Boca Raton may seize private property

Officials are trying to preserve beachfront

Boca Raton officials may force property owners to sell their land on the beachfront to keep it from being developed.

The Greater Boca Raton Beach & Park District is eyeing properties along North Ocean Boulevard, the city’s stretch of State Road A1A.

Park district staff could not be reached Thursday to say which properties it is considering, but Palm Beach County property records show at least seven private, vacant properties on Boca’s oceanfront, all of them north of the Boca Inlet.

The park district tried last year to buy several properties, but the owners declined, said district chairman Robert Rollins. Now city officials are considering using eminent domain, a process that allows government to acquire private land for public use. A court must approve the seizure and determine how much an owner would be paid.

The properties sought last year included:

0.3 acres at 2500 N. Ocean Blvd., owned by Natural Lands LLC.

0.4 acres just north of 2500 N. Ocean Blvd., owned by Grand Bank National.

0.28 acres at 2425 N. Ocean Blvd., owned by Diamond Development Partners.

The district also expressed interest in a property at 2330 N. Ocean Blvd. and a swath of vacant land at 2401 N. Ocean Blvd., which is owned by the Ocean Club condos.

All of those properties lie roughly be-

tween South Beach Park, at Palmetto Park Road, and Spanish River Park.

“The objective really is to preserve the Boca beaches,” Rollins said.

The land could be made into parks or incorporated into Ocean Strand, an undeveloped lot on Ocean Boulevard owned by the district, he said.

The effort arose in 2015 after the city reluctantly agreed to allow for a 10,000-square-foot house with four stories to be built on the beach at 2500 N. Ocean Blvd. City staff told the council the developer had met all of the required criteria to build on the site.

“We are bound by our code and the law,” Boca Mayor Susan Haynie said in 2015 when the council voted to approve the project. “We may not like something, but it doesn’t mean we have the right to impose our personal opinions on it.”