By Mary Thurwachter
Lantana residents got a first look at the town’s completed master plan June 14.
Dana Little, the urban design director for the Treasure Coast Regional Planning Council who spearheaded the effort, appeared at a special Town Council meeting to present the $169,800 plan, a year in the making.
“Tonight, I want to focus on the things that haven’t been presented before,” which came directly from work with Town Manager Brian Raducci and Development Director Nicole
Dritz and her staff, Little said. “And it’s a much better plan for it.”
Little identified three planning districts: the Lantana Beach District, the Downtown District along Ocean Avenue from the Intracoastal Waterway west to U.S. 1, and the Town Center District, where Town Hall is located.
The beach
“We think the beach is, if not your primary asset, it’s in the top two or three,” Little said. “It really needs some investment. We were out there, and the restaurant was packed. The
Dune Deck is one of the very few places in Palm Beach County where you can literally sit and dine on the beach. But we were quite surprised with the state of the boardwalk, handrails and steps. There are unsafe conditions at the beach which need to be an immediate priority for funding.”
If the beach is the town’s best asset, its upkeep should be a priority, Little said. “It’s like the old broken window scenario, what is the message that’s being sent?” he asked.
Replacing handrails and steps that have been battered over the years with storms will vastly improve the conditions out there and make them safer, he said.
Beyond the decking and handrails, his team looked at the landscaping and at what other communities have done.
“In Martin County, they did a full beach-park redo,” Little said. “They got rid of the sod, which never worked very well in those sandy conditions. They replaced it with natives that are sea spray and sea salt tolerant.”
Another recommendation is to landscape the beach entrance at Dorothy Rissler Lane beside Eau Palm Beach Resort & Spa. “There are sandbags all over the place and cars are parked all over. With landscaping and design, you can maybe discipline this a little bit. There’s probably an infinite number of ways to do this,” Little said.
Downtown
The master plan recommendations include a “dining incentive area,” Little said. “It’s the parcels that are on Ocean Avenue stretching all the way out to North Dixie. That’s really the heart of your downtown and that includes the Key Lime House.
“We heard over and over again about the parking challenges and we’ve come up with recommendations about how you might provide parking to the north and the south.”
Little said Dritz identified parcels “on Third Street and then the FEC parcel south — right along the FEC corridor south of Ocean Avenue — which has some opportunity.”
There is an existing municipal parking lot at North Third Street, just north of the library, to the west of U.S. 1.
“It’s missing sidewalks and is not clearly signed,” Little said. “You don’t know if you’re supposed to be there or not. It’s kind of unkempt. We walked from there to downtown multiple times and it’s literally a 41/2- to 5-minute walk. Crossing U.S. 1, North Dixie, is easier than it is in a lot of locations within the corridor. We were able to restripe and get over 60 spaces that are literally within a 5-minute walking distance from your downtown. Not only is that an interesting and perhaps a good idea, but those spaces could be used as an incentive for someone to come and invest.
“Say I want to do a restaurant and go into one of the buildings that’s already there. And the code currently requires me to have five parking spaces on site. Well, guess what?
Maybe it’s a first-come, first-served basis: You invest in the downtown, we will count these spaces off site toward your parking requirement.”
The town needs to do some work such as completing sidewalks and manicuring the municipal lot.
“We did a rendering to show you how you can even take a wall [next to the municipal lot] and do some sort of mural, and turn it into a vibrant place,” Little said. “With a little paint and some signage, people would know this is a safe and legitimate place to be.”
Town Center District
Little’s team said the Town Hall campus deserved additional attention.
“There’s a lot of pent-up opportunity within this beautifully planned municipal campus that you have,” he said.
“You all were designated a Tree City at one point. But over time, many of the trees have gone away. We looked at the Greynolds Circle area and we identified six or seven different locations where there could be key interventions along the circle.
“It might be missing sidewalks, it might be creative crosswalks, it might be providing streetlights and certainly providing landscaping. I just identified one or two of those detailed areas but there are six of them where we’ve got detailed plans which show where new street trees should go, where new sidewalks should go, where additional on-street parking could be beautified and legitimized.”
Little said the circle area should be used for a lot more things. It would be a great place to set an example for re-creating a tree canopy, he said.
Kmart site development
The Kmart site is also an important piece of the master plan.
Little’s team agreed with the council’s decision to reject a recent development proposal for the property.
“Not because the program was wrong, not because we were opposed to a developer bringing in residential, but the way that they were delivering it, creating a sort of gated cul-de-sac community in the middle of a parking lot,” Little said. “You could do better than that. So, we’ve got designs in the master plan with renderings for that and lots of other things as well.”
A vote on whether to accept the plan is expected at a future council meeting.
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