News

By Ron Hayes

    Oh, thank heaven for 7-Eleven.
    Had a small group of outraged residents not come together in May 1967 to oppose a convenience store along A1A in Delray Beach’s south end, someone might be dispensing Big Gulps near where Atlantic Dunes Park stands today.
    Those early activists grew to become the Beach Property Owners Association, and 48 years later they’re still working to keep Delray Beach beautiful, accessible and welcoming to all.
    “Approval of a convenience store would have acted as a precedent for future commercial development,” says the group’s president, Bob Victorin, a member since the 1970s.
    “It would have changed the whole character and lifestyle of the area,” agrees Vice President Andy Katz, “and the city would have lost taxes because property values would have been a lot less.”
    Working with city govern-ment through the years, the association has kept commercial property confined to Atlantic Avenue, Katz notes, with only the Marriott resort, three restaurants and a clothing store along A1A. Any taller buildings predate height limitations the organization and city worked to pass in the 1980s.
    The organization that began as a neighborhood effort to keep a convenience store off A1A has grown, but is still a small organization with office supplies, but no office.
    The group’s more than 400 households pay dues of $25 a year and meet each March and December in space provided free by the Northern Trust Bank. Board members meet monthly. The dues cover the cost of printing and mailing membership communications including three or four newsletters a year, telephone bills and a website. No one is paid.
    “And about 12 percent of our members have voluntarily given more than the dues,” Victorin notes. “We’ve had gifts from $200 to one for $1,000.”
    Over the years, that small outlay has produced impressive returns.
    Most important, in 2004 the group helped to pass residential design guidelines establishing architectural styles, building setbacks, acceptable colors and garage standards for single-family homes.
    “If you’re going to paint your house,” Katz said, “you can’t do the Pepto-Bismol thing, and no triple-wide garage doors.”
    With the help of $60,000 raised by the association, the city was able to rebuild the beach pavilion in 2014, based on the footprint and design of the original 1929 structure.
    Katz also points with pride to the group’s commitment to dune development and beach renourishment.
In 1973 the city started a beach renourishment program and later planted native vegetation to create the dunes.
    “In 1983, we worked for dune development, renourishing the dunes by planting native vegetation. That was done mostly with county, state and federal money, and today Delray Beach is praised at national conferences as a model for successful dune maintenance,” Katz says.
The importance of dunes hit home in October 2012, when Hurricane Sandy arrived.
“Luckily for us, it was still quite far out at sea when it was in the southern latitudes,” Katz recalls. “Everyone knows the extreme damage it caused up North. Sandy and another storm later that month did scour our beaches, and also took out about 20 feet of the dunes, but the vegetated dunes did their job in protecting A1A and the upland properties.”
    The group’s greatest accomp-lishment, Katz said, is also his greatest disappointment. “It’s taking so long to implement the master plan,” he says. In 2009, the group developed a widespread plan to improve the beach area. It was accepted by the city in 2010, but since then the devil has been in finding money and formalizing the design and construction details. Recently the city established a bond funding mechanism and plans are being formalized with the prospect of starting construction in late 2016.        Now the group, founded 48 years ago, already is looking that far into the future. “We’re a coastal community that could be affected by rising tides the same way Miami and the Keys are being affected,” Katz says.
    To combat the threat, Katz says the city has recently raised its base floor elevation requirement by 6 inches and is spending “tens of thousands of dollars” to install one-way valves to prevent the Intracoastal Waterway from flooding nearby streets during storms and seasonal high tides.
    “Miami Beach is spending  $400 million,” Katz says. “The oceans are rising. There’s no doubt about that. The debate is about the cause. But tide gauges aren’t political, and they don’t lie.”
    The Beach Property Owners Association is also not political. It will ask municipal candidates identical questions and publish the responses in its newsletter, but never make endorsements.
    “We’re trying to preserve the very public and welcoming nature of our beach area,” Katz explains. Come to Delray Beach and you’ll find 600 parking spaces for only $1.50 an hour, he notes. Go to Palm Beach and you’ll pay $5. “We want to keep it as a public amenity, and also improve it.” Ú