Structures to be torn down for golf course

Boca district OKs demolition cost

All the buildings, tennis courts and parking lots on the old Ocean Breeze site will be demolished to make way for a new redesigned public golf course in Boca Raton.

The Greater Boca Raton Beach & Park District, which has bought the property, agreed Monday to pay $730,735 to demolish about a dozen vacant structures including the hotel and clubhouse.

It could be two months before demolition starts, and it could last three months, said Briann Harms, assistant director.

“The most important thing will be notifying all the people in advance about the noise and inconvenience,” said Harold Chaffee, president of Keep Golf in Boca.

That includes 1,800 condo units on the course and an estimated 3,000 residents in the nearby Hidden Valley neighborhood.

“The parking lots will be ripped up at the hotel and clubhouse,” Harms said. “They will not reuse the parking lots because the buildings will change.”

Six tennis courts also will be demolished.

The former 212-acre golf course closed in June 2016. Af-

ter a controversy about the purchase price, city council passed a revenue bond not to exceed $20 million to loan the district the money to buy Ocean Breeze for use by city and district residents.

“We own the east side, which includes the hotel. The city owns the west side, which is the golf course,” Harms said, after the district bought the hotel parcel outright.

The district rescheduled the first meeting with Price/ Fazio, the golf course design firm the district chose, until next Monday.

“Nothing has been decided on the hotel property,” said district director Art Koski.

Hotel companies have expressed interest in both building a hotel and buying the property, he added.

“We could get the golf course up and running without the clubhouse,” he said.

Who will finance the course’s reconstruction is also uncertain. “We may look to the city or seek our own financing,” Koski said.

In a separate deal in November 2017, the city agreed to sell its municipal golf course outside city limits to G.L. Acquisitions Corp. City council just approved a third extension to Sept. 22 so the developer can analyze the deal.