very good discussion with Mr. Caruso and his attorney.”
Mayor Pro Tem Lynn (Doc) Moorhouse said he would do anything he could to support the Dune Deck, which, like the Old Key Lime House, is a destination point in town.
“Let’s face it, they’ve been through multiple hurricanes, and they are an outdoor restaurant,” Moorhouse said. “It’s not like you got walls and AC around to protect you. They don’t work when it rains because nobody comes. I think they’ve done a fantastic job.”
Council member Kem Mason agreed. “It’s a landmark location. They built it up. They made the name. They’re bringing people to our town so I’m behind them 100% and if they leave, we don’t know what we might get in there. For me, a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.”
Mayor Robert Hagerty said he understood what Mason and Moorhouse were saying but also understood the reason for the conversation.
“It doesn’t mean nobody wants you around,” he said, referring to Caruso. “It’s not that at all. Everybody enjoys your restaurant, as a matter of fact. It’s just that we have to look into the future and not everybody knows what that entails. I don’t want to get rid of it. If anything, I want to improve that location if it’s possible.”
The Dune Deck has had a home at the public beach for 26 years. During a lease negotiation with the Town Council in 2012, Caruso said he had taken “a rat-infested building that was an embarrassment and created something to be proud of.”
He invested $80,000 of his own money to get the restaurant started and made many improvements over the years, including adding restrooms, new chairs and tables, and an outdoor bar. Customers previously used the beach’s public restrooms.
There were two public comments related to the new rent increase. One was from Pastor Ken Baker of First Baptist Church of Lantana, who said the Dune Deck was a staple in the community. He said the town should focus on bringing in new businesses, meaning “you don’t hurt the businesses that are already here by trying to jack up the price.”
John Raymer, who made an unsuccessful run for a council seat this year, said the rent was too low compared to what other business were paying and the town should charge more.
“You’re doing a disservice to the town of Lantana because that could be additional revenue that could help the town fix the beach and the roads and multiple other things, like hire lifeguards,” Raymer said of a rent increase.

In other action, the council made some changes to its rules and procedures as discussed at its visioning session in April. The changes allow the town manager to format the order of the agenda and to adopt a new section allowing for a consent agenda for non-controversial matters that do not require an individual discussion. Ú