ag holley - News - The Coastal Star2024-03-29T09:21:00Zhttps://thecoastalstar.com/profiles/blogs/feed/tag/ag+holleyOutdoors: Lantana Scrub area offers escape from busy part of townhttps://thecoastalstar.com/profiles/blogs/outdoors-lantana-scrub-area-offers-escape-from-busy-part-of-town2022-03-01T15:29:05.000Z2022-03-01T15:29:05.000ZThe Coastal Starhttps://thecoastalstar.com/members/TheCoastalStar<div><p style="text-align:center;"><em><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}10162870681,RESIZE_930x{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}10162870681,RESIZE_710x{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="10162870681?profile=RESIZE_710x" width="710" /></a>Environmental analysts Antonio Rodriguez and Victoria Strange look at an insect in the midst of a saw palmetto, one of the dominant scrub area plants. <strong> Photos by Joe Capozzi/The Coastal Star</strong></em></p>
<p><strong>By Joe Capozzi</strong></p>
<p>For nature lovers, Palm Beach County’s best-kept secret might be a 36-acre oasis of wilderness surrounded by an industrial park, police station, public health facility, ballfields and residential homes on the north end of Lantana.<br /> The Lantana Scrub Natural Area, tucked inside a densely populated area between Interstate 95 and U.S. 1, would seem like an easy place to reach. But getting there is part of the adventure.<br /> The newest of the county’s 34 natural areas, the Lantana Scrub has no parking lot. Eight parking spaces will be designated later this year at the Palm Beach County Public Health Department parking lot off Southwinds Drive, which borders the Lantana Scrub’s southwest boundary. <br /> For now, visitors can access a half-mile hiking trail and maintenance roads by entering two public maze gates, at the northeast and southeast corners of the property. There is no designated parking at those entrances, either. And the maze gates, open to the public from sunrise to sunset, are tucked away from the road. <br /> The gates are fairly easy to find if you have a little patience and determination. At both entrances, noise emanates from trucks coming and going from a Waste Management Recycling Center on Hillbrath Drive.<br /> Once you are on the interior paths, all signs of the busy urban surroundings give way to the peace and solitude of towering scrub pine trees, lush silver and green saw palmettos and tweeting songbirds. </p>
<p style="text-align:center;"><em><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}10162871263,RESIZE_930x{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}10162871263,RESIZE_710x{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="10162871263?profile=RESIZE_710x" width="710" /></a>Fallen trees, like this one near a path, are left to naturally decompose in county-managed natural areas like Lantana Scrub.</em></p>
<p>Formerly part of the now closed A.G. Holley State Hospital property, the Lantana natural area is named for its Florida scrub and scrubby flatwoods, home to Florida rosemary, powder-puff lichen and hog plum. <br /> Wildlife includes gopher tortoises, Eastern Phoebe songbirds, red-bellied woodpeckers, golden-winged skimmer dragonflies and raptors like osprey, Cooper’s hawk and swallow-tailed kite.<br /> The only reminders of civilization are the faint buzzing of airplanes taking off from the nearby Lantana airport. <br /> “It’s a great start. I want to see more of this,’’ Abbe Gleicher of Boynton Beach said on a recent Lantana Scrub tour guided by analysts with the county’s Environmental Resources Management Department.<br /> “Every area needs nature. Nature decreases anxiety and increases a sense of well-being and health,’’ she said.<br /> The Lantana Scrub is owned by the state, which has leased it to the county since 2012 for an annual $300 fee. Before the county started preparing it as a natural area, the site historically had been used as a homeless encampment. <br /> The maze gates, with information kiosks, were added in 2018. Hiking trails were cut in 2020. The county is waiting on additional signage before designating the eight parking spaces at the health department later this year. <br /> “This is a really cool site. It’s very intact considering how much development surrounds it,’’ said Victoria Strange, an ERM analyst. <br /> Abundant flowering tillandsia, dancing lady orchids and air plants can be found in the open scrub of the eastern half, just west of the Lantana Sports Complex. <br /> The dancing lady orchids were introduced to the site by Pine Jog Environmental Education Center.