South Florida Sun-Sentinel Palm Beach (Sunday)
Richie’s Gourmet Italian Ices closing
For more than a quarter century, Richie
Childs has been selling gourmet Italian ices through the window of a tiny store on Commercial Boulevard in Oakland Park. Not for much longer. Richie’s Gourmet Italian Ices will be closing on Dec. 16 to make way for a Starbucks.
Never mind that there are 30,000 coffee shops around the world and only one Richie’s. Pave paradise and put up a coffee shop.
“On Aug. 13, I got a notice from Safeway to vacate within 15 days because they were selling to Publix,” Richie says. “I panicked. I called Publix in Lakeland and asked them to give me more time. Publix agreed and was nice enough to let me stay until Dec. 31. They were very fair to me.”
A Publix spokeswoman was looking into the matter, but had no immediate comment.
The affable Richie has been selling his homemade gourmet ices, coffees and soft pretzels out of the 150-square-foot store at 898 E. Commercial Blvd., for 26 years. The shop sits catty-corner to the new Publix, which opened on Nov. 1 at 950 E. Commercial Blvd.
It’s quite possible Richie’s is the smallest store in South Florida. Certainly, his is one of the few independent business selling the specialty ices, which are a cross between a sorbet and a snow cone. Yelpers rave about them.
Richie says his little location also is convenient because of the drive-through. Customers, many of them busy moms who pick up their kids from nearby schools, can pull off the boulevard to grab a frosty treat and quickly be on their way without getting out of the car.
“I opened up on Black Friday in 1992, and I’ve been scooping ices ever since,” he says.
Even though he’s served thousands of customers, Richie doesn’t know them by name. “I know them by flavor and by their cars. You’re lemon, right?” he asks with grin in his distinctive South Philly accent.
Like so many others in our neighborhood, my husband, Dan, and I have been bringing our (now-grown) kids to Richie’s since we moved in more than 25 years ago.
Richie’s pint-size store is popular. He makes 25 buckets fresh every day using natural ingredients and hunks of real fruit. Flavors change daily and include traditional lemon, chocolate, strawberry and cherry, along with exotic combinations such as lemon-ginger, pineapple-basil, mango, coconut, tangerine and watermelon. There are kid favorites rainbow, birthday cake and
We knew it was one of the most expensive houses in the country: A Hillsboro Beach mansion dubbed Playa Vista Isle was listed for $159 million, after all.
But now the real estate website PropertyShark has made it official.
The mansion with its 3,000-bottle wine cellar, six waterfalls and a putting green with its own sand trap has been ranked No. 3 on a list of top 10 most expensive homes for sale nationwide.
The top 10 locations of single-family homes “for the richest of the rich” range between $50 million and $500 million, according to PropertyShark, which provides data for 90 million properties in major U.S. markets.
Eliza Theiss, real estate writer and study author, said it’s possible some of the homes will see a price cut. For others, “it’s a question of finding the right buyer.”
These homes are “for the 1 percent of the 1 percent. It’s beyond what a house would mean for you and me,” she said. These are “iconic status properties. It’s not just to live in, but to entertain in.”
The Hillsboro Beach property, at 935 and 939 Hillsboro Mile, includes the house and an adjacent 2-acre piece of land along State Road A1A. It has 30,000 square feet of living space, with 11 bedrooms; 22 bathrooms; a 3D-IMAX, in-home theater with 18 recliners; 20-car garage with secure tunnel access; wine cellar with individually controlled temperature and humidity with an adjacent tasting room; a pool with a slide; and a Jacuzzi with ocean views.
The 58,000-square-foot estate will be up for sale at a live auction on Nov. 15 through the real estate auction company, Concierge Auctions. One Sotheby’s International Realty has the listing along with the auction house.
The other homes on the top 10 list offer everything from a working farm complete with coconut and citrus trees (that would be No. 7 in Hawaii, with an asking price of $70 million), to 7,000 acres shared with bears, bison and mountain lions and featur-