Twelve candidates on Boca Raton ballot
Related: January election canceled, but project’s fate will be in voters’ hands
By Mary Hladky
Resident furor over Boca Raton’s plans to redevelop the 31-acre downtown campus now has engulfed the March 10 city election as redevelopment opponents attempt to win control of the City Council.
Five candidates who are part of the opposition group Save Boca or support many of that group’s positions have announced they are running for mayor or the three other council seats that will be on the ballot.
In all, a large field of 12 candidates, including three current council members, qualified in November to run.
Save Boca has a slate of three candidates — Save Boca founder Jon Pearlman, Michelle Grau and Stacy Sipple.
Running for mayor
The mayor’s race includes the high-wattage matchup between Deputy Mayor Fran Nachlas and Council member Andy Thomson, who are vying to replace term-limited Scott Singer.
Nachlas supports the redevelopment, while Thomson repeatedly has called for the project to be terminated.
Thomson maintains that even though developers Terra and Frisbie Group have made significant concessions to win over opponents, the project remains too dense and has been pushed forward too rapidly.
Joining them in that contest is Mike Liebelson, whose résumé includes more than 40 years of experience with energy companies, including executive management positions in two publicly traded companies. He now is a senior adviser to several sustainable energy companies.
When he learned the City Council planned to lease land to private developers, he began attending council meetings.
“I just could not believe the level of tone deafness this council had for the interests of the people,” he said.
When Liebelson did not see any mayoral candidate he could support, he decided to run for office himself. He opposes handing over city land to private developers and pledges to take no campaign contributions from developers. While not part of Save Boca, he gives the group credit. “I have to thank Save Boca for really educating the community,” he said.
Council Seat B
Pearlman and Save Boca supporter Meredith Madsen are challenging incumbent Council member Marc Wigder for Seat B.
“I saw where the leadership of Boca was taking the city. They were taking it to a very dismal place,” Pearlman said. “I am running to revert the course of the city … and to protect our public land, our parks and to do what is right for the residents and represent their best interests.”
Pearlman, co-founder of the Mission Lean fitness app who also has an office that manages investment portfolios, said that the Save Boca slate “will not take one cent of developer contributions. Therefore, we can act without being compromised. We can make every decision in the best interest of the citizens of Boca, not the developers.”
Madsen, the founder and CEO of Sunshine & Glitter, which sells sunscreen products, frequently speaks out at City Council meetings against city plans to redevelop the campus in partnership with Terra and Frisbie Group.
Council Seat A
Three candidates are vying to replace Nachlas in Seat A: Save Boca candidate Grau; Christen Ritchey, a former Planning and Zoning Board member, who resigned from that position to stand election; and Bernard Korn, who initially filed to run for mayor as well, but withdrew from that race.
Grau is a certified public accountant with Grau & Associates in Boca Raton that specializes in governmental auditing. When she learned about the redevelopment plan, she saw that “residents were concerned about not being part of the process” and what she said was the lack of information provided by city officials.
When she expressed an interest in running, she was told, “‘We need you, Michelle. We need someone with a financial background,’” she said. “I know government budgets. I know how to spot waste.”
Ritchey, a family law attorney, briefly was a council candidate in 2023 but withdrew to focus on her children and her law firm. While she is not part of Save Boca, “I love that they have come together to let the residents have a voice,” she said.
Ritchey has not yet taken a firm position on the redevelopment, but said, “I think first and foremost, collaboration and communication is key.”
Korn, a real estate broker, is a perennial candidate who has never won an election. He had his best showing in 2024 when he captured 23% of the vote when running against incumbent Yvette Drucker.
Council Seat D
Three candidates are running for Thomson’s Seat D.
Former Council member Robert Weinroth is making a bid to serve again.
He won a special election to the council in 2014 and then ran without opposition in 2015 and term-limited out in three years. He was elected to the Palm Beach County Commission in 2018 and became county mayor.
After Weinroth lost reelection in 2022, he filed to run for the Palm Beach County School Board, but withdrew from that race, and ran unsuccessfully for Congress in 2024 in the Republican primary. He did not return calls from The Coastal Star about his current candidacy.
Entering politics for the first time is Larry Cellon, who is well known in the city for serving nearly 10 years on the Planning and Zoning Board and, before that, 27 years on the Community Appearance Board.
He resigned from the planning board to run.
Cellon is a founding member of Workshop 344+, formed by a group of influential residents who have plans to improve a five-block section of East Palmetto Park Road.
Frustrated because that effort hasn’t gained traction with city officials, Cellon decided on a council run.
Cellon is not affiliated with Save Boca, but he opposes the redevelopment plan. “I see no reason for us to give away our public lands to a private developer,” he said.
Instead, Cellon said, the city should upgrade city buildings and recreational facilities on its own.
“I think we can do it ourselves,” he said. “We can do it better.”
Sipple, a clinical pharmacist, is Save Boca’s candidate for Seat D. She said council members are not listening to residents. And residents “want to feel they have a City Council that listens to them and responds to them.”
Sipple opposes the redevelopment project.
Too many development projects have been approved in the city and are changing its character in a way that residents don’t want by turning it into an overbuilt and congested Miami or Fort Lauderdale, she said.
Sipple opposes the redevelopment project, saying it would bring an unneeded hotel and residential units. She believes that the city can improve the downtown campus on its own, at a far lower cost.
“I hope our residents show up in force and vote” in the March 10 election, she said.
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