<br /> “There’s a lot of wildlife that uses this little fragment, too, because there’s nothing else in the area until you get to Hypoluxo,” the scrub area about 2 miles south, Strange said.<br /> “There’s a bunch of predatory birds. There’s a Cooper’s hawk nesting pair that is very active on site. An osprey comes here with his fish and hangs out with his fish on the snags’’ of the scrub pine, she said. <br /> ERM’s recent tour of Lantana Scrub highlighted some of the natural area’s tiniest inhabitants — insects, from silver garden spiders to ox beetles.<br /> “It’s kind of like bird- watching,’’ said ERM analyst Antonio Rodriguez, who used his i-Naturalist app to identify the diverse invertebrates. <br /> “It’s pretty fun to collect a whole bunch of different species, to say you’ve seen it.’’</p>
<p><span style="font-size:12pt;"><strong>If You Go</strong></span><br /> <strong>What:</strong> Lantana Scrub Natural Area<br /> <strong>Where:</strong> Adjacent to the Lantana/Lake Worth Health Center at Andrew Redding Road and Southwinds Drive.<br /> <strong>Open:</strong> Sunrise to sunset; no designated parking, accessible by pedestrian traffic only.<br /> <strong>For more information:</strong> <a href="https://discover.pbcgov.org/erm/NaturalAreas/Lantana-Scrub.aspx">https://discover.pbcgov.org/erm/NaturalAreas/Lantana-Scrub.aspx</a></p></div>Lantana: 100 years of Lantana, 150 years of storieshttps://thecoastalstar.com/profiles/blogs/lantana-100-years-of-lantana-150-years-of-stories2021-06-02T18:29:49.000Z2021-06-02T18:29:49.000ZThe Coastal Starhttps://thecoastalstar.com/members/TheCoastalStar<div><p style="text-align:center;"><strong><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}9026300481,RESIZE_930x{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9026300481,RESIZE_710x{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9026300481?profile=RESIZE_710x" width="710" /></a></strong><em>Anglers at the Keese boathouse, in Lantana’s south cove, display sharks they caught around 1940.</em><strong> Photo provided by Local History Archives</strong></p>
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<p><span style="font-size:12pt;">Related stories:</span></p>
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<li><a href="https://thecoastalstar.com/profiles/blogs/photos-remembering-lantana-s-early-years" target="_blank">Photos: Remembering Lantana's early years</a></li>
<li><a href="https://thecoastalstar.com/profiles/blogs/lantana-centennial-celebration" target="_blank">Lantana Centennial Celebration</a></li>
</ul>
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<p><strong>By Ron Hayes</strong></p>
<p>On July 20, 1921, the town of Lantana was officially born.<br /> The community covered 1 square mile at the time and was home to 100 residents, 22 of whom voted to incorporate.<br /> Today, the town has burgeoned to 2 square miles, and this Fourth of July, many of its 11,695 residents will gather in Bicentennial Park to celebrate the first 100 years.<br /> Allegiance to the flag will be pledged, the national anthem sung. There will be stilt walkers and fishing lessons, a professional band and a patriotic baby contest, ending with the longest, loudest, brightest fireworks display the town has ever seen.<br /> Happy 100th birthday, Lantana.<br /> That’s the official history, anyway.<br /> But as with so many official histories, the truth is an older, murkier, even better story.</p>
<p style="text-align:center;">***</p>
