lantana village - News - The Coastal Star2024-03-29T08:51:29Zhttps://thecoastalstar.com/profiles/blogs/feed/tag/lantana+villageLantana: Council denies proposal for apartments on former Kmart sitehttps://thecoastalstar.com/profiles/blogs/lantana-council-denies-proposal-for-apartments-on-former-kmart-si2022-08-31T15:29:23.000Z2022-08-31T15:29:23.000ZThe Coastal Starhttps://thecoastalstar.com/members/TheCoastalStar<div><p><strong>By Mary Thurwachter</strong></p>
<p>Vocal residents crowded the council chambers for the Aug. 8 Lantana town meeting and got what they asked for — a unanimous vote to deny a proposal to build 231 apartments on the former Kmart property.<br />The project, called Lantana Village, seemed doomed a month earlier when it came before the council for the first time, even though many who attended a community meeting previously were enthusiastic. Town staff, however, strongly recommended denial at that July 11 meeting, but council members wanted a little more time to mull it over and postponed the vote until Aug. 8.<br /> The development plan presented by the Morgan Group called for the old Kmart building to be razed to make way for five, four-story buildings and entry from Greynolds Circle. Amenities included a dog park, gym, pool, upgraded parking lot and a pocket park on the north end of the site at the northwest corner of Dixie Highway and Hypoluxo Road. The apartments would be fenced in for security reasons.<br />The proposal included cosmetic improvements for retail portions of the property, including Winn-Dixie and West Marine. Four out-parcels — Bank of America, Dunkin’ Donuts, Burger King and a vacant building last occupied by IHOP — were not part of the application.<br />When Kmart shuttered its store in the 18.6-acre shopping center owned by the Saglo Development Corp. of Miami about two years ago, Saglo tried to find another tenant but came up empty-handed. That’s when the Morgan Group stepped in and proposed transforming about 8 acres of the property into an apartment complex.<br />Cushla Talbut, an attorney with Greenberg Traurig who was processing the application, said the Morgan Group’s $65 million investment “would provide significant tax revenue increases for the town and revitalize a site that is definitely in need of some love.”<br />But the town staff — and residents who turned out in force at the August meeting — weren’t feeling the love.<br />Nicole Dritz, director of development, said the project was not in line with “the spirit or intent of town codes.” <br />The plan “almost draws an imaginary line around three entirely separate parcels that are otherwise unrelated,” she said, referring to the Winn-Dixie area, the apartments and the Lantana Pizza building. “In fact, it feels this is an attempt to garner those 231 units on a site that only approximately 133 units would be allowed otherwise.” <br />Residents said the apartment complex would bring more crime and traffic and would benefit developers — not people who live in Lantana. Some vowed to vote council members out of office if they failed to turn down the proposal.<br />One resident, Stephanie Forman, submitted a petition against the development, collected on change.org and signed by 850 residents.<br />“Our cozy town does not need to be overrun by overdevelopment of apartments and condos,” Forman said. “We need another business or two, or even revitalization of the shopping center as a whole to help boost our local economy.”<br />Catherine Skervin, a longtime council watcher, said “a mini-mall would be nice.”<br />But Chamber of Commerce President Dave Arm, the only resident who spoke in favor of the apartment complex, said Lantana doesn’t need more retail, it needs more housing.<br />“We paid about $170,000 to the Treasure Coast Planning Council to do a master plan and their economists have told us we need hundreds more housing units,” he said. “Where are we going to put them if we don’t put them on this site? There is no other location. If we don’t do this, if we don’t add any (housing), don’t complain if your rent goes up, because that is the nature of supply and demand.”<br />The study done through the Treasure Coast Regional Planning Council also concluded that the town has too many retail properties, and Arm, who recently sold his gym on Lantana Road after it had been on the market for four years, agreed.