Downtown campus details to depend on wider master plan
The new Boca Raton City Council (l-r): Council members Stacey Sipple and Yvette Drucker, Mayor Andy Thomson, Deputy Mayor Michelle Grau and Council member Jon Pearlman. Photo provided
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By Mary Hladky
Moving beyond their laserlike focus during the last two years on redevelopment of Boca Raton’s downtown campus, city officials now want to widen the aperture to create a master plan for the entire city.
At the same time, they still are working to decide what should be done with the 31.7-acre downtown campus since voters in March overwhelmingly rejected the city’s plan to revamp it in a partnership with developers.
At its meetings on April 27 and 28, the City Council now dominated by Save Boca members first tackled the community master plan.
They rejected a proposal by Deputy City Manager Andy Lukasik to work with the Treasure Coast Regional Planning Council, one of 10 in the state that assist local governments.
Another option was to issue a request for proposals from companies on the creation of a master plan. But this process would take longer to get off the ground, since the city would have to advertise and give companies time to create proposals.
Council member Jon Pearlman suggested giving city staff time to bring additional options to the council rather than rushing into an immediate decision.
But with Deputy Mayor Michelle Grau and Council member Stacy Sipple saying they were willing to allow the city to issue a request for proposals, Treasure Coast was eliminated from consideration in favor of working with a private company.
That debate spilled over into discussion about how the downtown campus should be improved.
Grau, Sipple and Mayor Andy Thomson agreed that the city needed the community master plan before decisions can be made on the downtown campus, which includes Memorial Park.
But Council member Yvette Drucker won support for her argument that they could agree to make relatively small changes to the campus — what she called “low-hanging fruit” — without awaiting the master plan.
That could include some improvements to the tennis center and the former Children’s Museum near City Hall.
Drucker had been supportive of going with the regional planning council, saying that the City Council has spent a lot of time on the downtown campus and now needs to focus on the entire city.
The Treasure Coast council focuses on matters including urban design, city planning and community engagement.
Kim DeLaney, Treasure Coast’s director of strategic development and policy, said her organization would first hold listening sessions with residents, begin designing the project — again with public input — and then develop recommendations for a master plan that would be presented to the City Council.
Treasure Coast works with local governments, but not with developers, she said. The work would be done for the city at cost, which she estimated would be $250,000 to $300,000.
But Pearlman expressed concern that while Treasure Coast does not represent developers, it has created plans for other cities that include housing, retail and office.
“Residents don’t want any other P3s to come here ever again,” he said, referring to the public-private partnership the city had wanted to enter into with developers Terra and Frisbie Group.
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