<p>“We had a good 50 years prior to 1921 in which pioneers worked to build it,” Michelle Donahue says of the town.<br /> Donahue is a passionate apostle for the history of Hypoluxo Island, the eastern portion of Lantana. She and her husband, Sean, live in Casa Lillias, the island’s oldest house, built in 1927. She writes the Brown Wrapper, a local history newsletter. She hosts the island’s free Happy Hour History Tours every month.<br /> On May 7, as about 20 residents on folding chairs in McKinley Park listened, Donahue introduced them to the first settler of European descent in what is now Palm Beach County — and Lantana.<br /> “Our beginning was really in 1873,” she began.<br /> On Oct. 20, 1872, Hannibal Dillingham Pierce was 37, a Maine transplant working as an assistant lighthouse keeper when the steamship Victor shipwrecked just south of Jupiter Inlet. <br /> The crew and passengers were rescued, and the next year Pierce converted one of the Victor’s abandoned lifeboats into a small sailboat and headed down Lake Worth with his family, to settle on a small island at the south end.<br /> He built a cottage with a thatched roof, raised tomatoes and eggplants for shipping to Jacksonville, and homesteaded on the island.<br /> When Seminole Indians told him hypoluxo meant “water all around, no get out,” he knew what to name his homestead. <br /> You might call Hannibal Pierce Lantana’s founding father. <br /> But then came E.R. Bradley.<br /> No, not that E.R. Bradley.</p>
<p style="text-align:center;"><br /> ***</p>
<p>“I live on ‘old man’ Bradley’s property,” Janet DeVries Naughton will tell you with pride.<br /> A professor of U.S. history and faculty librarian at Palm Beach State College, Naughton is the author of numerous books on the county’s history. She lives in The Moorings, a condo community that sits on land homesteaded by E.R. Bradley.<br /> You’re probably thinking of Edward Riley Bradley (1859-1946), who ran the legendary Palm Beach gambling casino and lives on in spirits at E.R. Bradley’s Saloon, the popular West Palm Beach bar. <br /> Edwin Ruthven Bradley (1842-1915) arrived in 1877 to become, with his wife and children, the first documented white settler on the west side of the lake in what is now Lantana.<br /> Mail delivery was patchy then, and the Jupiter Lighthouse the end of the line, but in 1885 rural mail routes were established and Lantana’s E.R. Bradley was the first to walk the stretch from Lantana to Lemon City, known today as Miami. He was paid $600 a year.<br /> Alas, the original “barefoot mailman” probably never heard the title, coined by Theodore Pratt for his 1943 novel.<br /><br /></p>
<p style="text-align:center;">***</p>
<p style="text-align:center;"><br /> <a href="{{#staticFileLink}}9026354871,RESIZE_930x{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9026354871,RESIZE_710x{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9026354871?profile=RESIZE_710x" width="710" /></a><em>The original 126 acres might have become known as Lyman, had owner Morris Benson Lyman not named the fledgling area Lantana.</em></p>
<p><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}9026373466,RESIZE_180x180{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-left" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9026373466,RESIZE_180x180{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9026373466?profile=RESIZE_180x180" width="100" /></a>“I would love to have been there in that time and have met him,” Cindy Jamison says. “I’m proud that my family had a part in settling the area.”<br /> She is Cindy Lyman Jamison of Boynton Beach, daughter of Kenny Lyman, granddaughter of Walter Lyman, and great-granddaughter of M.B. Lyman.<br /> Lantana is called Lantana because Morris Benson Lyman (1860-1924), a carpenter from Canada, homesteaded 126 acres where the west end of the Lantana bridge stands today.<br /> Lyman Point, it was called, until M.B. renamed it Lantana Point, after the bright yellow, red and orange flowers native to South Florida.<br /> In 1889, he built a house on the property, still standing and very much alive as the Old Key Lime House seafood restaurant.<br /> You’d be forgiven for thinking it’s the oldest house in mainland Lantana, but that honor belongs to the home his father, Morris Kennedy Lyman, built two years earlier. It’s still standing, much altered, at 122 S. Lake Drive.</p>
<p>“Later, M.B. Lyman opened general stores in Lantana, Boynton Beach and Lemon City,” Naughton says. “You could say he had the first chain store in Florida.”<br /> When the town celebrates its centennial in Bicentennial Park, today’s residents will be partying on M.B. Lyman’s former homestead.</p>