<br /> “We didn’t get one single retail tenant to come up and make us a proposal” to buy the gym, Arm said. <br />“So, when our building was bought by a developer, he realized there is no retail and we convinced him to take a below market rent to keep the place a gym. It does prove there is no retail. Be careful what you wish for, because if this doesn’t go through, you know you’re going to end up with a giant thrift store, or a big box of nothing there, because there is no demand.” <br />Vice Mayor Pro Tem Lynn “Doc” Moorhouse, who made the motion to deny, said “the biggest thing is this is not a single, cohesive developmental planned project. I don’t care how you trim it or turn it, it’s not. They took the whole 18.6 acres to stuff that development on 8.84 acres fenced in, not walled in — it looks like a little prison to me.” <br />Talbut said she recognized the interest residents expressed to have more stores in the shopping center, but said “if the demand were there, if there was somebody else who wanted to go there to elevate the tenants as you all want, that would have been one thing. But that’s just not going to happen. What you have there currently is not going to elevate the town and what we’re proposing will.”<br />If the apartment proposal dies, she said, property owners would seek to fill the old Kmart building with whatever tenant they could find, and past attempts haven’t been fruitful.<br />But there may be another option. Only days after the Aug. 8 meeting, Dritz met with another developer, one whose portfolio “is impressive in terms of projects I think we’d hope to see there,” she said in an email.<br />The discussion went well, she said. “We spent time discussing what the property is zoned for, allowable uses, special exception uses, the site plan submittal process, providing a lot of resident feedback that we heard from the previous developer’s submittal, and providing staff’s strong desire for a true redevelopment effort for the entire site.” <br />She “encouraged the developer to gather the public feedback/input on any future proposals through a public meeting or workshop.”<br />Dritz said she had not seen a rendering or sketch because this was “a very preliminary conversation,” one reason she did not name the developer.<br />And she’s waiting to hear from council members regarding their preferences. </p></div>Lantana: Kmart site development vote postponed; staff recommends denialhttps://thecoastalstar.com/profiles/blogs/lantana-kmart-site-development-vote-postponed-staff-recommends-de2022-08-03T15:38:04.000Z2022-08-03T15:38:04.000ZThe Coastal Starhttps://thecoastalstar.com/members/TheCoastalStar<div><p><strong>By Mary Thurwachter</strong></p>
<p>A proposal two years in the making to turn the old Kmart shopping center into a mixed-use development with 231 apartments finally came before the Lantana Town Council on July 11.<br /> But when council members couldn’t agree on how to proceed — and with staff recommending the project be rejected — they postponed a vote on it until Aug. 8. A council workshop will be held at 5:30 p.m. prior to the regular 6 p.m. meeting, where a vote is expected, so members can have more discussion about the project, dubbed Lantana Village.<br /> The 18.6-acre site is owned by Saglo Development Corp. of Miami and being developed by the Morgan Group. <br /> Cushla Talbut, an attorney with Greenberg Traurig who is processing the application, said “the $65 million investment would provide significant tax revenue increases for the town and revitalize a site that is definitely in need of some love.”<br /> Development Director Nicole Dritz strongly recommended denial, saying the project was “not in line with the spirit or intent of town codes” and appeared to be a way of getting about 100 more apartments than would normally be allowed in the residential portion.<br /> The plan calls for the old Kmart building to be demolished to make way for five, four-story buildings with elevators and an entry from Greynolds Circle. Amenities would be a dog park, gym, pool, upgraded parking lot and a pocket park on the north end of the site at the northwest corner of Dixie Highway and Hypoluxo Road. The apartments would be fenced in for security reasons.<br /> Besides construction of studios and one- and two-bedroom apartments, the plans include cosmetic improvements for retail portions of the property, including Winn-Dixie, West Marine and the Lantana Pizza buildings. Four out-parcels — Bank of America, Dunkin’ Donuts, Burger King and a vacant restaurant formerly home to IHOP — are not part of the application.<br /> Among the community benefits the project would provide, Talbut said, are enhanced landscaping with more than 500 trees, four electric car charging stations, and 24 units dedicated to workforce housing for professionals such as teachers, firefighters and police officers.<br /> “We’re going to provide 1% of the construction cost for public artwork,” Talbut said. “Buildings will be constructed to certified national green building standards. Residents will be able to enjoy the proximity of retail shops and restaurants as well as some great community benefits such as the pocket park and artwork.” <br /> This site is particularly challenging for a number of reasons, mostly due to the age of the buildings, Talbut said. <br /> “The buildings went up in the 1970s and at that time there really was no landscape requirement,” Talbut said, “so you have parking lots and no landscaping. That was a challenge, to put as much greenery as we could on this.”<br /> Additionally, some of the retail operations, such as Winn-Dixie and West Marine, have long-term leases.</p>
