News

By Jane Smith

    The owner of the proposed iPic luxury movie theater in downtown Delray Beach received a sixth extension to its contract to allow the firm time to work out a parking agreement with the city.
    The deadline is now Oct. 31, instead of May 31, required by the city’s Community Redevelopment Agency. The CRA owns the 1.59-acre site, which once housed the city library and chamber of commerce. The developer proposes to build a multilevel garage with 315 parking spaces, with 90 reserved for public use.
    The CRA board passed the motion 5-0, with Chairman Reggie Cox and member Bill Branning absent at the May 12 meeting. The site sits just south of East Atlantic Avenue, between Southeast Fourth and Fifth avenues.
    The discussion was minimal with only board member Paul Zacks asking whether the parking issue was going to be a sticking point between the city and iPic.
    “We’ve already seen a lot of sticking points,” he said.
    CRA attorney David Tolces said that the city wanted to negotiate the parking garage agreement.
    “It was a condition of the City Commission approval to work out the parking details,” said Jeff Costello, CRA executive director. The city wants to make sure the hours, management, maintenance and public easement of the garage fit with its parking management program, he said.
    In March, the iPic complex received city approval to build a mixed-use development with eight movie theaters having 497 seats and taking up 44,979 square feet of space, 43,880 square feet of office space and 7,487 square feet of retail space.
    Another condition of approval requires iPic to move its corporate headquarters to Delray Beach and occupy 20,000 square feet for five years.  The third condition covers traffic on southbound Federal Highway, requiring iPic to station a police officer near its pedestrian entrance to prevent vehicles from stopping to drop off passengers for the movies.