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By Larry Barszewski
A major mixed-use downtown development planned on the east side of Federal Highway just north of Ocean Avenue has been in the works for almost nine years, but construction still hasn’t started.
Boynton Beach city commissioners, serving as the Community Redevelopment Agency board, agreed to do what they could to help the project move forward. At the CRA’s Dec. 9 meeting, they increased the CRA’s subsidy for the eight-story Ocean One project to $11.5 million — $2.5 million more than they approved in May 2024.
The CRA receives tax money from the increased property value of developments in the CRA district. It is money from those tax revenues — to be generated by the Ocean One project — that the CRA has pledged to pay over 14 years to support the estimated $174.1 million project.
“This is such a big piece of our downtown,” Mayor Rebecca Shelton said of the 3.5-acre site.
“I remember when it was a Bank of America building and you couldn’t go there. You’d get robbed in your car — and the prostitutes — and so, it was a blighted property for so long.”
She supported the increased amount of tax increment funding because “we’re so close to having what the residents want as a viable downtown and I do like the project.”
Ocean One received its first city approval in 2017, but the original developer failed to meet its CRA-imposed deadline to begin construction and sold the property in 2021.
The new owners, Hyperion Group (BB1 Development LLC), received approval in April 2023 for a revised project that includes 371 residential units and about 25,000 square feet of retail and commercial space. It also has green space and public plazas with outdoor seating.
In May 2024, with Hyperion back before the CRA board seeking $11.5 million in tax increment funding, the board approved $9 million. In return, the developer agreed to provide 90 public parking spaces inside a planned garage, as well as 20 on-street spots, with 20% of the parking revenue to be shared with the CRA.
But this past May, the developer put in a request that the CRA up the tax increment funding to $16 million, which commissioners at the Dec. 9 meeting said was too high.
While they wouldn’t agree to $16 million, they did say from an economic analysis that the $11.5 million was justified.
“What’s the alternative, right?” Commissioner Thomas Turkin said. “The alternative is you guys can’t perform, you have to sell the project, then we get a 10-12 story building, or another Live Local project which I think, again, is not what residents want to see.”
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