<p><span style="font-size:14pt;">Staff opposition</span><br /> Dritz warned the proposed project is essentially three properties separated by fences with separate entrances and exits.<br /> “Typically, a planned mixed-use development is a site with multiple uses combined together in a very cohesive design that encourages visitors to travel throughout the site and establishes a very clear sense of place,” she said.<br /> “We feel that this project, however, almost draws an imaginary line around three entirely separate parcels that are otherwise unrelated,” she said, referring to the Winn-Dixie area, apartments and the Lantana Pizza area. “In fact, it feels this is an attempt to garner those 231 units on a site that only approximately 133 units would be allowed otherwise.” <br /> She said very minor changes are proposed to the Lantana Pizza property and the Winn-Dixie area storefronts. <br /> Vice Mayor Pro Tem Lynn “Doc” Moorhouse agreed with Dritz’s assessment. <br /> “We can do a lot better,” he said.<br /> “I just can’t get past a gated community in the middle of Lantana,” Vice Mayor Karen Lythgoe added. “It just doesn’t fit.”<br /> Council member Kem Mason said he needed more time to digest all the pros and cons.<br /> “I’ve heard a lot negative here tonight about this proposal but at the end of the day when they had the town meeting at Lantana Pizza, they got applause afterwards,” Mason said of the developers. “There are a lot of people who want this.”<br /> He said he didn’t think it would be fair to vote on the site plan that night. <br /> “I would like to table it until we can have another workshop very soon. Don’t make these people wait a long time,” Mason said.<br /> Mayor Robert Hagerty said he wasn’t opposed to postponing the vote but had issues with putting a gated community inside a commercial space. He also was worried about traffic.<br /> Lythgoe and Mason were concerned that council member Mark Zeitler, absent because of an accident at work, wasn’t there to vote on the matter. <br /> Mason’s motion to postpone the vote until Aug. 8 passed 3-1, with Moorhouse dissenting.</p></div>Lantana: An unraveling on Ocean Avenuehttps://thecoastalstar.com/profiles/blogs/lantana-an-unraveling-on-ocean-avenue2020-10-28T17:47:33.000Z2020-10-28T17:47:33.000ZMary Kate Leminghttps://thecoastalstar.com/members/MaryKateLeming<div><p style="text-align:center;"><span style="font-size:12pt;"><strong>Lawsuit against broker reflects tide of adversity businesses have faced</strong></span></p>
<p style="text-align:left;"><strong>By Mary Thurwachter, </strong><br /> <strong>Larry Keller and Jan Norris</strong></p>
<p>When news hit the streets of a court case filed against one of the county’s foremost restaurant brokers — one who once managed a block of struggling shops on Ocean Avenue — no one in Lantana seemed particularly surprised. <br /> While the broker, Tom Prakas, dutifully collected shop owners’ rent each month after he became manager in March 2016, he stopped turning over the money to the property <a href="{{#staticFileLink}}8088028652,RESIZE_180x180{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-left" src="{{#staticFileLink}}8088028652,RESIZE_180x180{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="8088028652?profile=RESIZE_180x180" width="97" /></a>owner 18 months later and used the cash as his personal repository, according to a series of jarring admissions in a sworn deposition.<br /> Prakas spent the money for pricey family vacations and expensive dinners at restaurants, and doled out thousands of dollars to his family, according to a lawsuit filed in Palm Beach County Circuit Court. The allegations stem from an eviction lawsuit over $343,000 in unpaid rent. A judge evicted Prakas in 2018.<br /> This news was no shocker to Dave Arm. <br /> “This is an old story,” the Lantana Chamber of Commerce president said. “We’ve known about this, but it finally hit the papers.”<br /> Prakas, Arm said, “has probably been the most successful restaurant broker in South Florida. He’s the go-to guy if you want to buy a restaurant, sell a restaurant, lease property, or buy property and put a restaurant in. He’s the guy. For some reason, he decided he wanted to control this property. He went to Burt Handelsman (who then owned the property) and came up with this idea of doing a 99-year lease.”<br /> The property — a collection of small, colorful old shops on the north side of the 200 block of Ocean Avenue — became Lantana Village, and Prakas put up a sign so everyone would know. But the sign disappeared a few years ago along with Prakas’ dream of turning Ocean Avenue into Lantana’s version of Mizner Park, Arm said. <br /> Only three shops are currently occupied: Mario’s Ocean Avenue, Oceano Kitchen and Jeannie’s Ocean Boutique. The vacancies are a mix of recent closures and buildings that were empty when Prakas arrived.