The Container Story Private Preview Party
Town Center Mall, Boca Raton – June 13
ABOVE TOP: Members of The Container Store’s executive team share a kickline to salute new employees. ABOVE: Garrett Boone, chairman emeritus of The Container Store, with Junior League of Boca Raton President Crystal McMillin. The store donated $13,000 of its grand opening weekend sales to the Junior League.
Photos provided
By Thom Smith
Unless something dramatic happens, literally, at the midnight hour, the Ritz-Carlton Palm Beach in Manalapan will become Eau Palm Beach Resort & Spa.
Rest assured, it didn’t happen overnight. Two years ago, the resort’s owners, RC/PB, sued the resort’s management team, Marriott International and Avendra for “utter disregard of fiduciary, contractual and statutory obligations.” Essentially, RC/PB says Marriott is skimming profits, the suit claimed.
Marriott and Avendra have countersued for breach of contract. Down in Miami, the legendary Eden Roc has severed its ties with Marriott’s Renaissance management company for similar reasons. RC/PB has assured its more than 450 employees that they will retain their jobs and salaries if they stay.
To handle sales and marketing at Eau, RC/PB has hired Preferred Hotel Group, which is hardly new to the neighborhood. Based in Chicago, Preferred contracts with hotels on every continent except Antarctica, including Jupiter Beach Resort and, in Delray, the Colony and The Seagate. Eau. Uh, eau.
***
Surprise, surprise! Trader Joe’s is coming to Boca.
A month ago, all the talk was about the hot, hot, hot California-based specialty grocer opening its first South Florida store in Miami this fall and another in Palm Beach Gardens next year. That all changed June 25 when the company added Boca Raton ... sometime next year.
No word on what this might mean for the proposed Delray Beach location at Linton Boulevard and Federal Highway.
Joe’s is hip. It sells lots gourmet, organic and “alternative” food. Cheeses, wines and beers, tofu, even vitamins. No MSG or trans fats. No artificial hormones in its dairy products. Service is a cornerstone. In 2009, Consumer Reports and MSN Money ranked it No. 2 in customer service.
The brand is owned by the German family trust Markus-Stiftung, parent company of Aldi Nord, a supermarket chain which recently began to open Aldi supermarkets in Palm Beach County. Compared with large grocers such as Publix, which may stock 50,000 different items, Trader Joe’s offers about 4,000, most of which carry its own brand names, which helps keep prices lower.
The Boca store, planned for the East City Center, a new three-building complex of shops and offices, will occupy only 12,500 square feet, about one-third that of the Publix a block away. You can bet the Lakeland-based big boy already has taken notice.
***
Long before Boca began to bustle with trendy, chic, hot, hot, hot restaurants, the standard by which all others were measured was “the old house.” In French it sounds so different, so much more pretentious — La Vieille Maison — but for three decades it was the place to go.
Built in 1927 as a home on East Palmetto Park Road, a block east of the Intracoastal, it was bought it in the ’70s by Leonce Picot and transformed into a French delight. Several dining rooms. Tuxedoed, multilingual waiters. Menus without prices for women guests. Food to live for. Constantly ranked among the state’s best. Groupon-like deals, forget it.
But age and economics forced Picot to sell in 2006. In 2011, the building was deemed beyond repair and bulldozed.
One of the people who grew up in Picot’s shadow was Arturo Gismondi. Over the years he’s become the Italian equivalent to Picot, with two highly regarded restaurants (Arturo’s Ristorante on North Federal, Trattoria Romana on East Palmetto Park Road), Cannoli Kitchen takeouts east and west and, most recently, Biergarten Boca Raton, a Tyrolean drafthouse in revitalized Royal Palm Place.
Now Gismondi wants to try something French. He’s found a site — the former Lilly’s in the building (at 5 Palms apartment complex) next to Trattoria Romana. Proposed as an homage to La Vieille Maison, but with a modern twist, it will be called La Nouvelle Maison (“The New House”). Arturo plans a January opening.
***
Westward, ho! … Merchants along Atlantic Avenue complain business is suffering because too much happens on Delray’s “main street.” Street festivals, parades, dining events at long, long tables — it’s just too much. So the folks who organize many of those events — the Delray Beach Marketing Cooperative — are moving in a different direction.
Instead of running east along Atlantic Avenue from Swinton, the Aug. 8 On the Ave celebration will run north-south from the bandshell at Atlantic and Northwest Fifth Avenue to Spady Elementary School. A month later, the party will move back east but will keep the north-south orientation through Pineapple Grove.
