By Angie Francalancia
Barricades block off the two outside lanes of Palmetto Park Road. Confused drivers struggle to navigate through to parking lots. Merchants fear they’ll keep on driving.
It’s the price for progress, said Giuliano Lorenzani, owner of Boca Raton Travel & Cruises. But at what cost?
Construction on the three phases of Boca Raton’s Pedestrian Promenade began in September after years of planning and months of meetings to design it.
There will be wider sidewalks with pavers, improved lighting and landscaping and raised intersections. The project is the link, city officials say, between Mizner Park and Royal Palm Plaza and the path to making downtown more pedestrian friendly.
But why begin it just as merchants gear up for season, when many expect as much as a 40 percent increase in business, they ask.
“It’s going to look nice, but I think the timing is terrible,” said Del Valeriay, owner of Meating Place of Boca Raton. “This is very confusing the way you’re having to cross through the barriers.”
Valeriay has been serving clients for 40 years from his Palmetto Park Road location, and the gourmet meat market is a destination for people.
He said he’ll never benefit from making Palmetto Park Road browser-friendly — people typically dash into his shop to buy gourmet meats, then rush home to get them in the fridge.
But he might lose a few customers who don’t want to struggle with the barricades and backups that are happening on the street, he said.
“It wasn’t that we planned to do it right in October and November,” said Assistant City Manager Michael Woika. The construction came after about nine months of community discussions over the design, he said.
“We recognized that merchants were going to be affected,” he said, but added that many in the community would have been upset had the project been delayed. “We tried to address it as much as we can. I think the council heard people say, ‘We’ve been discussing this for two years now. When are you going to help us out?’ ”
The long-term goal is to make Palmetto Park Road just as pedestrian friendly as Mizner Park, with the hope of enticing restaurants, boutiques and other shops that invite browsing to open in Palmetto Park Road’s empty spaces, Woika said.
Burkhardt Construction Inc. won the bid for the $6.8 million job, and has been holding weekly meetings to help solve any problems resulting from the construction.
Although merchants hate the timing, they give the contractor high marks for the attentiveness.
Other parts of the project include renovating Southeast First Street to convert it to a “pedestrian spine” linking Mizner Park and Royal Palm Plaza, and improvements to Boca Raton Boulevard.
“I’d love to see more people on the street, and that might change if they put more restaurants in,” said Frank Cardinale, a partner-owner of Eye Catcher Optique. “This all should’ve been done 25 years ago, but what are you going to do?”
Lynn Chandler Novick, a member of the City Council’s Downtown Advisory Committee, might agree with Cardinale. The committee has been meeting twice a month on Wednesdays for the past three years to change the face of Boca Raton’s downtown.
“Mayor Steve Abrams and then (Susan) Whelchel realized that we finally needed to do something because West Palm Beach and Delray were ahead of us as far as making it a pedestrian friendly downtown,” Novick said.
“The sidewalks are going to be pavered, the medians are going to be full of beautiful trees. It’s for beautification and also to slow the traffic down. People are going to have a chance to drive slowly down Palmetto Park road and see the merchants,” Novick said. “It’s not going to be quite the crawl as on Atlantic in Delray, but I think in the end it will bring in those kinds of merchants — and developers, too, perhaps to build condos. There are all kinds of possibilities.”
The project is expected to continue through May 2011, but Palmetto Park Road is expected to be substantially complete by the end of the year, Woika said. Ú
Comments