<br /> “There was a hair cutter, but she’s gone,” Arm said. “Set back in there was a little smoothie café, but that’s closed now.” <br /> Arm said one of the features of the Handelsmans’ real estate program “is they really never fix anything up and they never sell anything.” The shops between Oceano and Mario’s are “really dilapidated,” he said. <br /> “They’ve been empty since I’ve been in Lantana,” said Arm, who arrived in 2006. “Tom (Prakas) came up with the idea of getting a master lease on the whole thing, trying to fix up and lease out those shops in the middle that are empty, and also control the leases for Mario’s and Oceano Kitchen and the clothing store,” Arm said. “Apparently Prakas had no idea how code works and how parking works and what the story is in Lantana.”</p>
<p><strong>Breaking the lease</strong><br /> Prakas began deviating almost immediately from terms of a 49-year master lease (with a 49-year option) that he signed in March 2016 for the shops known as Lantana Village. The owner of the properties was Love Lantana Point LLC. Real estate magnates Burt and Lucille “Lovey” Handelsman and their son Steven each had a 33% stake in the company.<br /> The lease stipulated that Prakas — via his own company called Lantana Village LLC — would pay $18,450 a month. The rents he collected from the shops’ subtenants were to cover his own monthly rent on the master lease, as well as taxes, insurance, utilities, repairs, maintenance and the like.<br /> Prakas, however, paid only $15,000 a month from April 2016 through March 2017, and stopped paying any rent at all beginning in October of that year. He purportedly collected $16,000 to $20,000 per month from the tenants. Even when he paid his own rent, he sometimes paid late and sometimes bounced checks, according to court records. He also failed to pay other costs such as insurance and property taxes.<br /> Love Lantana Point sued Lantana Village LLC in January 2018 and sought to evict Prakas and recover unpaid rent and taxes. Prakas, his wife, Donna Gibson, and a son, Nicholas, were later added as defendants for alleged fraudulent transfers and civil conspiracy.<br /> Prakas contends the rent was too high — in part because of insufficient parking — and that he had a verbal agreement with Burt Handelsman, his longtime friend, to pay the lesser amount. The lease, however, stipulated that any amendments had to be in writing.<br /> Meanwhile, the Handelsmans were in the throes of a complex divorce starting in March 2016. Nearly 90 family businesses — including Lantana Village — were among the marital assets contested by the couple. Burt Handelsman, 92, tried to keep the Lantana properties and continue with Prakas as the master lessee.<br /> A judge eventually awarded the properties to his ex-wife and their three children. They are now managed by daughter Marsha Stocker. Prakas said he attempted in vain to reach a settlement with her.</p>
<p style="text-align:center;"><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}8088032854,RESIZE_930x{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}8088032854,RESIZE_710x{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="8088032854?profile=RESIZE_710x" width="710" /></a><em>Henry Olmino, who opened Mario’s in 2015, says the restaurant has had good relationships with members of the Handelsman family. <strong>Tim Stepien/The Coastal Star</strong></em></p>
<p><strong>Tenants weigh in</strong><br /> Word of Prakas’ legal problems also came as no surprise to chef Henry Olmino, owner of Mario’s. Because of the ongoing lawsuit, Olmino didn’t want to comment, but he did say he was happy with the relationship he has maintained with Burt and Lovey Handelsman initially and currently their daughter Marsha.<br /> “By the time Prakas took it over as manager everything was done,” said Olmino, who opened Mario’s in 2015. “We were at full roll and all I did was write him a check every month. I have a triple net lease, which means if something breaks, I fix it. So all he did was come by and pick up the rent.” <br /> Olmino began paying rent directly to Handelsman’s wife and children (or Love Lantana Point) after the Handelsmans informed him that Prakas hadn’t been turning over the rent to them. And that’s just fine with Olmino, who says he has a good working relationship with his landlords. <br /> While Olmino was able to weather the Prakas reign, a former tenant was anything but pleased with the former manager.</p>
<p style="text-align:center;"><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}8088036484,RESIZE_930x{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}8088036484,RESIZE_710x{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="8088036484?profile=RESIZE_710x" width="710" /></a><em>Good Vibes Acai Bar was one in a string of businesses in this location. The owner feels she was driven out. <strong>Photo provided</strong></em></p>