<p style="text-align:center;">***</p>
<p>By the time the man who named Lantana died in 1924, the town was already incorporated, and Florida was booming.<br /> “People came initially because this was America’s last frontier,” Janet Naughton says. “It was unexplored, and then when the real estate boom came, people just poured into South Florida.”<br /> In 1925, the first bridge linking the town to the barrier island was built. Beachgoers no longer had to take a boat and then trudge through mangrove swamp for a day at the beach.<br /> In 1931, 40 acres on the south end of Hypoluxo Island seceded from the town to become part of Manalapan.<br /> During that decade, Finnish immigrants arrived in Palm Beach County.<br /> The 2000 census tallied 4,879 in Palm Beach County, but that was a 10% drop from the 1990 count.<br /> “Today, I’d estimate we have about 1,000 Finns in Lantana alone,” says Peter Makila, the honorary consul of Finland. “The older ones are dying, and the younger ones may not be coming because it’s difficult to get a visa. A lot of the young professionals are going to Silicon Valley.”<br /> In 1948, construction began on Finlandia House, the local Finns’ still very active community center.<br /> On July 16, 1950, the Southeast Florida State Sanatorium opened on Lantana Road, the second of four state tuberculosis hospitals. After the state tuberculosis board was dissolved in 1969, it was renamed the A.G. Holley State Hospital after the retiring chairman.<br /> The hospital was closed in 2012, and the building demolished in 2014, to make way for more condos and a shopping center.</p>
<p style="text-align:center;">***</p>
<p>“I was in charge of Christmas,” Malcolm Balfour boasts, “until I had the usual firing.”<br /> From 1972 until his death in 1988, Generoso Paul Pope Jr., publisher of The National Enquirer, added a touch of holiday magic to the tabloid’s customary scandal and sleaze by erecting “the world’s tallest Christmas tree” beside Lantana’s railroad tracks. <br /> Thousands came from miles around to ogle the 7,000 twinkling lights, 400 ornaments, and 50 3-foot candy canes adorning the towering balsam fir. From 1972 until he was fired in 1980, Hypoluxo Island resident Balfour, 83, was the Enquirer’s articles editor, a job that also entailed making sure the world’s tallest Christmas tree was indeed the world’s tallest Christmas tree.<br /> “Well, Pope came down one day during the first year, and he had a picture in The New York Times that said the tree at Rockefeller Center was 76 feet tall. Ours was 74,” Balfour recalls.<br /> “So I pointed out that the Rockefeller tree was on a 6-foot pedestal.<br /> “He seemed satisfied.”</p>
<p style="text-align:center;">***</p>
<p><br /> In the past 100 years, Lantana has seen 26 mayors come and go, including three women, but none lasted as long as Dave Stewart. <br /> First elected in 2000, he served the town for 21 years, until his defeat in the March 2021 election.<br /> “But I was president of the Hypoluxo Island Neighborhood Association in the late ’80s and chairman of the planning and zoning board for six or seven years,” he says, “so I can say I’ve been active in this town for a third of its history.”<br /> Stewart arrived in 1977, settled on the north end of the island, and never left. <br /> But he tried: In 1989, when their son was born, the Stewarts realized they were living in a neighborhood with lots of elderly residents but no small children.<br /> “We looked from Boca Raton to Sewall’s Point and found nothing with the same amenities and hometown feeling. That’s why we stayed,” Stewart says.<br /> “It’s more busy now, it’s more congested, but it’s also gotten better. The first 100 years are over, and now we’ve got the next 100 to look forward to.”</p>
<p style="text-align:center;">***</p>
