Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Doc’s All American still might make a comeback
If you miss Doc’s All American — the Delray Beach staple that closed after 70 years of serving up ice cream and burgers — don’t despair. There’s a chance the landmark will open again, with a serious facelift.
All you have to do is wait until 2023. Possibly. That’s when Neil Schiller, the attorney for the new property owner, MDG Banyan
Partners, thinks they will finish the refurbishing.
“We’d like to get shovels in the ground at the beginning of 2022,” Schiller says.
Why so long? Well, a lot has to be resolved between the developer and the city of Delray Beach.
What is boils down to is that city commissioners want to preserve the restaurant that opened in 1951, and so they are
requiring that the developers register Doc’s with a historic designation. The lot includes a Dunkin, Doc’s and two small parking lots in between.
“It’s a very, very valuable corner of Delray Beach,” Schiller adds.
Already on the other side of Atlantic Avenue, another project is in the works. Sundy Village will be a complex with restaurants, bars, wellness centers and office space built alongside the Sundy House boutique hotel/restaurant/ event venue. Pebb Capital, a real estate and private equity investment firm, is behind the development.
To strike a balance between the new construction while honoring the neighborhood’s legacy, the city of Delray Beach maintains that making Doc’s an official historic site would preserve the building on the corner of West Atlantic Boulevard and North Swinton Avenue (across the street from Old School Square).
“The building is not historically protected,” explains Ryan Boylston, Delray Beach vice mayor. “So, [with certain caveats] a developer or the property owner can knock down all the buildings.”
Schiller is now finalizing the application and site plans, which will include indoor seating.
“Doc’s wasn’t making money and hasn’t been making money for many, many years,” he says. “The air conditioner hadn’t been working for at least eight to 10 months. They’ll be rivitalizing the kitchen, which needs to be done. It was not in great shape. There are other major deficincies.”
He adds that the principals of MDG Banyan Partners are considering greatly expanding the menu offerings, maybe adding breakfast service. They also want to construct a building next to Doc’s with retail and a restaurant on the ground floor and office space on the second and third floors.
“The restaurant in that building might be something more like fine dining, something other than just hamburgers,” Schiller explains. “The idea is to make [the entire lot] a little bit more user friendly. And a little more community-centric, which we hope will bring people from East Atlantic Avenue over Swinton and enjoy the amenities that West Atlantic offers.”
Boylston says that’s what the commissioners want as well.
“They have a great vision for what Doc’s is going to be in the future…in return we are going let them build another building. And in turn they are not building on one third of the property. We’re preserving Delray Beach without freezing it in time. It doesn’t do any good for the Doc’s building to sit there empty.”
It doesn’t do the neighborhood any good either, according to Schiller.
“We think this will open opportunities for economic development,” he says. “The surrounding neighborhood is heavily minority, heavily Caribbean. There’s a lot of really cool restaurants, cool stores. There’s just this cool vibe in this neighborhood that will experience a renaissance if we are able to make this happen.”