<p><br /> “We were driven out against our wishes,” said Tara Huber, owner of Good Vibes Acai Bar and smoothie café. “Tom Prakas became our new landlord in April 2016 and by the end of 2017 he succeeded in destroying everything we built and drove us out officially. Due to current litigation, I can’t speak of all the particular things Tom did to us at this time, <a href="{{#staticFileLink}}8088038059,RESIZE_180x180{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-left" src="{{#staticFileLink}}8088038059,RESIZE_180x180{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="8088038059?profile=RESIZE_180x180" width="96" /></a>but I feel telling the truth in short about why we left is no secret to many who know us.”<br /> Huber said she couldn’t understand why Prakas was making it so difficult for her to stay in business. She thought she and her family had created a wonderful community together and brought life to that end of the street. “We assumed we would be his key benefit to helping him build the Lantana Village he often spoke of. <br /> “We soon found out exactly why,” Huber continued. “His underlying motive and purpose of driving us out was because he loved our concept and all we had built and wanted it for himself and his children to claim the glory of it.” <br /> Prakas nearly tripled Huber’s rent only to gift the shop to two of his sons, Alex and Aristotle, for a fraction of what Huber was paying, she said. <br /> The sons opened a vegan shop, the Current Café, that sold acai bowls and smoothies. Prakas reimbursed them for expenses they incurred to spruce up the property, he said in a deposition.<br /> The Current Café closed in January 2019. Huber had moved her business west to 6169 S. Jog Road in Lake Worth in 2018. <br /> Dak Kerprich, creator of Pizzeria Oceano, was on the block before Prakas arrived but sold his restaurant in early 2017 to Jeremy Bearman, who rebranded it as Oceano Kitchen. Prakas brokered the sale.<br /> “We were not there that long with Tom,” Kerprich recalled. “I introduced Tom to the town of Lantana. That’s when he kind of figured out what they were doing with that property. I introduced him to Dave Thatcher (Lantana’s former director of development). I’ve known Dave for years. <br /> “I worked with Thatcher when I opened up Oceano, then Burt (Handelsman) actually opened up two (parking) spots for me,” Kerprich said. Parking on the avenue has long been an issue. <br /> “I’m probably the only one in the world who can’t say anything bad about Burt,” Kerprich said. “I’ve never had a problem with him. I paid my rent. I liked him. I like listening to him: He’s very interesting — a pleasure to talk to.”<br /> Kerprich also said Prakas was an interesting guy. “You have to take him with a grain of salt. He basically told me what he wanted to do with the block and I told him I was ready to move from Pizzeria Oceano.” <br /> Unlike Olmino, Bearman has a regular lease at Oceano Kitchen. If something has to be repaired at the building, landlord Love Lantana Point pays for it.<br /> “What happened between Tom and Burt,” Bearman said, “was obviously a lot of scheming. It ended up pretty much a bad situation for everyone that was involved. Definitely cost us money in lawyer fees and all the rest of that.<br /> “We don’t have any problems, nobody comes around and asks us anything,” Bearman said. “We do OK with what we have. Nobody’s told us we have to go find other parking.”</p>
<p><strong>Parking issues</strong><br /> “Basically, the empty shops have no parking,” Arm said. “Oceano Kitchen has some parking spots and Mario’s has some parking spots. The parking spots are basically given by the landlord to the tenants to control so they can fulfill the code. So, say Mario’s needs 40 parking spots, it left no spots for these stores. You can’t have a store with no off-street parking. I don’t know if he (Prakas) didn’t know that going in or didn’t research it or thought he’d be able to get around it.”<br /> Prakas, 63, went to the Lantana Town Council on Sept. 26, 2016, to ask for a shared parking agreement that would allow the empty shops to share a town lot on the west side of Dixie Highway on Third Street with Mario’s. But that didn’t work out. <br /> In May 2019, the town did significantly reduce the parking requirements for downtown businesses, and Mario’s, which offers valet parking, no longer needed the town lot. In fact, Olmino said Mario’s never once parked a car on the town-owned lot since he signed the lease for the lot in 2015. <br /> While there is an ongoing debate about whether Ocean Avenue has a parking problem, Arm said he doesn’t think the code is restrictive anymore.<br /> Mayor Dave Stewart adds: “Of course, on Friday evenings and when there are football games and when people go out to the restaurants, yes, parking is at a premium. But every resident can go purchase a parking permit for one year for $36 plus tax and they can park at any spot, anywhere without having to pay a meter — anywhere along Ocean Avenue (where there are no meters), or in the kayak park, Bicentennial Park and Sportsman’s Park where there are meters. I believe we have provided ample spaces for them.”</p>