<p><br /> In 1892, Morris Benson Lyman, who had given Lantana its name, also gave it a cemetery — 2 acres at the southeast corner of Arnold Avenue and Lantana Road.<br /> A year later, his 9-month-old daughter, Rachael, was among the first to be buried in Evergreen Cemetery. <br /> In 1909, his father, Morris Kennedy Lyman, arrived, and in 1924, he joined them there.<br /> In all, 18 marked grave sites remember the town’s eight pioneer families.<br /> But not Edwin Ruthven Bradley or Hannibal Dillingham Pierce.<br /> Bradley moved south after his time in Lantana and was buried in Miami’s Woodlawn Cemetery in 1915.<br /> Pierce, the first white settler on Hypoluxo Island, died in 1898 and was buried in Lakeside Cemetery on the waterfront in West Palm Beach.<br /> After Henry M. Flagler donated land to the west that became Woodlawn Cemetery, most of the early, lakeside graves were moved there.<br /> But not all.<br /> Along with about 40 other reluctant pioneers, Hannibal Pierce still rests today somewhere beneath the Norton Museum of Art.</p></div>Lantana: Construction set to begin on Water Tower Commons residential phasehttps://thecoastalstar.com/profiles/blogs/lantana-construction-set-to-begin-on-water-tower-commons-resident2018-01-31T18:12:34.000Z2018-01-31T18:12:34.000ZThe Coastal Starhttps://thecoastalstar.com/members/TheCoastalStar<div><p style="text-align:center;"><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}7960771474,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img width="450" src="{{#staticFileLink}}7960771474,original{{/staticFileLink}}" class="align-center" alt="7960771474?profile=original" /></a><em>Residences at Water Tower Commons will feature Colonial Caribbean architecture. <strong>Rendering provided</strong></em></p>
<p><strong>By Mary Thurwachter</strong></p>
<p>Construction is expected to begin this month on residential development at Water Tower Commons, a 73-acre retail and residential project east of Interstate 95 on Lantana Road. <br /> The first phase will include 360 apartments in 14 multifamily buildings, a clubhouse with a resort pool, recreation areas and other amenities such as carports and garages. A 6-foot wall will surround the residential development.<br /> Ken Tuma, on behalf of the master developer Lantana Development, received approval during the Jan. 22 Lantana Town Council meeting to reduce the number of parking spaces per unit from 2.5 to 2.15, and to add three monument signs. A landscape plan was also approved.<br /> Water Tower Commons, being built on the site of the former A.G. Holley tuberculosis hospital, is the biggest development in Lantana’s 96-year history. It is expected to bring shops, restaurants, offices and up to 1,100 residential units to the town of more than 10,000 residents. <br />The property is being developed by Lantana Development, a partnership between Southeast Legacy and Wexford Capital. But Tuma said the residential portion of the project, on 16 acres, will be handled by the Related Group, a leading private developer with 40 years of building and managing high quality communities throughout the world. About 10 years ago, the Related Group built the Moorings, Caribbean-style condos about a mile away along the Intracoastal Waterway.<br /> Construction on the retail portion of Water Tower Commons is about a year behind schedule, in part because of the challenging retail environment, Tuma said.<br /> While council members generally praised the residential design, they weren’t as thrilled about the Colonial Caribbean architecture.<br /> “I do have to admit it looks good,” said Mayor Dave Stewart. “But it doesn’t look like we always thought it would. We wanted more of the seaside village look.” <br /> His colleagues expressed similar concerns.<br /> “I like everything I’ve seen but I’m a little concerned about Colonial Caribbean,” said Vice Mayor Lynn Moorhouse. “We’re a little Key Westy.”<br /> Council member Phil Aridas said adding garages and carports was an upgrade, but also questioned the Colonial Caribbean architecture. “We sell ourselves as a seaside village and we don’t want to lose that,” he said.<br /> Tuma said the architects thought the Key West, fishing village theme was conveyed through color and awnings.<br /> “Colors are what will tie it all together,” he said. Architects said they wanted to bring more elegance to the seaside village look with dancing parapets, very light colored roof and white window frames.