Longtime Seaside Deli & Market manager Chelsea Steen rings up cyclists Ellie Beaulieu (left) and Marie Prevost during their final visit to the deli after a dispute over the lease forced it to close. Photos by Tim Stepien/The Coastal Star
By Joe Capozzi
The customers kept coming until the very end.
As they walked in that final weekend, it was hard for them to miss the eviction notice, taped across the front doors by a sheriff’s deputy on Jan. 12. But they held out hope that surely a resolution could be reached so the Seaside Deli & Market, the “heartbeat” of the small but proud County Pocket, could continue to sell sandwiches, sodas and snacks to customers like bike riders, billionaires and beachgoers as it had since at least the 1980s.
“I was hopeful that this might just be a tenant dispute that can be resolved. We didn’t realize it was really this imminent,’’ Gulf Stream snowbird Darren Alcus said Jan. 14 as he watched employees clear the shelves of Fritos, Fruit Loops and other inventory while waiting on his sandwich order.
“It’s terribly sad,’’ he said. “It’s truly the end of an era.’’
That era, during which surfers, celebrities and generations of families like Alcus’ came to regard the Seaside as an essential part of the community, ended a few hours later. On that chilly Saturday night, deli owner Randy McCormick rang up the final sales, turned out the lights and locked the doors.
Owner Randy McCormick chats with Natalie Willoughby (left) and Cheryl Marier in the deli’s final hours. He decided to retire rather than look for another location.
“I am throwing my arms up and walking away,’’ said McCormick, the latest and perhaps last operator of the convenience store at 4635 N. Ocean Blvd., in an unincorporated pocket just south of Briny Breezes.
When a judge ruled against Seaside on Dec. 22 in an eviction lawsuit brought by the building’s landlord, McCormick briefly flirted with the idea of finding a new location for the deli but decided to retire.
“I don’t have the resources to start anything again,’’ he said. “I’m just going to call it a day.’’
McCormick and a few longtime staffers returned Jan. 15 to wipe down the shelves and mop up the floors in the empty 2,131-square-foot shop. Sometime after that, they would hand the keys over to a deputy to give to the landlord, a company owned by former major league baseball player Rafael Belliard.
Belliard, a Boca Raton resident who bought the Seaside building in 2014 and leased it to McCormick in 2017, played 17 years for the Pittsburgh Pirates and Atlanta Braves before retiring after the 1998 season.
McCormick and Seaside loyalists accuse the retired shortstop and his wife of turning a squeeze play that forced the beloved deli to shutter.
Although Palm Beach County Circuit Judge Paige Gillman sided with claims by Belliard’s company, Ocean Blvd 14 LLC, that Seaside failed to pay $40,279 in back rent, McCormick insisted that he tried to pay the rent.
In a complicated dispute over the lease, the Belliards refused to accept the payments, McCormick said.
McCormick said he has checks for the rent, and the sealed envelope Ocean Blvd 14’s attorney would not open, to prove his point.
McCormick and others think the Belliards, who operated the deli for three years before turning it over to McCormick in 2017, didn’t accept the rent payments because their long game is to sell the building.
McCormick said he spoke a year and a half ago to two potential buyers from Gulf Stream who discussed with him the possible terms of a new lease. One of the potential buyers, who did not want to be identified or quoted, confirmed that he and some partners at one point spoke to the Belliards about buying the site and spoke to McCormick about a potential lease.
Belliard’s wife, Leonora, who handles the company’s business dealings, said in a brief interview a week before Seaside closed that she “would like to have it rented,” possibly to another deli or convenience store.
“We are trying to figure it out,’’ she told The Coastal Star, declining to comment further.
Although the building that housed Seaside Deli stands on a small footprint, many locals worry it may be a piece of a larger plan developers are eyeing for high density, multifamily condos.
“The deli is located in the only unincorporated county pocket remaining on our barrier island. County rules for residential development are vastly different from Gulf Stream and Ocean Ridge, and even from Briny Breezes, which is undoubtedly destined to undergo significant change in the years ahead,’’ the nonprofit Florida Coalition for Preservation said in a statement Jan. 12 after the eviction notice was posted.
The interior of the Seaside Deli & Market one day before it was forced to close.
Hub of the community
Seaside’s next-door neighbor, Nomad Surf Shop, said developers should not bother approaching it. At least that was the message surf shop owner Ryan Heavyside said he was hoping to convey in a video posted on social media two weeks after the judge’s ruling.