<p><strong>Prakas’ side of the story</strong><br /> Being a real estate broker, Prakas was hardly a novice at leases and contracts. He says he sold Handelsman millions of dollars of property over the years. When he was young, he worked in the restaurant and bar industry for his parents. By age 21, he opened his own establishments, accumulating 28 restaurants and nightclubs throughout Ohio, Georgia and South Florida. He shed them all in the 1990s, he says, and switched his focus to commercial real estate. <br /> Yet in a pair of sworn depositions, Prakas was fuzzy on details about his bank accounts, said he failed to put agreements in writing and couldn’t explain some of his expenditures.<br /> He contends that Burt Handelsman agreed to the $15,000 in reduced rent until he resolved the parking issues. “I never could get the parking settled,” he said in one deposition. <br /> But he also agreed to the lease even though he said two to four of the structures were so shabby that it would be more economical to tear them down. Prakas said he spent $30,000 on awnings, decks, landscaping and painting the structures. His lease should have been around $10,000 a month, he said.<br /> “It was a bad decision,” Prakas said. “I made a bad deal.”<br /> Handelsman vouched for Prakas’ account. “He didn’t pay the rent that was stipulated in the lease because I said he could take an allowance,” Handelsman said at a court hearing in July 2018. “I made a management decision, what’s best for the company. He was putting back buildings that were falling apart. He was spending far more money than he or I even contemplated that he was going to need.”<br /> In the fall of 2018, Circuit Judge Howard Coates Jr. ordered Prakas to deposit almost $343,000 into a court registry for unpaid rent. Prakas said under oath earlier that he had held onto the subtenants’ rents that he received. But none of the money was paid, and interest is accruing.<br /> Instead the Prakas family treated Lantana Village income as though it was “their personal piggybank,” attorney Jeffrey Fisher, representing the Handelsman children, said in a court filing.<br /> “All told, the Prakas family has conned Love Lantana out of hundreds of thousands of dollars,” Fisher wrote.<br /> The entire family — Prakas has six sons and two daughters — spent Thanksgiving and Christmas 2016 on visits to Atlanta, staying at a luxury hotel in the city’s swanky Buckhead area.<br /> Prakas conceded that his son Nicholas — who he said managed Lantana Village for him — repeatedly spent tenants’ rent on personal expenses such as airline tickets, Uber Eats, Starbucks and Domino’s Pizza.<br /> He also acknowledged transferring Lantana Village rent to his wife but said it was to repay a loan she made to Lantana Village. There is no promissory note, he said. <br /> And Prakas transferred Lantana Village income in what he said was “a very small amount” to a Delray Beach building on which he held the master lease. The owner: Burt Handelsman.<br /> “You made a conscious choice to pay yourself and your family members rather than the rent, right?” Fisher asked.<br /> “Well, yeah,” Prakas said.<br /> Prakas, who hasn’t held leases on Ocean Avenue since 2018, was hesitant to comment on the litigation.<br /> “It was a rent thing,” he said. “It was a negotiation. I was trying to renegotiate the lease and got embroiled in the middle of a family battle with the Handelsman family, with the father. That’s all I can say. It’s a Greek tragedy. There are three sides to the story — yours, mine and the truth. They only told one side.”<br /> A trial date has not been set.</p>
<p><strong>How to fill empty shops?</strong><br /> Arm said the Chamber and all of Lantana would like to see something happen and get some businesses into those empty shops. <br /> “I’m not certain how it could be done. It’d be great if something could open up there, if the owners of the property could make that happen,” he said, referring to the Handelsman family.<br /> Alan Ross, whose Shades of Time sunglass shop across the street at 214 E. Ocean has been on Ocean Avenue for 26 years — the first several years in one of the vacant shops the Handelsmans now own — said people have to be realistic about the street’s potential.<br /> “I don’t know what the intentions are of the people that have that property,” Ross said. “In my opinion, 25 years later, this isn’t a street that has a lot of walking traffic at all. You have to have the willingness and/or ability to make yourself a destination with a product that works or you’re just not going to do business.<br /> “I’ve seen businesses come and go and the reason they’ve come and gone is they didn’t do the upfront work they should have done to investigate what the street and its potential was or is.”</p></div>Lantana: Apartments may be in Kmart shopping center’s futurehttps://thecoastalstar.com/profiles/blogs/lantana-apartments-may-be-in-kmart-shopping-center-s-future2019-10-02T15:00:00.000Z2019-10-02T15:00:00.000ZThe Coastal Starhttps://thecoastalstar.com/members/TheCoastalStar<div><p><strong>By Mary Thurwachter</strong></p>