<br /> Council members were also concerned that there won’t be elevators in the apartment buildings, even those that have three stories. <br /> “How can you be ADA compliant with three-story buildings and no elevators?” Stewart asked, referring to the Americans with Disabilities Act.<br /> “This does meet ADA standards,” Tuma said. “One hundred twenty units are on the first floor.”<br /> Chamber of Commerce President Dave Arm urged the town to accept the plans.<br /> “This is a project that has to be done,” Arm said, “This is the future of Lantana. If you don’t approve this tonight, this might not be developed by the current ownership.”<br /> Plans were approved by a 4-1 vote, with Stewart the lone dissenter.<br /> “It’s good, but not what I had the vision for,” Stewart said. “I don’t have a good feeling.”<br /> <strong>In other news,</strong> the Town Council learned it would not have a municipal election on March 13 because Stewart, the only council member whose term is expiring, is the only candidate for the Group 5 position.</p></div>Lantana: Water Tower Commons ‘an eyesore’ after Irmahttps://thecoastalstar.com/profiles/blogs/lantana-water-tower-commons-an-eyesore-after-irma2017-11-29T18:40:29.000Z2017-11-29T18:40:29.000ZThe Coastal Starhttps://thecoastalstar.com/members/TheCoastalStar<div><p><strong>By Mary Thurwachter</strong><br /><br /> The Lantana Town Council approved the final plat for Water Tower Commons, the 72-acre retail and residential project on the site of the former A.G. Holley tuberculosis hospital east of Interstate 95. But some council members expressed their dismay about the property’s appearance, particularly after Hurricane Irma, during a Nov. 13 meeting. <br /> “It should be called Water Tower Dump by the way it looks right now,” said council member Phil Aridas. “All the screens are down and most of the trees they replanted look like they’re dying. It’s an eyesore.” Developers had moved 50 protected oaks from their original locations to another area on the property.<br /> Council member Ed Shropshire agreed with Aridas, suggesting the property, at the entrance to the town on Lantana Road, looked terrible. <br /> Lyn Tate, a Hypoluxo Island resident, called it “a pigsty.”<br /> Town Manager Deborah Manzo said code violations had been issued, adding that developer Lantana Development LLC said supplies needed to correct the problems were hard to get after Irma.<br /> The violations, according to code enforcement supervisor Sammy Archer, were for fence disrepair and obstruction of public easements (sand blocking sidewalk).<br /> But no fines will need to be paid.<br /> “The good news is that Water Tower Commons has two crews repairing the fence,” Archer said. “For us, this is a win-win. Voluntary compliance is our No. 1 goal.” <br /> Above-ground construction on the development is expected to begin in January.<br /> <strong> In other business, the town:</strong><br /> • Gave Manzo a 5.5 percent raise (to $138,000) and extended her contract another year after giving her a glowing review.<br /> • Prohibited medical marijuana treatment center dispensing facilities in the town.<br /> • OK’d the purchase of a $25,000 Harley-Davidson motorcycle for the Police Department.<br /> • Reappointed Erica Wald and Tate to the Planning Commission; voted in Shane Laasko as a regular member and Joe Farrell and Michelle Donahue as alternates. Already on the commission are Rosemary Mouring and Arthur Brooks.</p></div>Lantana: Police department moves next to sports complexhttps://thecoastalstar.com/profiles/blogs/lantana-police-department-moves-next-to-sports-complex2017-10-04T17:28:54.000Z2017-10-04T17:28:54.000ZThe Coastal Starhttps://thecoastalstar.com/members/TheCoastalStar<div><p><strong>By Mary Thurwachter</strong><br /><br /> The Lantana Police Department has moved to new headquarters at 901 N. Eighth St., off Lantana Road next to the new sports complex.