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Related Story: Rules revision for automated garages aids proposed tower, making council uneasy

By Mary Hladky

Alan Neibauer first learned that a major development could be built across the street from the Tower 155 condo he has owned since 2020 when he saw a sign at the site announcing that the project was coming soon.
“I saw how massive it was,” he said. “It would change the whole look of the neighborhood.”
Now retired, Neibauer is a former newspaper reporter and editor and author of many books on computer hardware and software. He moved to Boca Raton in 2007 before relocating to Delray Beach. He and his wife, Victoria Milazzo, a former business owner, were lured back to Boca when they saw the building’s plans at the Tower 155 sales office.
The couple started researching the proposed three-building Aletto Square residential, office and retail development one block east of Federal Highway between East Palmetto Park and East Boca Raton roads. What they learned propelled them into spearheading opposition.
They have voiced their objections to the city’s Community Appearance Board, spoken out at City Council meetings and created a petition at www.change.org imploring city officials to reject the development.
It had garnered 547 signatures as of Feb. 15 and more than 100 people have signed a paper petition.
Neibauer and Milazzo also objected to an amendment to an ordinance the City Council approved on Feb. 8 that makes it easier for developers to get city approval for construction of automated parking garages in the downtown. Aletto Square, if built, would have an automated garage.
The couple’s opposition to Aletto Square centers on the size of the project, which they say is too large and inconsistent with the character of the neighborhood. They also warn that it will cause an increase in traffic that would clog East Boca Raton Road, Northeast First Avenue and other streets, and object to the negative impact they say it will have on Sanborn Square, located immediately west of the project site.
“The added traffic from this project would be disastrous, and a totally unnecessary and undeserved burden on residents and commercial business on the East Boca Raton Rd.,” the petition states.
Neibauer sees some irony in the fact that many of the project objectors live in the Tower 155 luxury condo. When that condo was proposed, downtown residents voiced many of the same objections about its size, an increase in traffic, and how it would change the character of the downtown.
Both Tower 155 and the highest Aletto Square building are 12 stories tall.
But those who accuse Tower 155 residents of being NIMBYs don’t recognize that many of the petition signers live elsewhere, Neibauer said.
“If you look at the people who signed the petition, you will see it is people from all over the city,” he said. They come to the area to relax or exercise in Sanborn Square, eat in restaurants and shop in small stores that would be displaced by Aletto Square.
“My attitude is, if you can’t defend your own home area, what good is it,” he said.

House from 1920s would not survive Aletto project
One of the buildings that would give way to Aletto Square is the Cramer House, constructed in the mid-1920s by builder Jack Cramer and real estate pioneer Harley Gates.
The two-story Mediter-ranean Revival house sits on East Boca Raton Road, which was Boca Raton’s Main Street in the 1940s and 1950s where everyone went to shop, said Susan Gillis, curator for the Boca Raton Historical Society.
Gillis had no luck in persuading developer Compson Associates to incorporate the house, which does not have a historic designation, into its plans for Aletto Square.
She then took to social media to try to find someone willing to bear the expense of moving the house to a new location in east Boca, possibly to the new Wildflower Park. There were no takers as of late February.
“We are kind of disheartened,” Gillis said. “We would love to see it preserved.”
Neibauer, who also laments the possible fate of the Cramer House, is nowhere near the end of his fight against Aletto Square.
The project has had only a preliminary review by the CAB and is not yet scheduled to be considered by the Planning and Zoning Board.
He and his wife plan to present the signed petitions to city officials when Aletto Square begins the formal city review process.
“I really care about the downtown,” he said. “I love the downtown.”