News

By Angie Francalancia

After three tries to get Palm Beach County to allow Boynton Beach to remove an old building at the city’s marina, the Community Redevelopment Agency has pulled its request.
    But that doesn’t mean the building will remain in use, nor does it mean its former tenant, Splashdown Divers, will be back in the old spot.
    The city can move forward with renovation plans, including erecting a new, code-compliant building, ignoring the old building for now, City Attorney Jim Cherof said.
    County commissioners agreed, though, after the issue no longer was before them, that they wanted to work with Boynton’s CRA, and Commissioner Steven Abrams has scheduled a meeting with city and CRA officials Aug. 2.
    The meetings before the County Commission had hinged on helping the building’s former tenant, Lynn Simmons’ Splashdown Divers — a nonissue, according to CRA Executive Director Vivian Brooks.
    Simmons had sued the CRA, alleging she had been promised a permanent spot once renovations to the marina were complete. The CRA’s proposed new marina building could not be made large enough to accommodate a dive shop, though. Simmons signed a settlement agreement to the 2-year-old suit last fall that gave her a long-term rental guarantee on her dive boat slip and almost $19,000 credit on the slip rent.
    But Simmons continued to fight the CRA’s efforts, rallying friends to tell the County Commission the CRA had run her out of the marina.
    The CRA thought it had complied with everyone’s wishes earlier in the month because, at the county’s request, it had helped Simmons find another location within the marina. But when Boynton leaders returned to the County Commission on July 10, commissioners and Simmons again weren’t satisfied.
    “We’ve bent over backwards in trying to resolve this,” Mayor Woodrow Hay told commissioners at the meeting. “Whatever we do, it’s not good enough.”
At the CRA’s own meeting that night, the members agreed to pull their request.
    “Going back there is only going back to get slapped around a little,” Cherof said.
    The CRA had sought an amendment to the agreement it signed that prevents material changes to the marina.
As Boynton goes through its budget process, it will decide what steps to take next, said Brooks, including the possibility of erecting its new proposed building on marina property north of the existing building.
    Some Boynton officials pushed to have the old building razed immediately, believing the agreement didn’t specifically require Boynton to keep a space for the dive shop.
    “I think it’s time to move forward, just tear down the building and move forward with our plans,” Commissioner Bill Orlove said at the CRA meeting, one of his last before he resigned to take a new
job.