<br /> The new digs are in a state-owned building once home to the Department of Juvenile Justice and used for training police officers and sheriff’s deputies for the past several years. The town has a lease on the 10,000-square-foot building through 2048, and put aside $95,000 last April for repairs to the DJJ building. The state Legislature awarded Lantana another $500,000 for repairs. <br /> “The town’s $95,000 turned into $500,000,” Mayor Dave Stewart told Town Council members at their Sept. 25 meeting, when Town Manager Deborah Manzo announced news of the move. An official opening celebration will be held later. The new location put police near Water Tower Commons, a retail and residential complex being developed on the former A.G. Holley property on Lantana Road east of Interstate 95. <br /> Manzo said the previous police buildings at 500 Greynolds Circle weren’t large enough and will house other town departments.<br /> <strong>In other news</strong>, the council:<br /> • Voted for a tax rate of $3.50 per $1,000 of assessed property value, a 15 percent increase over the rollback rate of 3.03. Only three residents attended the public hearing for the budget on Sept. 25, and no one voiced opposition. Lantana had kept the tax rate at $3.24 for the past 10 years.<br /> Stewart cast the lone dissenting vote for the tax increase, saying he didn’t feel it was necessary with property tax revenues up $182,866, plus income from the penny sales tax increase ($560,000) and new development at Aura Seaside and Water Tower Commons on the horizon. But other council members argued that the town looked shabby and needed more money for code enforcement.<br /> • Honored Finance Director Stephen Kaplan and his staff after the town received a Certificate of Achievement for Excellence in Financial Reporting for the 20th consecutive year.</p></div>Lantana: Water Tower developers highlight jobs, tax revenue … and tower lightshttps://thecoastalstar.com/profiles/blogs/lantana-water-tower-developers-highlight-jobs-tax-revenue-and-tow2015-09-02T16:23:02.000Z2015-09-02T16:23:02.000ZChris Felkerhttps://thecoastalstar.com/members/ChrisFelker<div><p><strong>By Mary Thurwachter</strong><br /><br /> The Lantana Town Council will get its first look at the site plan for Water Tower Commons, the 73-acre development planned for the former A.G. Holley tuberculosis hospital, on Sept. 28. But the Greater Lantana Chamber of Commerce got a peek at plans during a July 31 gathering at Pearl’s Next Generation Restaurant.<br /> Planner Ken Tuma of Urban Design Kilday Studios said that the old water tower on Lantana Road will be the centerpiece of the development and the tower will be bathed in blue LED lights.<br /> The 127-foot tower “may not be the coolest thing during the day,” he said, but “at night it will be amazing.”<br /> Some elements of interest include a traffic light at the proposed entrance on Lantana Road, a 40,000-square-foot grocery store on the northwest corner of the project, a waterfall-like structure on the main street and lots of landscaping, including four to six trellises with bougainvillea. <br /> A proposed gas station would require a special exception from the town’s code.<br /> Developers said Water Tower Commons would create an estimated 700 retail jobs and bring the town about $1 million a year in property taxes.<br /> Residential units will likely include apartments, condos and town homes. Stores and offices are also part of the mix.<br /> Tuma and the site plan came before the town’s Plan Review Committee on Aug. 18. Although no recommendations for approval were given, town staff did provide comments since the plan still lacked the meshing of commercial and residential that town officials have sought since developers Southeast Legacy Investments introduced plans at the beginning of the year. <br /> Headed by Kenco Communities’ Ken Endelson, Southeast Legacy coupled with Wexford Capital to pay $15.6 million to the state for the land a year ago. <br /> The tuberculosis hospital, owned by the state, closed in 2012. <br /> According to a memo to Tuma from David Thatcher, Lantana’s development services director, “on several occasions, the town has recommended that the applicants reconsider the overall design concept of the entire development to ensure integration of the residential and commercial activities as contemplated by the town’s comprehensive plan.”<br /> Thatcher said the proposed development should closely follow building regulations in the code rather than request many deviations.<br /> <em> Willie Howard contributed to this report.</em></p></div>