“We just want to say thank you to the Seaside Deli for being such great neighbors over the years. Most of you have heard they are moving on, so it’s a pretty sad time for the community,’’ Heavyside, whose father, Ron, opened the surf shop in 1968 and died in 2018, says in the Instagram video.
“But we just also want to say Nomad’s been here for 55 years. We are not going anywhere. We’re going to be here for another 55.’’
The surf shop and the deli, tucked together at the southeast corner of State Road A1A and Briny Breezes Boulevard, served as the unofficial center of the community, a place where parched bicyclists mingled with barrier islanders who took pride in not going “OTB,” meaning over the bridge, unless absolutely necessary.
Whether picking up Bloody Mary mix on a Sunday morning, a six-pack on a Saturday night or a lottery ticket, customers could always turn to the Seaside, as they called it.
It was a place where famous customers like retired hockey star Mario Lemieux, comedian Jim Carrey and baseball Hall of Famer Derek Jeter could pick up snacks and sandwiches without being hounded for autographs.
“This place is vital. It is an essential part of this area. This makes it a town. You remove this, now everyone has to start going further afield,’’ longtime regular Harvey Brown of Delray Beach said Jan. 13.
“It’s sort of like a little heartbeat here,’’ he said. And when it closes, “I think everyone is going to realize what it meant to them.’’
Just before Christmas, the Florida Coalition for Preservation launched a campaign to “Save the Deli,’’ as a banner on the building proclaimed. More than 1,000 signatures were gathered on a petition, which continued collecting names after the eviction notice was posted.
‘Destroying little people’
“I’m heartbroken,’’ said Natalie Willoughby, a former Seaside clerk who returned to help McCormick pack up. “I think it’s wrong, destroying all the little people. It’s a sad, sad day.’’
Volunteers and employees spent Jan. 13 and 14 boxing the inventory and driving it south to Deerfield Beach, where McCormick donated the goods and supplies to the Second Avenue Deli. McCormick owned that store years ago but sold it when his wife died.
In 2017, he decided to go back into the bodega business and took over the Seaside Deli. He brought loyal workers like store manager Chelsea Steen and deli worker Emmy Brandt, both of whom quickly got on a first-name basis with regulars.
Steen, who usually wore casual clothes to work, put on a black dress on Jan. 13 — not so much a symbol of mourning, she said, but because she just felt that wearing something nice on her last Friday at the Seaside was the right thing to do.
“It’s like the last day of school and you have to say goodbye to all your friends,’’ she said.
Fred Podvesker (right), former owner of the Seaside Deli & Market, reminisces with longtime customer Lawrie Bird.
Those final two days often felt like a class reunion, with former store owner Fred Podvesker and his son, Richie, stopping by to collect photos and knick-knacks from the walls and to pay final respects.
Coffee and sodas were given away for free that weekend, while wine, cigarettes and other items were sold at half price.
“I’ve got to get out of here or I’m going to start crying,’’ said Fred Podvesker, who ran the place from 1993 until 2014 when he sold it to the Belliards.
No one is sure exactly how long a deli operated out of the space, but old-timers remember when it used to be a bar and a chicken restaurant. Heavyside said his mother waited tables there when it was a restaurant. Before Podvesker and his sons took over, it was called Seaside Superette, a name still used by many of the store’s longtime suppliers.
“It was nice to get the support from so many people. It’s heartwarming to know that everybody cared so much, not just for the store but the people who worked there,’’ McCormick said.
Despite the gloom hanging over the place, there was no shortage of smiles and laughter as customers hugged Steen goodbye and tried to cheer her up with bad jokes.
One that made her smile: “Today is Friday but tomorrow is a sadder day.” (Get it? A Saturday.)
The dumb joke turned out to be true, since Seaside’s last day was a Saturday, with the deli’s long menu of famous sandwiches reduced to a handful of choices made from whatever ingredients were left.
As Brandt and co-sandwich maker Casey Shugar took final orders that day, they heard something odd: their own voices echoing across the empty store.
“It was definitely one of those weird moments,’’ Brandt said.
Brandt made the deli’s last sandwich, a BLT without tomato, for longtime customer Brandon Martel of Ocean Ridge, then gave away small containers of the remaining chicken salad and tuna salad.
“There were people coming in when we had nothing left to sell,’’ said Brandt. “One group of customers turned around and said, ‘We’re just going to go out to the parking lot to cry.’’’
As customers walked out the door for the last time that final weekend, they received the same send-off that Steen repeated over and over on her last day behind the register.
“It’s been a pleasure,’’ she said. “Thank you for coming and being part of the family.’’
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