***
The recently renamed Delray Beach Center for the Arts at Old School Square — still known to hoi polloi as Old School Square — has always offered a little something for everyone. With acts such as the Lettermen (Nov. 22-24), Home for the Holidays on Ice (Dec. 20-22), Flipside — The Patti Page Story (Jan. 17-19), Hair (Feb. 14-16); Rhythm of the Dance (March 7-9) and The Golden Dragon Acrobats’ Cirque Ziva (March 28-30), the 2013-14 season continues that skein.
Executive Director Joe Gillie will have a difficult time, however, trying to top this season’s lecture series, which opens glamorously Jan. 16 with Golden Globe and People’s Choice winner Linda Evans. The star of Big Valley and Dynasty is no stranger to the area, although Delray has certainly changed since her 10-year relationship with Manalapan resident Yanni ended in 1998.
Next in on Feb. 13 will be Elizabeth Smart, a national advocate for nationwide reform of child abduction laws. Her memoir about her abduction in 2002 will be published this fall. At age 14, Smart was kidnapped from her home in Salt Lake City and sexually abused for nine months before her abductors were captured. Legal proceedings dragged on for years. In December 2010, a jury rejected Brian David Mitchell’s insanity defense, and in May 2011 he began serving a life sentence.
In February 2012, Smart married Matthew Gilmour, whom she met in Paris, where both were serving as Mormon missionaries.
Tony Mendez, the mastermind behind the hostage rescue mission chronicled in Oscar-winner Argo — he was played by Ben Affleck — speaks March 20, followed April 10 by Story Musgrave, the 30-year NASA astronaut who performed the first shuttle spacewalk and led the Hubble telescope repair team.
“It’s crazy; it gets better every year,” Gillie said. “The lower level is already sold out. There won’t be a seat left.” (243-7922 or delraycenterforthearts.org)
***
Just in time for the city’s 100th anniversary celebration, the Lake Worth Historical Museum — closed for 17 months after the City Council cut it from the budget — is open again on the second floor of the City Hall Annex. A small staff of volunteers welcomes the public from 1 to 4 p.m. on Wednesdays and Fridays, with more hours to be added as additional volunteers sign on. Call 533-7354.
Art to the east, art to the west … If everything works out with the Community Redevelopment Agency’s grant application, the old shuffleboard center on Lucerne will become an art center. City commissioners voted in mid-June to lease the center to the CRA and to spend $37,500 to design the renovation. It’s part of the CRA’s plan to emphasize art, which sparked the move of the Cultural Council of Palm Beach County to 601 E. Lake Ave. and construction of 12 live/work townhomes for artists across the street. Of course, if the CRA’s application for a state grant falls through, the lease will be killed.
The CRA envisions an arts district extending west to Lake Worth High School. Goals and reality, however, often don’t jibe. Lake Worth may be ambitious, but the town isn’t as well off financially as Boca or Delray, and while development of an arts community would seem to be a noble cause, some residents like shuffleboard, others just don’t want change and still others would like to see the city return to what it was like 100 years ago.
***
Tripping the not-so-light fantastic … The folks who run the George Snow Scholarship Fund have announced the participants for the Sixth Annual Boca Ballroom Battle. The Aug. 16 event at the Boca Raton Resort & Club pairs members of the community with professional dancers from the Fred Astaire Dance Studio who compete for a grand prize — the coveted mirrored ball.
The lineup includes Miami Dolphins chief financial and administrative officer Mark Brockelman; Gary Collins, general manager at Frenchman’s Reserve Country Club; plastic surgeon Dr. Anthony N. Dardano; Dorothy MacDiarmid, partner at Cloud 9 Consulting; Marie Occhigrossi, an attorney with Weitz & Luxenberg; Global Communication Networks founder and CEO Chris Palermo; Cecilia Peters, educator at Westminster Academy; Marie Speed, editor at Boca Raton magazine.
The Ballroom Battle, patterned after TV’s Dancing With the Stars, raises money for the George Snow Scholarship Fund, which has provided more than $4 million in college scholarships, including $580,000 to 80 students this year. To contribute or buy tickets: 347-6799 or www.scholarship.org.
***
The temperature may be up, but life on the FAU campus seems to have cooled down. Give credit to Dennis Crudele, who took charge immediately after being appointed interim president. In mid-May FAU’s board of trustees chose Crudele to replace Mary Jane Saunders, who resigned after the ill-advised attempt to name the school stadium for GEO, the prisons for-profit corporation with headquarters just across I-95 from the campus.
