On the verge of a trial and already having spent thousands on legal fees, the owners of Splashdown Divers and the Boynton Beach Community Redevelopment Agency agreed late last month that their money would be better spent not paying lawyers.
The CRA agreed to a settlement that allows Splashdown to remain through the end of the year in the aging building destined to be razed.
It also agreed to give owner Lynn Simmons a seven-year lease on her boat slip and $18,750 in credit toward the rent on the slip, which will be set at market value.
“I’d love them to stay. I’d love them to be successful, but both sides are going to spend a lot of money on attorneys,” Mayor and CRA Chairman Jose Rodriguez said. “I think for $18,750, I can support it.”
As for the dive shop, Simmons is looking to buy a spot across the parking lot in Marina Village condominiums that formerly housed an ice cream shop.
Splashdown Divers sued the CRA, alleging the dive shop had been promised a permanent spot once the CRA’s renovations to the marina were completed. The dive shop already occupied the building on the water’s edge when the CRA bought the marina in 2006.
But the CRA’s master plan doesn’t include renovating the building or constructing any new buildings that it could lease, Executive Director Vivian Brooks said. The spot the building now occupies is destined to be green space.
“We actually hired a firm to do a master plan for the whole marina and that firm did an analysis of that building. The building doesn’t meet current code both in setback and in structure,” Brooks said, and even if it could be improved to meet the building code, it still couldn’t meet the setback requirement.
“We want marina uses, but there’s commercial space around the marina where it could go,” Brooks said.
Before the building can be torn down, a second tenant, the Sea Mist, which sells tickets for its drift-fishing boat from a small space in the structure, also will have to move out, Brooks said.
And late last month, the CRA learned it will have to get Palm Beach County’s approval to raze the building.
That’s because the resolution allowing the purchase with money from a 2004 bond refrendum prevents material changes to the marina.
For Simmons, moving won’t be simple, she said.
“I’m looking at $150,000 that it’s going to cost me to do this,” she said. “I can’t get a mortgage. I’m trying to raise the money from my customers and friends, and I hope they’re going to come through.”
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