Boynton Beach is moving ahead with its proposal for downtown, but it’s back to the drawing board in Lantana
The northern portion of The Villages, a mixed-use project in downtown Boynton Beach, is under construction. Photos by Tim Stepien/The Coastal Star
Related: Lantana: Hotel project shelved, but Ocean Avenue still primed for major development
Related: Boynton Beach: Ocean One gets $2.5 million more from CRA
By Jane Musgrave
Boynton Beach Mayor Rebecca Shelton smiled Dec. 17 as she swung a sledgehammer, destroying the walls of the crime-ridden Inn at Boynton Beach.
“It’s the highlight of the last 10 months of being mayor,” Shelton said. “This is why I ran for office.”
The demolition of the 20-year-old hotel on the south side of West Boynton Beach Boulevard at Interstate 95 is seen as the key to a sweeping revitalization plan that is to transform the city.
“It sends a message: Boynton Beach is open for business,” Shelton said.
Exactly what will be built on the roughly 2-acre site is unknown. After paying $8.1 million for the land in October, the city’s Community Redevelopment Agency now wants to buy 13 adjacent parcels — appraised at $7.5 million — to create what it hopes will be a signature project.
Community meetings will be held to determine exactly what will be built on what would become a 6-acre site.
“It is the gateway to the city and it needs to be beautiful,” said Shelton, who serves on the CRA board along with the rest of the City Commission.
An office building with retail on the ground floor is one possibility. Or, she said, a high-end hotel might be considered.
Chris Brown, the newly hired executive director of the CRA, said he hopes to have a deal in place with a developer in 2026.
But, he emphasized the redevelopment of the hotel site is just one part of a grand scheme to turn the city’s unsightly, traffic-choked entryway into a pedestrian-friendly area that will become a destination instead of a place people drive en route to somewhere else.
“I’m going to be spending a lot of time on Boynton Beach Boulevard,” said Brown, who was CRA director in Delray Beach during that city’s boom years.
In addition to the hotel site, the CRA owns other land on West Boynton Beach Boulevard to boost revitalization efforts.
It owns a lot on the north side of the road at Northwest Fourth Street and another one two blocks over at Northwest Second Street. It also paid $917,000 for two lots on the south side at Seacrest Boulevard, one that has long been home to the U.S. Post Office.
Like the hotel property, there are no firm plans as to what will eventually be built on those sites. The vacant land gives the CRA a blank slate to carry out its new vision, Brown said.
The city is also getting an assist from the Florida Department of Transportation, which owns the road. As part of a $64-million, four-year project to reduce congestion for motorists getting on and off Interstate 95, landscaping will be added to the stretch of Boynton Beach Boulevard from I-95 to North Federal Highway.
Crews soon will begin planting trees along the sidewalks that were widened in a $7.2 million project that wrapped up in 2025.
Aesthetics are important, Brown said. “If we can get some really quality development with quality architecture, we can change the nature of Boynton Beach Boulevard,” he said.
But it won’t be easy. Even in Delray Beach, where the downtown’s transformation in recent decades has been hailed as a model of success for other cities to emulate, it has been a decades-long struggle to develop the blocks on Atlantic Avenue from I-95 to the heart of the downtown that begins at Swinton Avenue.
Downtown developments
Brown said one promising sign is that private developers are investing in Boynton Beach’s downtown area. In the next five years, 2,000 units are to be built, he said.
Already, Edgewater Capital Investments is at work on an eight-story complex on East Ocean Avenue that will have 336 apartments, 668 parking spaces, 8,000 square feet of retail and restaurant space. The project, Villages at East Ocean, extends to Boynton Beach Boulevard and is expected to be completed in two years. A second phase planned on the south side of Ocean Avenue will bring an additional 171 residences.
Other planned large residential developments, with commercial spaces and eight-story buildings, include Ocean One at the northeast corner of Ocean Avenue and Federal Highway, The Pierce across from it on the west side of Federal Highway, and Town Square to the north and south of Ocean Avenue near City Hall.
Having people living in the city’s core to shop and go to restaurants is a game-changer, Brown said. “It will change the downtown,” he said.
The key, however, is giving them a safe, comfortable area so they will get out of their apartments and visit local businesses.
In addition to making Boynton Beach Boulevard pedestrian-friendly, Brown said he wants to remake Ocean Avenue. Like Atlantic Avenue in Delray Beach, he said he wants to expand the sidewalks and install bricks to make the city’s long-struggling downtown more attractive.
Brown admits the CRA’s plans are ambitious. But, Shelton said, city leaders have ignored key areas for too long, which wasted resources and caused the city to stagnate.
For instance, instead of patrolling the streets, city police spent hours at the Inn at Boynton Beach, where drug deals, sexual assaults and domestic violence were common.
“Now we can put the cops back on the streets where they belong,” she said.
Likewise, the city doesn’t fully benefit from special events it hosts. After watching the holiday boat parade or the July 4 fireworks or attending the Pirate Fest & Mermaid Splash, people head somewhere else.
They go to Delray Beach or to the Key Lime House in nearby Lantana, Shelton said. “So, we don’t get any economic benefit from it,” she said.
She is hopeful the planned revitalization will change that.
Larry Barszewski contributed to this story.
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