On- and off-campus reports have Crudele, former senior vice president of financial affairs, with a steady hand on the throttle. And barely a month on the job, the school’s trustees moved him from acting to interim president. That gives the board some time to search, since Crudele is set to retire at the end of 2014.
***
As Saunders headed out, some new, much-needed faces headed in — to improve public relations. And not just with the GEO and mislabeled “Stomp Jesus” classroom controversies. Two professional public relations agencies have been retained to develop a better system for getting the word out about the positive contributions FAU makes in the community. Until that move was made, the school employed only two full-time publicists; most schools of its size rely on 10 or more.
One of their first projects will be to spread the news about Dr. Deandre Poole, the communications instructor involved in the so-called “Stomp Jesus” incident last spring. Using an exercise developed at a Christian institution and used at many schools, Poole instructed his students to write “Jesus” on a sheet of paper and then step on the paper. One student took issue with the exercise, protested vociferously and confronted Poole.
School administrators at first suspended the student, for reportedly threatening Poole. Then Gov. Rick Scott jumped in — the student was reinstated, and Poole was suspended pending an inquiry. School administrators cited concerns for his safety. National media jumped all over it, especially conservative Christians. With no supporting evidence, many suggested that Poole, himself a devout Christian, had some other agenda because he is vice chair of the Palm Beach County Democratic Executive Committee.
Actually, the textbook was written by James Neuliep, a professor at St. Norbert College, a small Roman Catholic school in De Pere, Wis. Neuliep has used the exercise in his classes for 30 years without incident.
On June 21, Poole was reinstated.
***
FAU’s baseball team made it to the NCAA tournament before being eliminated by top-seeded North Carolina, 12-11 in 13 innings.
How far has the football team progressed since Coach Carl Pellini took over the program last year? It should provide some answers on Aug. 30 when the team plays the University of Miami. Not just alums who don’t travel to Sun Life Stadium in Miami, but also a national audience can assess the Owls on national TV, courtesy of ESPNU.
***
FAU’s MBA program in sports management has been ranked fifth in North America and eighth in the world in the 2013 SportBusiness International rankings of master’s-level sport courses by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business. FAU is the only school in Florida to make the top 25 world rankings. Ohio University was ranked No. 1, followed by FIFA’s International Center for Sports Studies in Switzerland. Impressive company.
An estimated 9,000 fans, most of whom had never been on campus, now know the new stadium is also an excellent venue for soccer. Germany battled Ecuador in a “friendly.” German striker Lukas Podolski scored with barely nine seconds gone in the match — reputed to be the second-fastest goal ever in an international match.
The stadium may not have a sponsor, but new Athletics Director Pat Chun, who cut his administrative teeth at athletic powerhouse Ohio State, is trying to land a new bowl game to wrap up the 2014 season. It wouldn’t be anything near the caliber of an Orange or Rose Bowl, but the location is ideal, the weather is good and the signs are encouraging.
“The only lights we’ve had are green,” Chun told Chuck King of Owl Access blog. “Nothing yellow and nothing red.”
***
On June 16, shortly after being admitted to Boca Raton Regional Hospital, Boca Raton Airport Manager Ken Day died from an “undisclosed illness.” Speculation has arisen that Day, 56, suffered a heart attack, but the cause of death has not been disclosed.
“We’re a bit stunned around here, to say the least,” airport public affairs director and office manager Kimberly Whalen said.
Back in March when the word of the day was “sequestration,” folks around the airport got a little antsy as the Federal Aviation Administration threatened to eliminate financing for control-tower staff. Concurrently, departing Airport Authority member David Freudenberg began to question the $1.2 million in salaries and benefits paid to airport employees. He was particularly critical of Day’s $218,000 salary, especially since Bruce Pelly, the boss at much larger and much busier Palm Beach International Airport, makes $15,000 less.
Supporters jumped to Day’s defense, noting that during his 13-year tenure, the airport’s cash reserves grew from $600,000 to $6.5 million. Authority Chairman Frank Feiler said he wished he could pay the staff more because the airport “is well-run, well-managed and well thought of.”
A search committee has been appointed to find a successor, but as Whalen noted, Day will be hard to replace. A scholarship fund has been established in his name to help students further aviation careers. Donations can be made to the Boca Raton Airport Authority.
Thom Smith is a freelance writer. Contact him at thomsmith@ymail.com
Comments