<p>The Lantana Town Council approved a change to the comprehensive land-use plan that could pave the way to replace the Kmart-anchored shopping center with apartments.<br /> A petition asking for the 18.6-acre site at the northwest corner of Hypoluxo Road and South Dixie Highway to be changed from commercial to mixed-use development was filed by the center’s landlord, Lantana SDC LLC, represented by Miami attorney Ryan Bailine.<br /> “Big-box stores are dying,” Bailine told the council at its Sept. 23 meeting. “With the rise and convenience of online retail, big-box stores, like the Kmart, are scaling back their brick-and-mortar operations because they are not finding the same type of economic vitality experienced in prior decades.”<br /> The Lantana Kmart has a long-term lease, Bailine said. “But if it does decide to shut its doors, finding another big-box tenant for the Kmart building will be difficult given the current economic climate for these types of uses.”<br /> Bailine said his client sees an opportunity to take the worn shopping center, built in the mid-1970s, and work toward an appropriate mixed-use development project known as Lantana Village.<br /> The conceptual master plan proposes to redevelop the Kmart parcel (other parcels included on the land-use plan change are the shopping center anchored by Winn-Dixie and the northernmost small shopping center) with up to 279 residential units. Three out-parcels — containing Bank of America, Dunkin Donuts, Burger King and a Fuel for Fit — are not part of the application.<br /> The only other mixed-use development project in Lantana is Water Tower Commons, which Bailine said “has been hugely successful in attracting a high-end multifamily developer, which only further demonstrates the town’s unmet need for more multifamily projects.”<br /> The vote to approve a change to the comprehensive land-use plan won by a 3-2 margin, with Mayor Dave Stewart, Phil Aridas and Malcolm Balfour in favor and Lynn Moorhouse and Ed Shropshire against. If the proposal is approved after a second hearing at a future meeting, rezoning will follow.<br /> “I’m hearing about apartments next to a Winn-Dixie and backed up to a railroad track on a busy road, and that doesn’t sound like a place for high-quality housing,” Moorhouse said. “I wouldn’t want a place next to a Winn-Dixie.”<br /> Bailine said the vision is to build a marketplace and multifamily housing with top-notch amenities. <br /> “I’m not an architect, so I don’t know how the site would lay out,” Bailine said. “I do know that there are a number of high-quality builders who are interested. I can tell you that, with your support, we will come back to the town with what we believe is a very thoughtful and code-compliant proposal to redevelop this with a market rate rental community.” <br /> He said a site plan would come up for council approval before any building is done.<br /> “If we change this, we can’t unchange this, and I have no idea what you’re going to put there and neither does anybody in this room,” Moorhouse said. <br /> Shropshire questioned whether the proposal’s scale was reasonably related to the neighborhood’s needs. He also mentioned the town’s increased water usage, wondering if a large rental community would overly tax the town’s utilities.<br /> Stewart said he was concerned about traffic and overall impact. “I am also concerned that the shopping center needs to be updated,” he said. “It is ready for a change.”<br /> <strong>In other business</strong>, the town:<br /> • Approved a special exception use to the mixed use zoning at Water Tower Commons to allow for a gas station with restaurant and convenience store. <br /> Ken Tuma, representing the developer, said the station would not be accessible directly from Lantana Road but that customers would need to drive into Water Tower Commons to reach it on the southwest corner of the property. <br /> The exception will apply only to mixed-use properties with at least 25 acres. Water Tower Commons has 73 acres.<br /> • Adopted a tax rate for fiscal year 2020 of $3.50 per $1,000 of taxable value — which represents a 6.7% increase from the rollback rate of $3.28. Next year’s total combined budget is $19,988,983.</p></div>